Organizing exhibitions: A handbook for museums, libraries and archives (original) (raw)
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In recent years, museums have developed into multi-dimensional organizations, displaying, preserving and collecting objects which are of increasing interest to the global community. They have adapted to a consumer-oriented world and now compete for our attention with other "leisure-time" activities. They must prove themselves worthy of the visitor's time and attention by developing quality exhibitions. Museum Exhibition: Theory and Practice is the only textbook of its kind to consider exhibition development from an integrated approach from theory to practice. The field of exhibition preparation is a complex and demanding one, calling on a variety of professional skills. Designers must have creative ability and aesthetic sense as well as considerable skills in writing, management and interpretation. David Dean examines a wide range of exhibition development concerns, including planning and design of exhibitions, collection care of exhibits, display evaluation and administration, content and text development for exhibitions and computer usage. Museum Exhibition provides a complete outline for all those concerned with providing displays for museums and similar cultural heritage concerns. It will be essential reading for all museum professionals.
Infrastructuring museum exhibition
2015
These pages propose some reflections on Cultural Infrastructure and on infrastructuring museum. We describe an ethnographical experience about understanding, interpretation and re-design of the exhibition environment by visitors. The experience allows us to follow different interpretation and use of the environment. 1 Thinking about cultural infrastructure The manuscript must not have page number or running headers and footers. The research presented in these pages focuses on how an interactive enhanced museum environment is supporting a relationship between visitors and curators. Through this research on exhibition observation and analysis, we seek to extract information about exhibition design, introduction and use of different stages of interactivity in the context of museums. We indicate features about the sustainability of technologically enhanced exhibitions: i.e., how technologies and interactive media promote, replicate and support the sharing of knowledge among visitors and...
Exhibition development and implementation: five case studies
2002
The use of case studies as a tool for better understanding exhibitions is relatively new in the museum field, although cases have been the core of study in a number of other fields including cultural anthropology, law, and sociology. This initial attempt to produce case studies on five Smithsonian exhibitions was aimed at increasing the Office of Policy and Analysis' (OP&A) knowledge of the variety, unique character, and diverse managerial approaches of exhibitions at the Smithsonian. Readers will note that OP&A has not interpreted, analyzed the cases, or compared them to each other. However, the cases demonstrate that exhibits take place in different contexts even within a single museum and that their similarities are perhaps less important than their differences. The cases illustrate the dangers of generalizing about the purposes of exhibitions, management of exhibitions, attitudes of staff, and leadership. I am surmising that many readers are thinking that OP&A is merely restating the obvious. However, sharing some of the background materials, such as these case studies, that OP&A is considering in preparing our forthcoming report on exhibitions may benefit some readers who are less familiar with certain aspects of exhibit making than with others. Zahava D. Doering conducted the interviews for each of the cases and wrote this report. She was assisted in the data collection by former staff member Abby Sharbaugh, and two capable OP&A interns, Courtney Price and Sophia Paulik. OP&A staff, Andrew J. Pekarik, Whitney Watriss and Kerry DiGiacomo, as well as museum staff that worked on each of the exhibitions reviewed the cases. I am indebted to all of them for giving their time, energy and suggestions while working concurrently on many other projects.
History and Theory of Exhibition Design
2014
This course explores a range of museological and popular cultural exhibition practices through case studies including fine arts, ethnography, (natural) history, science and technology, national, memorial and children's museums. Throughout the semester we will focus on investigating how contemporary (primarily American) museums and heritage sites have evolved from princely collections, curiosity cabinets, circuses and amusement parks. The overarching theme of the course is to trace the development of modern museological practice in relation to economic, social, technological, scientific, cultural and political changes and how these transformations affected various "cultures of display." Studying the metamorphosis of museums necessarily entails discussion of empowered public audiences, invention and discovery, education as a means to train citizens in morality and the importance of solidifying national, regional, local as well as class and ethno-cultural identities. The growth of commerce and trade in the aftermath of the first and second industrial evolutions in conjunction with widespread European colonialism resulted in new models and venues for the exhibition of new technologies, art, architecture, anthropology, history as well as living and dead human and animal remains. During the course of the semester, we will look at objects, buildings, people, animals and landscapes to think about how their contexts of display have told three-dimensional stories over the course of several centuries, drawing mainly on examples in the United States. We will examine issues such as the relationship of collections and landscapes to identity; the intersection of commerce and culture; and the influence that evolving educational and entertainment practices have had upon museological institutions. We will consider the role of museums and exhibitions in preserving a view of the past and developing an image of progress; and we will discuss how they change in response to the various contexts in which and for which they exist. The basic objectives of this course are: • To become familiar with the origins of the modern museum, from early collecting activities to the development of the museum in the 19th and 20th centuries and into the postmodern present • To explore the relationships between museums and evolutionary theory, ethnology/ethnography, anthropological theories of cultural relativism, archaeology, natural history • To investigate the cultural and political contexts of building ethnographic collections and displays; as well as the relationship between museums and imperialist/colonialist plunder • Analyzing the emergence of the museum as a focus of anthropological and theoretical inquiry and as a subject of ethnography itself • Examining the contemporary role(s) of museums, notably as the museum has become part of the culture industry (e.g., blockbuster exhibitions); political reassessments of museums' "use" and marketing in
Reformulating the Architecture of Exhibitions
Curatography, 2023
And so, I was trying to ask the question again, ask it anew, as if it had not been asked before, because the language of the historian was not telling me what I needed to know…-HORTENSE SPILLERS The more possibilities are suggested, the more possibilities exist, the more possibilities are taken in by the imagination, the more the imagination's possibilities are defined, the more the possibility of more possibilities can be recognised. The possibilities of more possibilities lead to the imagination itself, immediately and to me.-Madeline Gins If you have curatorial experiences, you might be familiar with the moment when something happens in the realm of an exhibition-the moment the exhibition transcends to become more than just the sum of individual art works in a specific space or site. Exhibiting is alchemy. Alchemy of all sorts of consciousness and entities-invisible histories, memories and projections into the future that curators, artists, technicians, installers and the beholders bring in; matters, objects, both animate and inanimate; knowledge, space and environment etc.-which dissolve their boundaries and synchronise to become inseparable and indistinguishable as individual beings. In this sense, the exhibition itself is not simply exteriorised memory or experience, or a collection of art works and their contextualisation, but also a specific attentional form, into which social, psychic, collective, and technological instances of un/consciousness are capacitated and merged.
2018
Most museum visitors do not know that extensive collections of specimens are stored “behind the scenes” and that these collections are used for current research in biology (e.g. on biodiversity or climate change). In recent years, many museums have developed new exhibition concepts in order to inform the public about this important aspect of museums. In this chapter, several approaches are presented that are used by German natural history museums in order to introduce a broad audience to the fascinating world of curators and taxonomists, to show them the value of the collections and to explain the research being done on these collections.
Museums: Promoting Cultural Awareness
Museum Anthropology, 1987
retired secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, has stated that museums are an enigma both to those who enter them as visitors and to those who work in them. They are enigmas because few people ever bother to think about what a museum is and what it does. Why do we have museums, what goes on behind the facade of halls and galleries? Even if most people do not know what a museum is, our society feels they are a necessary part of our lives. Millions of people visit our over 5,000 museums each year. Every six days in this country a new museum is founded. In view of this, it is especially fitting to think about what anthropology museums are and their special role in American society.