{"title":"Arriving at the Current Museum Definition: A Global Task and a Decentralising Exercise","authors":"Lauran Bonilla-Merchav, Bruno Brulon Soares","doi":"10.1080/13500775.2022.2234200","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13500775.2022.2234200","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45701,"journal":{"name":"MUSEUM INTERNATIONAL","volume":"74 1","pages":"134 - 147"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43650531","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Decolonisation, Indigenisation and Digital Returns: Two Case Studies from Australia","authors":"Anna Edmundson","doi":"10.1080/13500775.2022.2234197","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13500775.2022.2234197","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article centres on two digital return projects led by Yolngu community stakeholders from North East Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia. Both projects illustrate how concepts of decolonisation and Indigenisation have been mobilised by Yolngu people within an affirmative action framework to overcome past malpractices, and to bring about a transformative environment of cultural reclamation and sovereignty. Both projects have served as pioneering models for digital return initiatives in Australia and internationally. The discussion begins by briefly addressing some of the critical differences between repatriation and the return of documentary heritage in the form of digital ‘archives’ (including collection images and provenance data, photographs, film and sound recordings). It then outlines two different but related pathways taken by Yolngu stakeholders in establishing cultural archiving projects, each centred on decolonising and indigenising museum collections through collaborative partnerships with museums and universities. Inherent in these discussions is the idea that decolonisation is complex, multi-sited and multifocal. The article concludes by arguing that museums need to be more proactive in reconnecting communities with collections. Working collaboratively with First Nations and formerly colonised peoples to restore cultural knowledge lost as a direct result of colonisation is a vital step for moving forward.","PeriodicalId":45701,"journal":{"name":"MUSEUM INTERNATIONAL","volume":"74 1","pages":"94 - 105"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42573993","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Collections Emerge from the Shadows: Exhibition Design, or a Multi-sensory Approach to Reinvesting in Collections","authors":"Viviana Gobbato","doi":"10.1080/13500775.2022.2157554","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13500775.2022.2157554","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The event-driven imperative for art museums has led some to fear the decline of permanent collections in favour of temporary exhibitions. However, recent studies have highlighted new museum practices that aim to promote permanent exhibitions through various strategies, such as carte blanche artist projects, artist residencies and performances. Art collections therefore seem to be emerging from the shadows. In that context, this article studies another phenomenon concerning the enhancement of art collections through various exhibition design practices. What are the intentions behind, reasons for and impacts of these strategies on the display of permanent exhibitions? To explore this question, the author examines the renovations of three museums: the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, the Islamic Gallery at the British Museum in London, and the twin ‘Leonardo’ and ‘Raphael and Michelangelo’ rooms at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The results support the idea that volume, colour, lighting and décor constitute a multi-sensory language of exhibition design that creates an aesthetic and emotional experience for visitors. These strategies are inherited from experience with temporary exhibitions but also from past practices in the display of collections. In this sense, these emerging trends suggest that museums are reinvesting in their art collections through an exhibition design approach oriented towards the public experience.","PeriodicalId":45701,"journal":{"name":"MUSEUM INTERNATIONAL","volume":"74 1","pages":"18 - 29"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43514115","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ana P. Labrador, A. Witcomb, Bruno Brulon Soares, Charalampos (Harris) Chaitas, Hervé François, Jane Legget, Mathieu Viau‐Courville, M. Mosothwane
{"title":"Reconstructions and Re-readings by the Editorial Board","authors":"Ana P. Labrador, A. Witcomb, Bruno Brulon Soares, Charalampos (Harris) Chaitas, Hervé François, Jane Legget, Mathieu Viau‐Courville, M. Mosothwane","doi":"10.1080/13500775.2022.2157549","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13500775.2022.2157549","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45701,"journal":{"name":"MUSEUM INTERNATIONAL","volume":"74 1","pages":"iv - vii"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41554421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Southeast Asian New Immigrant-Themed Contemporary Art as an Approach to Anti-Authoritarian Practices at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taiwan","authors":"S. Chang","doi":"10.1080/13500775.2022.2157567","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13500775.2022.2157567","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines the exhibition Family Memo-Island of Memory and Migration: Southeast Asia New Immigrant-Themed Contemporary Art (11 May–26 August 2018) at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei, Taiwan. As part of the institution’s transnational justice exhibition, Family Memo was the first and only exhibition to feature South East Asian culture and issues of immigration—especially migrant workers and marriage migrants. This topic created a veiled dialogue with objects that represent Chiang’s authoritarian regime and Taiwan’s days of White Terror, as many Taiwanese see Chiang’s Nationalist Party as a settler/immigrant regime from China to Taiwan. I applied discourse analysis when treating the ‘exhibitionary complex’ (Bennett 