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MeLa Seminar: Envisioning 21st Century Museums

admin — Sun, 20 May 2012 10:13:55 +0000

Don’t miss the next Mela Seminar: Envisioning 21st Century Museums!

A Public Symposium will take place on the 31st of May 2012 at the Post and Tele Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark.

You can find more information about the event on our website, here.

MHIC in Barcelona: “El viatge de Gaye” + CCCB: “Pandalla global”

annachiara — Sat, 19 May 2012 21:53:53 +0000

Anna Chiara Cimoli from Politecnico di Milano recently visited the Museo d’ Història de la Inmigraciò de Catalunya. Besides describing the museum activities, objectives and challenges, director Imma Boj discussed the temporary exhibition “El viatge de Gaye”, curated by Tatiana Donoso and Magda Bandera, which suggests through photography a relationship among a person, his/her migration story (real, imagined or refused) and the food he/she eats. This allows a reflection, suitable in particular for schools, about an ideal pyramid where, instead of nutrition elements, there is a series of values going from the most basic (phisiological necessities) to the intermediate (security, social acceptance, self-esteem) to the highest (self-fulfilment).

Anna Chiara also visited the “Pandalla global” (Global screen) exhibition in CCCB (Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona).

Call for Papers for RF03 International Conference ‘Migrating heritage: networks and collaborations across European museums, libraries and public cultural institutions’, 3-4 December 2012, University of Glasgow

perla — Fri, 18 May 2012 09:52:09 +0000

MeLa Research Field 3 (http://wp3.mela-project.eu/), composed by international institutions and led by the University of Glasgow, is organising an international conference on ’Migrating heritage: networks and collaborations across European museums, libraries and public cultural institutions’, 3-4 December 2012, to identify and explore innovative trans-national and trans-local partnerships, collaborations and policies between European museums, libraries & other public cultural institutions around the themes of European cultural and scientific heritage, migration and integration, and use of ICTs.

What are the experiences and effects of collaboration, partnerships and networks around the core activities of archiving, preserving, displaying history and artefacts, and the associated categories and hierarchies of cultural value and identity? Is it possible to allow more flexible and heterogenic connections of public cultural institutions within the European/Mediterranean space? How are museums, libraries and public cultural institutions presenting themselves and interact with multicultural audiences? What guidelines and policies could be suggested to support networking between European museums, libraries and public cultural institutions around the themes of European cultural and scientific heritage, migration and integration?

An overview of the conference is provided below. More details are available at http://wp3.mela-project.eu/wp/pages/research-field-03-international-conference . Contact chairs at mela2012conference@glasgow.ac.uk.

Confirmed invited speakers
• Sharon MacDonald (Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester)
• Rebecca Kay and Alison Phipps (Professors at University of Glasgow and convenors of Glasgow Refugee Asylum and Migration Network)
• Agnès Arquez Roth (Directrice réseau et partenariats, Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration)
• Dr Bernhard Serexhe (Chief Curator of ZKM Media Museum)
• Katherine Watson (Director of European Cultural Foundation)

Topics
• Case studies on museums, libraries and public cultural institutions collaborating for European integration
• Operative approaches to multiculturalism, interculturalism, transculturalism in public cultural institutions
• National and transnational collaboration models: partnerships, cooperation, coordination
• European cultural policies, migration and mobility
• Identity, memory and heritage in European museums, libraries and public cultural institutions
• Studies on European narratives and cultural points of divergence and commonality
• Contested European cultural and scientific heritages in a post-migratory world
• Visitor experiences in collaborative projects involving European museums, libraries and public cultural institutions
• Archiving, preservation and exhibition technologies in relation to migration and mobility
• Politics of migrating objects, including repatriation
• Cross border tourism, customs and border policies, including souvenirs and museum replicas

Submissions
Authors are requested to submit 500 words abstracts and 300 words bio, followed by full papers (max 7 pages). Paper submissions should follow the general Ashgate submission guidelines (http://www.ashgate.com/Default.aspx?page=2902) and must comply with the formatting instructions. All papers should be submitted in PDF format via the EasyChair online submission system at https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?conf=mela2012rf03 . You will need to sign up for an account for submitting your paper. An international panel of experts will review the submissions.

