Allan Wallach's The Museum As A Way Of Seeing

In December 2002, the directors of 18 museums located throughout Europe and the United States issued the Declaration of the Importance and Value of Universal Museums. The declaration is an attempt, by the directors of major Western museums, to defend against demands for restitution of museum objects by defining themselves as “universal museums” which are of value to all of humanity. This document fails as a convincing defence against restitution claims for several reasons. First, it dismisses circumstances of older acquisitions without considering the ethics or legality of surrounding the acquisition. Second, while it pronounces these museums “universal,” it approaches this from a distinctly Western perspective and perpetuates colonial and imperialist ideas. Finally, it ignores important debates that are occurring between and within scholarly, professional, and activist communities.

What defines a memorial museum as a category of museum? While symbolizing the event and forming public perspectives on it, “the ethics in memorial museums, ethics morality and human deeds occupy the very heart of the topics on display, and correspondingly involve especially careful consideration of representation and reception” (Williams, Memorial museums, 220). Memorial mMuseums should be responsible at when choosing the objects they display, narrating the event and establishing visitors’ memories.

The museum in modern society is no longer a place for an unchallenged authority to civilize the barbaric masses, but instead a place fraught with conflicting views. Numerous artists and activists’ groups are performing critiques on museums for the ways they are still upholding anachronistic ideals and remain hegemonic, privileged, and patriarchal intuitions in society. This paper will be looking at these issues through the lens of Feminist critique and Institutional critique. This paper will analyse how Feminist art is de-contextualized and commercialized for use in museum spaces eliminating much of its radical meaning, and the limited successes and the failures of Instructional critique. This paper argues that while both Feminist and Institutional critiques are de-radicalized by being held within institutions, the critically specific and activist nature of feminist critique allows it to retain more power than Institutional critique. Feminist and Institutional critique will be contextualized by a case study in The Tate Modern museum, specifically the “Media Networks” gallery.

In Steven Lubar’s book, Inside the Lost Museum: Curating, Past and Present, the recurring idea that museums are “more than the sum of their parts” plays a critical role in the overall argument (329). Lubar notes many aspects that make up a museum, the collection, for example is an essential part of any museum, but the community, as well as the experiences of the patrons create a lasting museum experience. Additionally, Lubar aptly utilizes real-world examples, contemporary and historical, highlighting the work of individuals in museums and establishing a connection between past and current events. Central to this narrative is the example of the lost Jenks Museum. Lubar uses this museum to argue that museums of the past can educate museum goers

To me, museums serve as trains that deliver goods that are arts to people. Art can be perceived as a mean to entertains our life, reflects customs and communicates thoughts, ideas and emotions and it’s museums job that bring them closer to people. There is a huge difference when it came to seeing the artwork in person and seeing the artwork from a book or website and magazine. You will never be able to feel a piece properly when you see it in the textbook, you will never understand how the color was put together and what is the meaning behinds it, you won’t see how the lines and curves are blend together to make the painting look perfect and how strong that art can affect you in emotion. Many people nowadays don’t even bother watching the art themselves, they rather listening to what critics have to say about the works in their own perspective and can’t even make a decision themselves whether or not they should see the arts. “An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance”, in my opinion, I think we will never know what is good until we see it

Throughout the experience, I learned the importance and care of working with an artifact along with operations within a museum. As I toured Heartland Museum, I witnessed all of the items that are stored behind the scenes because museums only keep a small percentage of the belongings on display. I also learned about the process of creating a display, which includes piecing together many details like attraction, relevance, and of course history. Museums must worry about the community’s interest in the displays. Lastly, I learned about the importance of an artifact by working with some of the items. It is important to handle artifacts with care because of the fragility of the item. After the information I learned at the museum, it was my turn to experience the public

While some may view museums as homes of the dusty, decrypt, and decaying, I think back fondly to the memories I've made in them. When I was four and living in a small apartment in Shaker Heights, Ohio, my father would take me to the Cleveland Museum of Rock and Roll on the weekends when he wasn’t busy working on his MBA at Case Western Reserve University. Every time we visited, I would tell my father that I would grow up to be just like Elvis, to which he would laugh and scoff affectionately. When we moved to Glen Allen, Virginia when I was six, we would occasionally drive up to Washington, D.C. to the Smithsonian Museums. On some Saturdays, we would walk for hours through the halls of art I didn't understand (and still don’t really understand) at the Museum of American Art. On other Saturdays, we would go to the Library of Congress, where I would press my forehead against the glass of the observation deck—much to the dismay of security guards. But perhaps the most significant "museum" I've been in is just a short three-minute drive or seven-minute walk from my suburban home: the Twin Hickory Public Library.

