Museums, Narratives, and Critical Histories

Museums, Narratives, and Critical Histories
Author: Kerstin Barndt
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2024-03-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 311078744X

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In response to systemic racism and institutions’ implications in histories of colonialism, nationalism, and exclusion, museum curators have embraced new ways of storytelling to face entangled memories and histories. Critical museum practices have consciously sought to unsettle established forms of representation, break with linear narratives of progress, and experiment with new modes of multivocal, multimedia, and subjective storytelling. The volume features analyses of narratives and narration in museums and heritage institutions today, as well as visions for future museum practices on a local, regional, national, transnational, and global scale. It is divided into three sections: Narrative Theory and Temporality, Ruptures and Repair, and Difficult Memories and Histories. Essays from a variety of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences examine museum practices in history, memorial, anthropological, and art museums across six continents. They develop narratological categories, reflect on immersive and virtual narratives, challenge colonial violence and hegemonic forms of representation, query the performance of heritage, parse exhibition design, and unearth techniques to express narratives of social justice.

Museums, Narratives, and Critical Histories

Museums, Narratives, and Critical Histories
Author: Kerstin Barndt
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2024-02-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110787466

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In response to systemic racism and institutions’ implications in histories of colonialism, nationalism, and exclusion, museum curators have embraced new ways of storytelling to face entangled memories and histories. Critical museum practices have consciously sought to unsettle established forms of representation, break with linear narratives of progress, and experiment with new modes of multivocal, multimedia, and subjective storytelling. The volume features analyses of narratives and narration in museums and heritage institutions today, as well as visions for future museum practices on a local, regional, national, transnational, and global scale. It is divided into three sections: Narrative Theory and Temporality, Ruptures and Repair, and Difficult Memories and Histories. Essays from a variety of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences examine museum practices in history, memorial, anthropological, and art museums across six continents. They develop narratological categories, reflect on immersive and virtual narratives, challenge colonial violence and hegemonic forms of representation, query the performance of heritage, parse exhibition design, and unearth techniques to express narratives of social justice.

Museum Making

Museum Making
Author: Suzanne Macleod
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 488
Release: 2012-03-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136445749

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Over recent decades, many museums, galleries and historic sites around the world have enjoyed an unprecedented level of large-scale investment in their capital infrastructure, in building refurbishments and new gallery displays. This period has also seen the creation of countless new purpose-built museums and galleries, suggesting a fundamental re-evaluation of the processes of designing and shaping of museums. Museum Making: Narratives, Architectures, Exhibitions examines this re-making by exploring the inherently spatial character of narrative in the museum and its potential to connect on the deepest levels with human perception and imagination. Through this uniting theme, the chapters explore the power of narratives as structured experiences unfolding in space and time as well as the use of theatre, film and other technologies of storytelling by contemporary museum makers to generate meaningful and, it is argued here, highly effective and affective museum spaces. Contributions by an internationally diverse group of museum and heritage professionals, exhibition designers, architects and artists with academics from a range of disciplines including museum studies, theatre studies, architecture, design and history cut across traditional boundaries including the historical and the contemporary and together explore the various roles and functions of narrative as a mechanism for the creation of engaging and meaningful interpretive environments.

Challenging History in the Museum

Challenging History in the Museum
Author: Jenny Kidd
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2016-04-08
Genre: Art
ISBN: 131716881X

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Challenging History in the Museum explores work with difficult, contested and sensitive heritages in a range of museum contexts. It is based on the Challenging History project, which brings together a wide range of heritage professionals, practitioners and academics to explore heritage and museum learning programmes in relation to difficult and controversial subjects. The book is divided into four sections. Part I, ’The Emotional Museum’ examines the balance between empathic and emotional engagement and an objective, rational understanding of ’history’. Part II, ’Challenging Collaborations’ explores the opportunities and pitfalls associated with collective, inclusive representations of our heritage. Part III, ’Ethics, Ownership, Identity’ questions who is best-qualified to identify, represent and ’own’ these histories. It challenges the concept of ownership and personal identification as a prerequisite to understanding, and investigates the ideas and controversies surrounding this premise. Part IV, ’Teaching Challenging History’ helps us to explore the ethics and complexities of how challenging histories are taught. The book draws on work countries around the world including Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, England, Germany, Japan, Northern Ireland, Norway, Scotland, South Africa, Spain and USA and crosses a number of disciplines: Museum and Heritage Studies, Cultural Policy Studies, Performance Studies, Media Studies and Critical Theory Studies. It will also be of interest to scholars of Cultural History and Art History.