Important dates
Abstract and bio submission: 16 July 2012
Author notification: August 20, 2012
Conference: December 3-4, 2012
Camera ready (full paper): December 14, 2012

Conference special sessions
• GRAMNet- Glasgow Refugee Asylum and Migration Network (http://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/gramnet/)
• Europeana, portal endorsed by the European Commission providing a single access point to millions European cultural and scientific heritage digital object (http://www.europeana.eu/portal/)

Proceedings
There will be the opportunity to publish a selection of the conference proceedings in 2013, upon the following conditions: all the required materials have been submitted in proper format, materials have not been already published and the paper has been presented in the Migrating heritage: networks and collaborations across European museums, libraries and public cultural institutions conference.

Successful RF03 Brainstorming workshop on European heritage, migrations and new media

perla — Fri, 11 May 2012 12:57:44 +0000

MeLa RF03 Brainstorming workshop on European heritage, migrations and new media: networks and collaborations across museums, libraries and public cultural institutions was held on 23 April 2012 at the University of Glasgow. During this successful and interactive event, MeLa Consortium members and invited guests from the Research Field 03 expert group discussed topics of collaboration across museums, libraries and public cultural institutions, migration and European cultural and scientific heritage.

The workshop was kicked off by the local hosts Dr John Richards, Head of History of Art at the University of Glasgow and Perla Innocenti, Research Fellow and RF03 Leader, who provided an overview of MeLa and Rf03.

In the session ‘Narratives for Europe’, Katherine Watson (Director of European Cultural Foundation) provided an exciting insight into the activities and neworks of the European Cultural Foundation, highlighting in particular the ECF project Narratives for Europe and Doc-Next Network.

Dr Sreten Ugricic (writer, philosopher, former Director of the National Library of Serbia) followed up with a compelling reflection over similarity vs. individual and collective identity, challenging the notion of identity and diversity as an effective base for Europe.

The session ‘European cultural and scientific heritage’ was opened by Dr Bernhard Serexhe (Chief Curator of ZKM Media Museum), with a thoughtful reflection over system change in cultural memory and identity, participation versus consensus reality, the Global Contemporary recent exhibitions at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and observations on identity and difference.

Dr Giulia Grechi (University of Naples) explored the concepts of artist and the curator as ethnographers in New Genre Public Art, proposing a new approach in which objects are contextualized instead of being historicized in museums.

In the ‘Migration and Mobility’ session, Prof Rebecca Kay and Prof Alison Phipps (University of Glasgow and Glasgow Refugee Asylum and Migration Network) described the activities of the Glasgow Refugee Asylum and Migration Network (GRAMNet). GRAMNet is a great example of an operational and enthusiastic network which includes organisations working with migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in Scotland.

Dr Ellen MacAdam (Head of Museums, Glagsow Life) talked about the proactive engagement on migration and mobility in Glasgow Museums, focusing on the engaging Sanctuary project and initiatives stemmed from it (including the Curious project, The Open Museum and the People’s Palace and Red Road Flats).

Sergio Dogliani (Idea Store ) was a linking pin between this and the last session of the workshop, with an thoughts provoking presentation on the creation and successful evolution of the Idea Store in London. Idea Store is a new concept stemming from the close collaboration and public involvement: it is based on widening participation in library and lifelong learning, as well as access to information, and it proved to be extremely successful.

Finally, the workshop was concluded by a session on ‘Collaboration models’, an overarching team of the RF03 investigation. Perla Innocenti (Research Fellow, University of Glasgow) discussed some of the preliminary findings of RF03 ongoing research on collaboration models and partnerships between museums, libraries and public cultural institutions, touching on the idea of ‘collaboration factor’.

Antonio Perna (Director, SUDLAB) described the collaborative activities of SUDLAB, a successful no-profit R&D center focusing on contemporary arts and ICT for cultural applications. During his presentation Perna also touched on cultural policies, communities of practice and EU structural fundings.

Each session was followed by active Q&A, during which the MeLA Consortium partners also discussed and debated a number of ideas coming from their own research fields. These discussions continued throughout the evening and at the workshop social dinner, including reflections and planning of RF03 and our forthcoming conference Migrating heritage: networks and collaborations across European museums, libraries and public cultural institutions, 3-4 December 2012 at the University of Glasgow.

More information and presentation materias are available at the Brainstorming – RF03 webpage.