1995) as text and analysed the narratives with elements of exhibited objects, written descriptions, and audio text. Data sources include museum annual reports, website information, newsletters, news reports, official publications, museum statements, and interviews with the curator and participating artists. Through literature reviews and interviews with museum staff, curators and several participating artists, I demonstrate how the efforts of the independent curator and artists opened up a variety of narratives of Taiwan, despite the nature of the Memorial Hall’s relationship to authoritarian history. In so doing, the Memorial Hall not only reads the concept of migration in a positive way in a time when labour migrants and marriage migrants are viewed negatively but also unveils its potential in providing a different approach to discuss human rights and anti-authoritarian practices and shared experiences and goals.","PeriodicalId":45701,"journal":{"name":"MUSEUM INTERNATIONAL","volume":"74 1","pages":"98 - 111"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44731017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Intangible Cultural Heritage as a Catalyst of Constructing Private Museums","authors":"Yahao Wang","doi":"10.1080/13500775.2022.2157572","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13500775.2022.2157572","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The development of ecomuseums and community museums in China over the past few decades has impacted the adaptation of the new museology as derived from Western contexts. However, these museums have been constructed and discussed within official heritage and museological discourses. This article suggests the need to reimagine and reframe the new museology employed in China, calling for an investigation into the bottom-up and alternative museological practices that intangible heritage practitioners conduct. Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) practitioners predominantly sustain and articulate their cultural traditions' values and vitality. Drawing on policies for heritage protection and local development or revitalisation, many ICH practitioners energetically participate in heritage-making and utilisation. They exert their power over ICH management by creating their own museums for self-representation and product commercialisation. Beyond privileging expert judgements and the received knowledge that scholars and official museums produce, ICH practitioners seek to freely define heritage value and demonstrate heritage authenticity within their own spaces. Drawing on the influence of critical heritage studies, this article is built upon a literature review and empirical case studies of two private museums in Guizhou and Guangxi provinces, China. It explores the museumification of ICH and contextualises the initiatives of ICH practitioners in the construction of private museums or non-official museums. It demonstrates how ICH acts as a catalyst for the diversification of museological practices, and how private museums founded by ICH practitioners become their vehicle for safeguarding ICH in situ.","PeriodicalId":45701,"journal":{"name":"MUSEUM INTERNATIONAL","volume":"74 1","pages":"144 - 157"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44751641","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Digital Heritage and Contingent Labour in the Museum","authors":"Haley Bryant","doi":"10.1080/13500775.2022.2157569","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13500775.2022.2157569","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Museums have responded to calls for accountability and reconciliation by establishing cultural recuperation programming, which commonly involves community members travelling to museums to visit and research object collections. Community groups identify the ability to be physically present with their belongings and bear witness to the stories and relations they embody as one of the most valuable outcomes of these initiatives. These visits are often prohibitively expensive and time consuming; therefore, museums are increasingly exploring digital solutions to expand access to collections and other resources. However, North American museums in particular are increasingly reliant on contingent labour to fill roles previously occupied by salaried staff. This is especially true for digital initiatives that frequently operate on a limited-term, grant-funded basis. Existing literature in museum studies offers little critical analysis of the nature of digital museum labour and its impact on workers, outcomes and community partners, focusing instead on standards, protocols and best practices. I argue that this shift towards contingent digital labour in museums challenges the robust, locally specific ‘logic of care’ that scholars suggest undergirds satisfactory cultural recuperation work. The impacts of this shift are compounded by the institutional tendency towards organisational silos and the reliance on technical specialists and specialised knowledges to ensure the success of digital projects. In this paper I attend to the experiences, perspectives and everyday practices of those people ‘doing’ digital work in the museum as a method to uncover the nature of that labour behind the scenes. Furthermore, I demonstrate that reliance on contingent labour perpetuates harm against community groups that have already been and continue to be harmed by institutions. To do so, I bring together extant data on employment precarity in digital museum work with literature on decolonial museology and the use of digital technologies for cultural recuperation to analyse the way that the precarious, technically specialised and temporally limited nature of digital museum labour articulates established museological praxis.","PeriodicalId":45701,"journal":{"name":"MUSEUM INTERNATIONAL","volume":"74 1","pages":"112 - 119"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49422998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Embodied Cognition and the Limits of Digital Museum Experience","authors":"Renata Pękowska","doi":"10.1080/13500775.2022.2157571","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13500775.2022.2157571","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract A museum visit is a life event, which can result in an array of experiences that its digital counterparts are not able to reproduce. Museum topographies reveal themselves through our encounters with them. The knowledge we gain is connected to physical locations and things, stored as scenarios and registered as whole events. The context of embodied and situated cognition provides a strong and thought-provoking argument for experiencing real-life museum spaces. What embodied cognition theories suggest is that the restricted use of our bodies might result in profoundly altered, limited forms of cognition. Online interactions increasingly force us into modes of thinking which rely on eye-based absorption of the mimetic language. The non-linear events and tapestries of real-life experience are replaced by ‘eye-screen cognition’, spatial inertness and disconnection from the modes which most likely play a crucial role in our cognitive processes. Without dismissing the obvious benefits of online presence, like reaching new audiences and connecting databases and thus creating new research opportunities, I would like to argue the case for the in-person museum visit, using specifically the theories of embodied experience and examples from my own lived experience. Embodied cognition theories indicate that we think as embodied agents, and depend on sensorial input to support our understanding, formation and retention of concepts. Embodied cognition in the museum context can help us better understand and appreciate the spectrum and complexity of our perception processes, the meaning of an impactful event and the richness of our living experience.","PeriodicalId":45701,"journal":{"name":"MUSEUM INTERNATIONAL","volume":"74 1","pages":"134 - 143"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44350057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Light in the Temple’: The Influence of Mouseion and the New International Museology in the Rooms of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, Argentina","authors":"Victoria Márquez Feldman","doi":"10.1080/13500775.2022.2157558","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13500775.2022.2157558","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article analyses the changes that took place in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (the National Museum of Fine Arts) of Argentina in the 1930s. Founded in 1895, it moved to a new building in 1933, leaving behind the chaotic display of the 19th-century pavilion that used to host its collections. The newly relocated museum then revealed a brand-new museography, which implied radical changes in its display methods and artwork selection. The main person responsible for this revamping was Atilio Chiáppori, its Director. An avid reader of Mouseion, he edited the Boletín del Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, where he published articles – that he translated into Spanish himself – for the Argentinian public to read. Our article aims to understand the influence of the International Museums Office – International Council of Museum’s direct ancestor – and Mouseion in Argentina, taking the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes as a case study. We will trace the influence of the debates conveyed by this magazine in the 1930s to better comprehend the place of Argentina within the context of the birth of museography as we know it today, and within newly born multilateral organisations like the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation. Along with the study of the Museum’s Boletín and its photographic archives, we will also dig into Mouseion’s pages and the proceedings of the famous 1934 Muséographie conference. By reviewing these sources together with Luz en el Templo, the memoir written by Chiáppori about his time as a museum director, we will try to understand the transformation of a 19th-century museum for the elite into a place of public education and debate.","PeriodicalId":45701,"journal":{"name":"MUSEUM INTERNATIONAL","volume":"74 1","pages":"52 - 61"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42621655","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Exhibiting the Past to Build a Nation: 19th-Century Identities and Museums in Spain and Italy","authors":"Jonatan Jair López-Muñoz","doi":"10.1080/13500775.2022.2157557","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13500775.2022.2157557","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article analyses how political and cultural European elites crafted new historical narratives to construct identities during the process of defining the nation-state in the 19th century. It looks specifically at the cases of Spain and Italy, two Mediterranean countries that have common characteristics with regards to the process of crafting their national identities: the use of historical objects and events. The ruling party’s ability to control the past led to the creation of new narratives that would favour their aspirations at the time. These were transmitted through a new tool: history museums. It was not only works of art that were exhibited in these museums; what had previously been considered trivial was also put on display. The familiarity and everyday nature of such objects was used to arouse patriotic feelings in visitors. National wars of independence and their attendant disasters were central themes depicted within deliberate political discourses. Three case studies show how museums were used to mythologise the most recent historical events at the time in order to generate nationalist sentiment. In the provincial museums of Girona and Badajoz, Spain, space was set aside in exhibitions to pay homage to local heroes of the War of Independence. In Turin, Italy, the Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento dedicated a museum to the cult of King Victor Emmanuel II, the Father of the Italian Fatherland. This museum was conceived as a great temple of italianità in which to remember the suffering and wars that had made Italy a new and united country.","PeriodicalId":45701,"journal":{"name":"MUSEUM INTERNATIONAL","volume":"74 1","pages":"40 - 51"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45332741","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}