The 21st century has seen a dramatic increase in the challenges facing cultural institutions, particularly museums. One of the most pressing issues currently facing museums worldwide is the diminishing level of government support. Despite reductions in government funding, the sustained maintenance of museum collections and facilities continues to require substantial resources. In the face of such difficulties, a growing number of museums have turned to innovative programming, specifically exhibitions, as a way to ensure financial viability through increased attendance. Given the growing competition for consumer leisure time in today’s society, attention has shifted away from traditional scholarly collection based exhibitions, towards the populist exhibition format offered by blockbuster exhibitions. Through a discussion of Harry Potter™: The Exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum and the First Emperor: China’s Entombed Warriors at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, this essay will examine the two approaches museums are taking to the blockbuster model. It will be argued that although exhibitions reflecting popular culture are becoming increasingly more common, there are institutions that manage to reflect popular taste in ways that continue to advance scholarship and create opportunities for lifelong learning.

This is an immense and actual task, for “[t]he achievement of a beneficial inter-action between the potentially conflicting expectations and aspirations of visitors and host or local communities, presents many challenges and opportunities.”13 I believe that within the museum world lies much knowledge and experience which is certainly relevant to further discussion and development of the relationship between cultural heritage management and tourism. Though my topic is connected to the field of cultural tourism, it has to be kept clear that this thesis is on museums and museology rather than on tourism. The reason is that cultural tourism is a form of tourism – it is not a form of cultural heritage management and is not a form of museum management.14 Museums can on the other hand contribute to cultural tourism as attractions, because they work with the cultural heritage, or even are themselves cultural or heritage assets. Therefore their input to the development in the field of cultural tourism is certainly valid. Though the tourism sector and the cultural heritage management sector, including the museums, actually do have

The author talks about how text that goes with objects in museums directs the reader towards the “preferred reading” or preferred meanings of the object.

For chapter 1 I think a proper title would be “A Museum” because the chapter is when Gene goes back to Devon in 15 years and he calls it “a museum”. Gene walks around the school and it reminds him of his time there and everything that happened. When he gets to the tree he has a flashback about one night when they jumped from the tree into the river. The flashback and places he sees and visits reminds him of the past like a museum that reminds us of the past through artifacts. Therefore, I think the title “A Museum” would be a proper title for Chapter 1.

In Duncan’s book “The Art Museum as a Ritual” he explains the meaning behind art museums, and how they are like rituals and are “complex entities in which both art and architecture are parts of a larger whole.” In most ways, Duncan is correct about art museums being like rituals. They are typically isolated, quiet, and have strict rules on what you are allowed to bring and do within the museum. Each piece is displayed beautiful in its own exclusive space. They also highly protect their pieces and maintain them on a daily. Most people don’t typically go to museums for a “fun experience” rather they go for a more rich and enlightening experience; almost something you can’t replicate elsewhere because atmosphere and ambience is so important. The reason why I bring up atmosphere and ambience is to connect it to Duncan’s claim that “art museums appear as environments structured around specific ritual scenario.” Ambience and atmosphere are important aspects to museums in order to feel like rituals. The atmosphere is museums often feel like a “pseudo-sacred kind of place filled with a ritual-like atmosphere.” Duncan claims that “it is, in my view, precisely the complexity of the art museum - its existence as a profoundly symbolic cultural object as well as a social, political, and ideological instrument - that makes the notion of the museum as ritual so attractive,” which means he believes that museums act as a cultural object for social and political means. He believes that art museums “constitute one of those sites in which politically organized and socially institutionalized power most avidly seeks to realize its desire to appear as beautiful, natural, and legitimate.” They are incredibly excellent places to study the history of cultural forms. He believes they aren’t ritual structures, but rather they stand “as ritual structures,” since they contain vast

Regarding this dichotomy, my thesis questions will include: When is it appropriate for a museum to change its mission? Does success in a museum’s current field mean that a museum should not change its mission? Should institutional history prevent a museum from major change? Does a museum have an obligation to serve a wider community over a smaller interest group? How should new research and changing cultural norms affect a museum and its mission? Due to the fact that the Strong Museum’s new mission is seen as a return to the original ideals of Margret Strong, my research paper will also explore these questions: Should the interests of a museum’s founder play a role in shaping its mission? How, if at all, should donated collections guide the mission of an

Exhibitions are narrative tools which museums and other public institutions assemble to inform, engage and inspire their visitors. The exhibitions are developed using variety of communicative process which generates visitor learning and interpretation on various levels. The understanding of the message largely depends on effective visitor engagement and participation. It is not about ‘what’ you present but how to present it. Each visitor develops their own interpretation based on prior knowledge and new experience. It is believed that the most effective interpretation is provocative rather than instructional which is supported through engagement and discussion. The primary role of an exhibition is to create environment for dialogues and visitor

The first author I would like to discuss is Michael Baxendall. His article Exhibiting Intention: Some Preconditions of the Visual Display of Culturally Purposeful Objects, is centered around understanding the relationship between the visitor and the museum label as well as the intent behinds the objects and the exhibit design. Baxendall has 2 major points in his article. The first point and his own unique idea is the museum set. The museum set is “a sense of the museum as a treasure house, educational instrument, secular temple, and the rest” . The typical adult visitor with this mindset comes to museums expecting that he will view a large array of objects and learn interesting cultural facts about them. This is the observer that most curators make their exhibits to interact with and as such must be aware of their expectations.