Research Field 01 Brainstorming: Museums, Migrations, and Identities, 20 April 2012

victoria — Thu, 10 May 2012 09:38:56 +0000

This Brainstorming allowed us to connect to researchers/experts across the topic of migration and to consider issues outside of our specific field of expertise in order to develop our ideas further.

Speakers:

Iain Watson, Director of Tyne & Wear Archives and Museums; Professor Ullrich Kockel, University of Ulster; Dr Cathy Ross, Museum of London; Dr Claire Sutherland, Durham University; and Zelda Baveystock, UK Migration Museum Project.

Issues discussed:

Migration and Societal Change

Western European nations are experiencing unprecedented patterns of migration not only in terms of volume but also diversity amongst and within migrant groups. Steven Vertovec has characterised the situation in Britain as ‘superdiversity’. He writes: ‘Such a condition is distinguished by a dynamic interplay of variables among an increased number of new, small and scattered, multiple-origin, transnationally connected, socio-economically differentiated and legally stratified immigrants who have arrived over the last decade.’ (Vertovec 2007: 1024)

For some migrants, the nature of the experience of migration also differs from previous generations because of the ability to keep in touch with ‘home’ through new communication technology, greater access to global media, and cheaper travel. This gives rise to increasingly blended and intertwined identities (Risse 2010: 25) generating a complex web of multiple belongings and allegiances within and/or across geographically determined borders. This has raised important questions about how we understand the relationships between places, peoples and identities.

Museums, Peoples, Places and Identities

Since the nineteenth century one important remit of public museums in Britain has been to represent the places, peoples and cultures in which they are located. This has been particularly important for history displays, folk/open-air, city and local museums. Such museums have traditionally been understood as important in fostering a sense of collective identity, civic pride and shared public history, although this has always been internally complicated by the histories of collections, vested interests and disciplinary priorities. In relation to contemporary issues of migration we need to now ask:

What are the implications for contemporary museums of the new social complexity described above?
What does it mean for thinking about museum audiences, visitors and stakeholders? What are the implications for interpretation, display, and collection strategies?
What does it mean in terms of producing representations of a given place (a city, region or nation), its collective histories and futures?
What can we learn from museums which have addressed (or plan to address) diversity and migration either as: a) integrated within displays about host populations or b) separated out into distinct migration galleries or stand-alone migration museums?
Are common strategies developing within museum practice to address such issues? Are there similar or different trends in European as opposed to non-European museums? Are there more similarities or more differences between countries within Europe on this issue?
How do museum researchers and professionals see the role of public museums in terms of debates around social cohesion and citizenship in diverse societies?

References:

Risse, Thomas (2010), A Community of Europeans?: Transnational Identities and Public Spheres. Cornell University Press: Ithaca and London.

Vertovec, Steven (2007), ‘Superdiversity and its Implications.’ Racial and Ethnic Studies. 30:6, 1024-1054.

Links:

See the Research Field 01 Brainstorming presentation at http://www.mela-project.eu/publications/827
Visit http://www.mela-project.eu/ for details about the whole MeLa Project and Consortium.
For further details about Research Field 01: http://wp1.mela-project.eu/wp/spotlights/contents-and-tools).
ICCHS webpage: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/sacs/icchs/

Participant Information:

Zelda Baveystock is a freelance Museums & Heritage Consultant and a Teaching Associate at the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies (ICCHS), Newcastle University. She has extensive experience in the capital development and management of history museums from previous roles as Deputy Director of the Museum of Liverpool, and Senior Keeper of History at Tyne and Wear Museums.

Zelda’s interests in migration museums stems from a 2004 research award from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust to investigate representations of multiculturalism in Australia, Canada and New York. Her travels took her to several leading migration museums, and started her on a research path later continued while working as a Lecturer in Museum Studies at ICCHS. She joined the Working Group of the Migration Museum Project in 2007 and is a now a Trustee of this organisation campaigning and fundraising for a major migration museum for the UK (see http://www.migrationmuseum.org/).

Ullrich Kockel is Professor of Ethnology at the University of Ulster since 2005 and Visiting Professor of European Ethnology at Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, having held various teaching and research positions in economics, geography, sociology and area studies in Britain, Ireland and Germany since the mid-1980s. During the 1990s, while based at the University of Liverpool, he worked closely with the European Centre for Traditional and Regional Cultures and the Tate Gallery. In 2000 he was appointed Professor of European Studies at the University of the West of England, Bristol. He was elected an Academician of the United Kingdom’s Academy of Social Sciences in 2003 and is currently editor of the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures and President of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF). In 2009 he established the SIEF Working Group on Place Wisdom. His research has ranged across the field of European ethnology. His recent publications include Re-visioning Europe (Palgrave, 2010) and the Blackwell Companion to the Anthropology of Europe (ed. With M. Nic Craith and J. Frykman, Wiley-Blackwell 2012).