Exhibiting Europe in Museums

Exhibiting Europe in Museums
Author: Wolfram Kaiser
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2014-04-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1782382917

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Museums of history and contemporary culture face many challenges in the modern age. One is how to react to processes of Europeanization and globalization, which require more cross-border cooperation and different ways of telling stories for visitors. This book investigates how museums exhibit Europe. Based on research in nearly 100 museums across the Continent and interviews with cultural policy makers and museum curators, it studies the growing transnational activities of state institutions, societal organizations, and people in the museum field such as attempts to Europeanize collection policy and collections as well as different strategies for making narratives more transnational like telling stories of European integration as shared history and discussing both inward and outward migration as a common experience and challenge. The book thus provides fascinating insights into a fast-changing museum landscape in Europe with wider implications for cultural policy and museums in other world regions.

Feminist Critique and the Museum

Feminist Critique and the Museum
Author: Kathy Sanford
Publisher: Brill
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2020
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9789004440166

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Thousands of diverse museums, including art galleries and heritage sites, exist around the world today and they draw millions of people, audiences who come to view the exhibitions and artefacts and equally importantly, to learn from them about the world and themselves. This makes museums active public educators who imagine, visualise, represent and story the past and the present with the specific aim of creating knowledge. Problematically, the visuals and narratives used to inform visitors are never neutral. Feminist cultural and adult education studies have shown that all too frequently they include epistemologies of mastery that reify the histories and deeds of 'great men.' Despite pressures from feminist scholars and professionals, normative public museums continue to be rife with patriarchal ideologies that hide behind referential illusions of authority and impartiality to mask the many problematic ways gender is represented and interpreted, the values imbued in those representations and interpretations and their complicity in the cancellation of women's stories in favour of conventional masculine historical accounts that shore up male superiority, entitlement, privilege, and dominance.0Feminist Critique and the Museum: Educating for a Critical Consciousness problematises museums as it illustrates ways they can be become pedagogical spaces of possibility. This edited volume showcases the imaginative social critique that can be found in feminist exhibitions, and the role that women's museums around the world are attempting to play in terms of transforming our understandings of women, gender, and the potential of museums to create inclusive narratives.

Museum Culture

Museum Culture
Author: Daniel J. Sherman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 326
Release: 1994
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780816619511

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Museums display much more than artifacts; Museum Culture makes us on a tour through the complex of ideas, values and symbols that pervade and shape the practice of exhibiting today. Bringing together a broad range of perspectives from history, art history, critical theory and sociology, the contributors to this new collection argue that museums have become a central institution and metaphor in contemporary society. Discussing exhibition histories and practice in Western Europe, the former Soviet Union, Israel and the United States, the authors explore the ways in which museums assign meaning to art through various kinds of exhibitions and display strategies, examining the political implications of these strategies and the forms of knowledge they invoke and construct. The collection also discusses alternative exhibition forms, the involvement of some museums with the more spectacular practices of mass media culture, and looks at how museums construct their public.

Museums and the History of Computing

Museums and the History of Computing
Author: Simone Natale
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2024-07-26
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1040127843

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Museums and the History of Computing examines the critical role that cultural organizations, such as museums and galleries, play in shaping ‘digital heritage’: the cultural heritage surrounding computer technology. Focusing on digital technologies as objects and practices that museums collect, exhibit, and preserve for the future, this book highlights how and why museums play a crucial role in preserving the rich heritage of the digital world, constructing powerful narratives that help make it relevant to the public. It demonstrates that the museum can be a powerful means of safeguarding and interpreting ephemeral and continually changing digital technology, offering new pathways for rethinking the very meaning of digital objects and practices in contemporary societies. It provides practices and strategies for the preservation and exhibition of computing artifacts and ways to accommodate and respond to narratives about histories of computing that circulate in the public arena. Bringing together leading museum and university researchers and practitioners, and mobilizing cross-cutting debates and approaches in areas such as museum studies, cultural heritage, history of technology, anthropology, and media studies, this book challenges us to think critically about what ‘digital’ is when examined not only as a tool but as a cultural object deserving of attention and a place within the museum. Museums and the History of Computing is for museum studies students and researchers as well as museum practitioners – especially those with an interest in digital technology and heritage. It will be of interest to researchers and students interested in histories of computing and digital media and in digital media studies.

Museums and Biographies

Museums and Biographies
Author: Kate Hill
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2014
Genre: Art
ISBN: 184383961X

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Exploring the relationship between museums and biographies, this collection of essays examines examples from the early 19th century to the present day.

Feminist Critique and the Museum

Feminist Critique and the Museum
Author: Kathy Sanford
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2020-08-31
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9004440186

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Feminist Critique and the Museum: Educating for a Critical Consciousness illustrates the potential of feminist adult education and research to critique but equally to encourage imaginative responses to traditionally patriarchal museum exhibition representations and practices.