is offering contemporary works of art in classical institution a good idea (original) (raw)
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L’expérience muséale : discussion sur la relation entre les musées contemporains et leurs visiteurs Le but de cet article est d’étudier l’expérience muséale et les discussions autor du rôle des visiteurs dans les musées contemporains. Nous entendons cette expérience comme la relation que le visiteur établit avec les musées ainsi que l’aptitude de ces établissements à nourrir chaque visiteur individuel, en créant des expériences significatives, spéciales et uniques. Le point de vue actuel est que les publics ne sont plus de simples spectateurs passifs mais cherchent à avoir leur identité et/ou leurs besoins culturels reconnus par les musées. Devant cette situation, nous chercherons à discuter les limites et les défis provoques par les transformations que les musées ont subies dans les dernières décennies. Nous discuterons aussi comment ces changements ont influencé la relation avec les visiteurs dans leurs attentes et leurs programmations personnels. La discussion sera appuyée sur des références théoriques provenant du domaine de la communication et de l’éducation muséales. Notre objectif est de contribuer au débat concernant le concept contemporain des musées en relation avec le visiteur.
The Eye of the Beholder Museology, Museums and Contemporary Presentation
2010
Too many museums are floundering under decreasing attendance and increasing commercialization. One very important way to address these ills is to reconsider museum presentation, specifically exhibitions and the visitor experience therein. Central to this reworking of museum presentation is the acceptance of the primacy of the visitor and her community: museums mount exhibitions to educate and entertain the visitor, to enrich and enlarge the person, even to change society. To fire the imagination and stimulate social change, museums must reconsider the nature of the architecture of their galleries; they must engage much more fully with their communities; they must transform the content of their exhibitions; they must rethink exhibition design and they must pay attention to learning systems. If these demanding modifications are made, I believe museums will become much more relevant and pleasurable. _________________________________________________________________ What do museum visitors want and how can museums give it to them? i What are museums for? What is the museum"s role in society? The rather ugly term edutainment has been coined to describe a blend of education and entertainment that many museums around the world serve up to their loyal visitors. The term underlines the dual nature of much museum presentation, a somewhat schizophrenic mixture of informal education and attempted fun. But how is each done and is it successful? This paper will argue that museums have great potential to educate their visitors in a relaxed social setting, but to do so a number of changes must be made, including establishing a new link with community, developing a greater understanding of what are important issues, concentrating on collaboration and undertaking a serious study of learning systems. We are all too familiar with museums where there seems to be more staff than visitors, where the halls echo with the isolated footsteps of quiet patrons peering into dark cases exhibiting the permanent collection. With the exception of the very major international museums, small attendance seems to be all too common. Many museums only come alive when the blockbuster arrives in town, that highly commercial, touring show accompanied by merchandise for sale in the museum shop, merchandise which some visitors consider as important and as interesting as the artifacts in the galleries. Add this to the glitzy opening and the fancy restaurant, and we see the commercialization of museums in full swing where it can seem that substance is outweighed by style. There is a trap here: the sad reality is that often the blockbuster and the commercialism are needed to fund all the other programming.
book, 2021
This volume explores the process of transformation that is affecting art museums and their role in the modern world. It considers art museums from the perspectives of their social disposition, pedagogical practices, and the education they offer. The book embraces modern perspectives as a part of the international process where museums’ activities are transforming from the established traditional approach to more innovative methods, such as the digital environment, websites development, and social activities, among others. The volume is divided into three parts wherein museums are considered as agents of different spheres in society, pedagogy, and education. The transformation that modern museums have to accept is rooted in new challenges that society offers, and the book offers various examples that could be inspirational for developing new strategies for museums. It also features interviews with museum educators throughout the world in which they share their experience and vision on the questions presented here.
Towards a theory of museum reception
Museum Visitor Studies in the 90s, 1993
The history of international museography teaches us that almost every initiative to create a museum is born out of an institutional project, and in the end it justifies specific needs that are mostly alien to the visitors'.