Cathy Ross has been Director of Collections and Learning at the Museum of London since 2009. She comes from a curatorial background, having worked for many years as Head of Later London History at the Museum of London. Previous to that she worked in museums in South Yorkshire and Newcastle, where she was Head of History at Tyne & Wear Museums.

She has published widely on museums and contemporary collecting, along with broader historical topics. A particular interest is 20^th century and contemporary London. She has taught on a number of museum studies programmes, including MA courses at the University of Westminster and University College London. She is currently an external examiner on the Curating Contemporary Design MA at the University of Kingston.

Claire Sutherland is a politics lecturer at Durham University. Her main research interest is nationalism. She is embarking on a project exploring the relationship between nation and citizen through citizenship legislation and museum representations of migrants and minorities in selected Western European and Southeast Asian cases. Recent publications include Soldered States: Nation-building in Germany and Vietnam (Manchester University Press, 2010) and Nationalism in the twenty-first century: Challenges and responses (Palgrave, 2012).

Iain Watson has been Director of Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (TWAM) since November 2010 and a member of TWAM’s Senior Management Team since 2001, following a previous 18 years experience in the cultural and heritage sector. He has extensive experience of leading and developing cultural services and managing major projects including Culture Shock, the world’s largest digital storytelling project and the development of the £26m Great North Museum project. He is a Director of Audio Visual Arts North East, a member of the Great North Run Culture Board, a lay member of Newcastle University’s Ethics Committee, a member of the National Museum Directors’ Conference and was a member of the External Advisory Group to Arts Council on the integration of museums and library functions. Iain Watson has written and lectured extensively on museums, learning and heritage.

Chris Whitehead is Professor of Museology at Newcastle University. He is Principal Investigator of Research Field 1 of the MeLa project. His research activities focus on both historical and contemporary museology. He has published extensively in the field of art museum history, with particular emphases on architecture, display and knowledge construction. His second major strand of activity relates to education and interpretation practices in art museums and galleries. In the context of museological study he has strong interests in learning theory, social constructionism, theories of representation, cartography and disciplinarity. He is the author of three books: The Public Art Museum in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Ashgate 2005), Museums and the Constructions of Disciplines (Bloomsbury/Duckworth Academic 2009) and Interpreting Art in Museums and Galleries (Routledge 2012). At Newcastle he is Director of Research for the School of Arts and Cultures, with responsibility for research strategy and performance in Fine Art, Art History, Museum, Gallery and Heritage Studies and Music.

Rhiannon Mason is Director of the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies (ICCHS), Newcastle University and Senior Lecturer in Museum, Gallery, and Heritage Studies. Rhiannon’s research and teaching interests are in national museums and heritage, history curatorship, identity, memory, and new museology. Rhiannon is the author of the book Museums, Nations, Identities: Wales and its National Museums (University of Wales Press, 2007) and has published widely in the area of museum studies. Rhiannon has led several publicly funded research projects which bring together museological research and museum practice, for example, on the development of a new permanent display at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle and on the topic of copyright and informed consent in museum, gallery and heritage participatory projects. She is currently working on issues of globalisation and postnationalism and the implications for national museums. In her work Rhiannon aims to connect theoretical debates with practical concerns; her teaching and research projects frequently involve collaborating with heritage sector professionals. She is the co-investigator on Research Field 1 of the MeLA project.

Susannah Eckersley is Research Associate on the MeLA project and a University Teacher in Museum, Gallery, and Heritage Studies in ICCHS. Susannah’s PhD examined new museum building projects in the UK and Germany, focussing on the relationships between and influences of the key figures involved (museum directors, architects and local/regional government officials) against the context of the different historical developments of museums, cultural policy priorities and management styles in each country. Susannah’s teaching combines these interests and her wider interest in issues of representing difficult histories (in particular in Germany). She is currently developing a new research project examining the representations of forced migration in museums, focussing in particular on the post World War II expulsions of Germans from east of the Oder-Neisse line (the post-war border between Germany and Poland).

