Museums and museologies in Norway (original) (raw)

Museums and museology in Denmark in the twenty-first century

Journal of Nordic Museology, 2018

The article discusses the role of the legal framework in Denmark in the development of Danish museums and identifies a shift in the administration through a new museum act implemented in 2002 as a turning point through the establishment of an agency under the Ministry of Culture. At the same time museology was strengthened at the universities and since then research, education and museum practices have been focusing on improving the role of museums for visitors and for society.

The Birth of the Museum in the Nordic Countries. Kunstkammer Museology and Museography

Nordic Museology, 2018

The article positions early modern collecting in relation to wider cultures of knowledge production by using perspectives from the history of knowledge, memory studies, and recent studies of Kunstkammern. Some twenty-five years after the reawakened interest in early modern collections the author revisits the question if the museum in the Nordic countries was born in the mid-seventeenth century and asks if collections became museums and a museum culture was established with the appearance of, one, museography, theories and methods of classification and display, two, museology, a science or profession of museum organisation and management, and, three, designated, purpose-built architecture and furniture. The first part brings into play exemplary scholarly and monarchical collectors that contributed to the development of museography and museology. The second part addresses seventeenth-century museography by introducing two acts of knowledge production and retention in the Kunstkammern – asking questions and selecting and ordering. Finally, the author discusses the findings in relation to arguments for placing the museum’s birth in the decades around 1800.

Intersecting heritage, milieu and environment. The concept of Nordic museology in the early 1990s

Nordic Museology (pp. 27–44), No 1, 2018

In this study, I investigate the concept of Nordic museology in the early 1990s. The museologist, museum director and editor-in-chief Per-Uno Ågren’s programmatic article about museology and cultural heritage, published in 1993 in the first ever issue of the journal Nordic Museology, is the point of departure for my historiographic investigation. Ågren’s article is firstly contextualized within the international museological discourse of the 1980s and early 1990s, with scholars like Peter van Mensch, Gaynor Kavanagh and Tomislav Šola. Secondly, it is contextualised within a late twentieth-century idea milieu in Umeå where curators and researchers, like Ronny Ambjörnsson and Sverker Sörlin, received, revised, shaped and used a variety of concepts and practices. The key concepts include traditional museology, new museology, museum studies and heritology as well as idea milieu and life milieu, total heritage, environmental heritage, idea heritage, cultural heritage and natural heritage. What were the specifics of Ågren’s concepts of museology and cultural heritage in relation to the adjacent concepts in the international museological discourse and the idea milieu in Umeå? How did Ågren and his colleagues formulate the concept of Nordic museology?

NORDIC INSPIRATION -FRESH APPROACHES TO MUSEUM LEARNING NORDIC ASSOCIATIONS OF MUSEUM EDUCATION

MID – Museum Communicators in Denmark, www.museumformidlere.dk ISSN 1904-1721, 2015

The publication is one result of the project The best of Nordic museum communication-fresh network approaches from Nordic associations of museum education (NAME) 2015. The project aims to launch a Nordic network of museum associations in the field of education and communication. The project partners: MID-Museum Communicators in Denmark, www.museumsformidlere.dk PEDAALI. The Finnish Association for Museum Education, www.pedaali.fi FISOS-Icelandic Museums Association, www.safnmenn.is THE SECTION FOR EDUCATION, Norwegian Museum Association, www.museumsforbundet.no FUISM-The Association for educational development in Swedish museums, www.fuism.se COVER PHOTO Museum Stavanger.

Museums as mirrors of society : a case study of Finnish museums

2017

This article discusses how Finland’s museums and their collections are both timeand culture-bound and, as such, reflect society’s evolving values as impacted by historical events. Through the lens of Jyväskylä University Museum’s history, the theory of ‘worker generations’ and museum professionalization are discussed. About the Authors Professor of Museology, Mr. Janne Vilkuna (b. 1954), attended Helsinki and Jyväskylä Universities (Finland), studying the fields of Archaeology/Prehistory, Ethnology, Finnish History, and Art History. After completing his Master’s degree (1979), he worked as Senior Curator at the regional Museum of Central Finland, Jyväskylä (1980-89). He taught museology at Jyväskylä University when the department was established in 1983, and became a Lecturer in museology in 1989. Vilkuna completed his PhD in Ethnology in 1992. In 1999, he became the first Professor of Museology in Scandinavia. Concurrently, Vilkuna served as Head of the Jyväskylä University Museums...

Break! On the unpleasant, the marginal, the taboo, and the controversial in Norwegian museums

Open arts journal, 2014

This paper explores the programme entitled Break, which was launched within a grouping of Norwegian museums in 2003. Break emerged in the context of a more critical approach to museum practice and their ways of dealing with controversial pasts in the wake of the new museology. A central goal for Break has been to promote a shift from the presentation of conventionally treated narratives in order to focus on areas that are marginal, hidden, contested and regarded as unpleasant. The programme has aimed to strengthen museums as active social institutions that are able to engage successfully with current issues and to stimulate serious reflection among visitors. While the concern to avoid making waves or drawing negative publicity often hinders museums from tackling controversial issues, Break is distinctive in that the initiative came not from within the institutional setting of the museum but among certain authorities in Norway that served as its leading agents. In this short reflection on Break, I explore two key questions: How has Break encouraged new approaches to difficult and, in particular, marginalised histories; and what representations have ensued from it that may help to continue problematising museum collections in Norway and stimulating critical engagement.