Museums and the Shaping of Contemporary Artworks
Museum Management and Curatorship, 2006
In the museum context, curators and conservators often play a role in shaping the nature of contemporary artworks. Before, during and after the acquisition of an art object, curators and conservators engage in dialogue with the artist about how the object should be exhibited and conserved. As a part of this dialogue, the artist may express specifications for the display and conservation of the object, thereby fixing characteristics of the artwork that were previously left open. This process can make a significant difference to the visual appearance of the work, the nature of the audience's experience, and how the work should be interpreted. I present several case studies in which the nature of the artwork has been shaped by such dialogues, and discuss principles for resolving cases in which there is a conflict between instructions specified by the artist and those adopted by the museum.
"Where, how, by whom and for what were the first museums of contemporary art created? These are the key questions addressed by J. Pedro Lorente in this book. In it he explores the concept and history of museums of contemporary art, and the shifting ways in which they have been imagined and presented. Following an introduction that sets out the historiography and considering questions of terminology, the first part of the book then examines the paradigm of the Musée des Artistes Vivants in Paris and its equivalents in the rest of Europe during the nineteenth century. The second part takes the story forward from 1930 to the present, presenting New York's Museum of Modern Art as a new universal role model that found emulators or 'contramodels' in the rest of the Western world during the twentieth century. An epilogue, reviews recent museum developments in the last decades. Through its adoption of a long-term, worldwide perspective, the book not only provides a narrative of the development of museums of contemporary art, but also sets this into its international perspective. By assessing the extent to which the great museum-capitals – Paris, London and New York in particular – created their own models of museum provision, as well as acknowledging the influence of such models elsewhere, the book uncovers fascinating perspectives on the practice of museum provision, and reveals how present cultural planning initiatives have often been shaped by historical uses. Contents: Introduction; Part I The Parisian Musée du Luxembourg as a Paradigm in the 19th Century: The origin of the Musée des Artistes Vivants in Paris; The first emulators and alternatives to the Luxembourg; Unresolved dilemmas in the last third of the 19th century; Utopian ideas and experiments at the turn of the 19th century. Part II The Role of the MoMA of New York as the International Model of the 20th Century: Foundations and context of the MoMA's creation; MoMA's transition to adulthood amidst war and confrontations; MoMA as an international role model during the Cold War: triumph and opposition; The Pompidou Centre, a counter-model which ends up imitating MoMA; Topographic review of the new museums of contemporary art at the turn of the millennium; Epilogue; References; Index."
Accommodating the visitor: How museums connect with their present-day populations
Anglophonia
RESUME L'article propose l'analyse des stratégies d'accommodation employées par les musées au Royaume-Uni et aux Etats-Unis. Les années 1970 et 1980 sont marquées par une nouvelle conscience du rôle social des musées et de la nécessité de mieux communiquer aux visiteurs. Cet article examinera les différentes stratégies langagières employées dans les musées dans les différents supports écrits (notice d'objets, panneau d'exposition).
Changing Permanent Exhibitions: An Exercise in Hindsight, Foresight, and Insight1
Curator: The Museum Journal, 2001
Traditions associated with conservatism, scholarly content, and durability inform the ideology of the permanent exhibition. Once installed it is usually considered complete, and will remain unchanged until its content is questioned or considered outdated, or its physical deterioration becomes embarrassing. Museum curators work on very few, if any, permanent exhibitions during their career, and when they do their primary focus is on the scholarly content. It has only been in the past few years that museums, and curators, have looked to the discipline of visitor studies as being integral to process of exhibition development and the accessibility of content. A permanent exhibition constructed prior to this collaboration is revisited by its curator who applied five visitor studies" methodologies to the gallery to ascertain whether the curatorial/design concept was accessible to the visitor. This paper presents some ideas and findings from that study.