RESEARCH FIELD 01: MUSEUMS AND IDENTITY IN HISTORY AND CONTEMPORANEITY

This research will examine the historical and contemporary relationships between European museum representations and identity and museums’ place. The main objectives of the Research Field are:

To investigate aspects of the relationships between museums, places and identities in Europe from the development of nation states (notably in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) to the present day.
To study the relationship between museums and the multidimensional, potentially shifting ‘territory’ in which they are situated and purport to represent – a territory which is geographical, political and epistemological.
To examine how museum actions (including collecting and display) have articulated and articulate the relationships between places, peoples and cultures within geopolitical conceptual frames (e.g. ‘the nation’, the ‘region’, ‘Europe’).
To study changing practices of representation, interpellation and audience participation in the context of population dynamics (e.g. migrations, mobility, etc…) and flows and diversified conceptions of place (as both routes and roots).
To study producers’ intentions with regard to such representations.
To study visitor understandings both of such museum representations and to evaluate their congruence or incongruence with visitors’ individual sense of identity.

What happens or what can happen, when ‘people’ and ‘places’ implicated in, and at least to some extent constructed in, museum representation shift, change, multiply, fragment and/or move? What happens when the Enlightenment desire for fixity and the making permanent of knowledge, peoples and places is dislocated by new sensibilities towards population flows, shifting demographics, multiple heritages, ethnic diversification and the shifting territories of geopolitical places and knowledge? Should museums’ representational practices change? If so how? What are the new dimensions of identity construction and production in museums whose physical place is fixed, but whose audiences, with their changing heritages and cultures, are not? These are critical questions to explore in national, postnational and transnational contexts, and a historical and theoretical exploration will form a foundational structure for the proposal as a whole.

MeLA Research Field 01 Team, International Centre for Cultural & Heritage Studies, Newcastle University:

Professor Chris Whitehead (Research Field 01 leader); Dr Rhiannon Mason (Co-investigator); Dr Susannah Eckersley (Research Associate); Dr Victoria Patton (Research Secretary)

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/sacs/icchs/mission/

Conference Report: ‘Visualised Minorities’, Dresden, 30-31 March, 2012

victoria — Thu, 10 May 2012 09:13:37 +0000

Susannah Eckersley of ICCHS, Newcastle University (MeLA RF 1) attended the two-day conference “Visualisierte Minderheiten. Probleme und Möglichkeiten der musealen Präsentation von ethnischen bzw. nationalen Minderheiten” (Visualised minorities. Problems and opportunities of the museal presentation of ethnic or national minorities) in Dresden on 30^th and 31^st March 2012.

Expand the page to read the report.

A wide range of fascinating papers were presented at this conference, spanning both academic and practitioner fields of museum studies but also covering a broad international scope of practical examples and theoretical issues, examining the problems and opportunities inherent in each case. The theoretical basis was provided by two excellent keynote papers by Prof Dr Konrad Köstlin, of the University of Vienna, and Prof Dr Dr Klaus Roth of Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich. Professor Köstlin discussed the idea that while both museums and minorities are results of modernity, museums sometimes ‘create’ minorities, either by embracing a single minority or majority subject and audience, or by attempting to join people together, despite their differences, through the use of collective memory work. Professor Roth’s paper took the Jewish Museum in Vienna as the starting point for his analysis of four key problems in the visualisation of minorities in museums today: firstly, that the definition of a minority in multi-cultural societies (not just the EU, but also within nation states and back in time to transcultural ‘empires’) depends on the state’s development; secondly, the tendency to (self-)stereotype when attempting to present identities through objects and visual images; thirdly, the increasing uniformity of cultural production, the globalisation of culture and the fact that 85% of culture is non-visible, non-material and subjective, and that this is what minorities use to define themselves; and fourthly, the question of what has the potential to be exhibited and what is considered to be worth exhibiting. Professor Roth argued that both ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ are needed to develop successful exhibitions in order to ensure that minorities are not presented in a stereotypical or narcissistic manner, but rather that the connections and influences between minorities and majorities need to be presented. He recognised the risks associated with such exhibition practice, but saw it as an opportunity to help prevent negative attitudes towards minorities and minority museums developing, a situation which is just as important in exhibitions on contemporary topics as for those on historical places, people and events. Regina Wonisch of Klagenfurt University, Austria provided a critical reflection on the current boom in migration museums in relation to her view that ethnic minorities have become the new priority for museums and society in the wake of similar booms in women’s’ history and workers’ history.

Other papers of particular interest to the MeLA consortium and to RF1 included the presentation by Blanka Mouralová of Collegium Bohemicum, Czech Republic and Jan Šicha from the Foreign Office of the Czech Republic, on the new Museum of the German-speaking population of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, in Ústí nad Labem. The permanent exhibition which is planned for this museum is all the more interesting in relation to the fact that, as the presenters pointed out, it could not have any identity-creating function as the German minority of the region no longer exists in this area (following the post-World War II border changes and population expulsions). This is a problem which was also raised by Magda Veselská of the Jewish Museum in Prague. Another Czech museum where forgotten or inherited histories of other ethnic populations are significant is the City Museum Chomutov/Komotau, whose role in the development of a Sudeten-German identity was discussed by Sandra Kreisslova of the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague.

Some examples of individual museums within Germany which address the histories and cultures of ethnic German minorities were also presented, notably the Donauschwäbisches Zentralmuseum in Ulm by its Director and Manager, Christian Glass and the Museum für Russlanddeutsche Kulturgeschichte in Detmold by Julia Debelts, Museums and Exhibitions Consultant and Katharina Neufeld, the museum’s Director.

Further international museum case studies examining the Cité nationale de l’immigration and Musée du Quai Branly and early English-Jewish museology were presented by Eric Hold and ICCHS alumna Kathrin Pieren respectively.

Some interesting over-riding topics were raised by many of the papers and examples presented, in particular the use of languages within museums as a key focal point for discussions on belonging and identity. Many of the museums presented chose to provide their museum texts in two or more languages, in recognition of the different national, cultural and linguistic backgrounds of their key audiences, while the Museum für Russlanddeutsche Kulturgeschichte intentionally restricts their written interpretation to German only, with guided tours available in Russian on the grounds that the Russlanddeutsche are Germans, even if they do not necessarily all speak the language. One interesting omission or deficiency within the conference papers overall was that they tended to present their topics purely from the perspective of museum-makers and museum theorists, with only Kathrin Pieren’s paper addressing the issue of visitor expectations of the museum rather than merely vice-versa.

To view the conference programme, open the Visualised Minorities Leaflet.

Research Field 01 – Fieldwork Research Trip to Berlin 21-26th March

victoria — Thu, 10 May 2012 09:08:11 +0000

Chris Whitehead, Rhiannon Mason and Susannah Eckersley undertook a research fieldwork visit to Berlin in March to explore a variety of museums in and around Berlin for their potential to form RF1 case studies. We had a full programme of visits to a diverse range of museums over five days, spending our time familiarising ourselves with each museum’s displays, themes and texts while analysing what we found for connections both within each museum and across the different institutions visited. The museums and exhibitions visited were:

Jewish Museum Berlin, permanent exhibitions and temporary exhibition “Berlin Transit”
Museum of European Cultures, Berlin
Museum Neukoelln, Berlin
Bezirksmuseum Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Berlin, permanent exhibitions and temporary exhibition “Ortsgespraeche: stadt – migration – geschichte” (site/place conversations: city – migration – history)
Silesian Museum, Goerlitz, permanent exhibitions and temporary exhibitions “Lebenswege ins Ungewisse” (Journey into uncertainty. Migration in Goerlitz-Zgorzelec from 1933 to the present day), and “Schlesien nach 1945. Wege und Wandlungen einer europaeischen Region” (Silesia after 1945. Routes and changes of a European region)
German Historical Museum

Susannah travelled on to Dresden after the Berlin fieldwork where she also visited:

Military History Museum, Dresden

The research trip to Berlin and Dresden was very productive and informative, with the fieldwork enabling us to test and develop our methodology, to re-analyse our case study cluster structure and to consider our key research themes simultaneously from local, regional, national and supranational perspectives. We also met and spoke with a number of the museum directors and are very grateful to them all and to their staff for welcoming us and for their support of, and interest in, our research work. We hope to continue these relationships through further research in our selected case study museums.

Research Field 06 Workshop with Prof. Chris Whitehead

admin — Thu, 10 May 2012 08:20:30 +0000

POLIMI group has just concluded a workshop of two days in Milan with Professor Chris Whitehead, from the University of Newcastle.

Within the Research Field 06 frame, the researchers from POLIMI presented their ongoing activities, problematic questions and preliminary findings. Through the contribution of Prof Whitehead it was possible to trigger an interesting discussion about the critical and methodological issues concerning the investigation.

On 8^th May the workshop ended with a lecture by Prof Whitehead, “Analyzing Display ” through an exploration of the approaches to exhibition design, regarding both his past experience of curatorships and exhibitions and his recent work in the frame of the MeLa Project.

You can find the presentations of the POLIMI group on Issuu, here.

Seminar ‘National Identities – A Scottish – Bavarian comparison’, University of Glasgow

perla — Fri, 04 May 2012 10:03:04 +0000

The University of Glasgow is pleased to host a half day conference this Thursday, 17 May, on “National Identities – A Scottish – Bavarian comparison”. The conference begins at 2pm and is being held in the Gannochy Room at the Wolfson Medical School Building.

Speakers include:

Angus Robertson MP on “Identity in Scotland ahead of the Independence Referendum”

Dr Ludwig Spaenle, Bavarian Minister for Culture and Education, “Bavaria and Germany and Europe. Annotations to his present-day position and identity”

Prof Dauvit Broun and Dr Catriona MacDonald , University of Glasgow – “Between States: historical perspectives on being Scottish”

Prof Ferdinand Kramer, University of Munich, “A Thousand Years and more of History”

Attendance is free but you are required to register in advance via: http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/events/conferences/nationalidentities/ . A more detailed programme can also be found via this link.

Activating Stilled Lives – The Aesthetics and Politics of Specimens on Display – AHRC Research Network “The Culture of Preservation” Department of History of Art, University College of London 17-18 May 2012

Deianira — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:14:20 +0000

The past twenty years saw an explosion of exhibitions fathoming the relations between art and science as well as numerous refurbishments of natural history or former colonial museums. Many of these displays and gallery transformations mobilised specimens, be it taxidermied animals or preserved human body parts. Objects were put into new contexts opening up their meanings, others disappeared in storage or travelled back to the countries where they were once collected. The conference will address the challenges institutions face when dealing with formerly living entities and consider the aesthetics and politics of their display. The idea is to discuss the use of specimens in temporary exhibitions, museums or university collections and the role curators, art and artists have been playing in the transformation of these spaces. We would also like to consider how preserved specimens have changed through the altering contexts in which they have been displayed: One could name the initial transformation of organisms into objects, the more recent re-definition of pathological specimens as human remains, or the dramatic rearrangements that took place when natural history, anthropology or anatomy collections (many dating from the nineteenth century) were updated – coinciding with a shift in audiences, from specialists to a broader public. Historical displays were often significantly altered, or even destroyed and replaced by “techy” but at times also by sentimental, “post-modern” installations still awaiting a critical assessment.

Beyond that, the question of preservation shall be considered in a more expanded sense, as this subject area offers a unique opportunity to reflect more broadly on issues of conservation and their ethics and to raise a variety of questions such as: How and why do various cultures preserve elements of what is considered as nature? How does this relate to environmental notions of conservation and extinction? Should flawed specimens be disposed of? Can museums as a whole be considered cultural preserves? Should we preserve the preserves? And last but not least: Do we really need to embalm everything

1Stilled Lives_Conference_programme_public

Thursday, 17 May 2012

UCL, JZ Young Lecture Theatre, Anatomy Building, Gower Street

14.30 Mechthild Fend & Petra Lange-Berndt: Exhibiting Preserves

Session one: REASSEMBLING

Chair: Sam Alberti (Director of Museums and Archives, The Royal College of Surgeons of England)

15.00 Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (Historian of Science, Berlin): Preparations Revisited

15.45 Rose Marie San Juan (Art Historian, London): Bones in Transit: the Re-Animation of Human Bone in Early Modern Cabinets of Display

16.30 John MacKenzie (Professor Emeritus of Imperial History, Lancaster): The Natural World and Imperial Legitimation: Hunting, Trophies, Taxidermy and Museums

17.15 Tea break

17.45 Robert Marbury (Artist / Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermy, Baltimore): Personal Computers as the New Wunderkammer and the Rise of Rogue Taxidermy

18.30 Reception at the Grant Museum of Zoology, University College of London (Rockefeller Building, University College London, 21 University Street, London WC1E 6DE)

Friday, 18 May 2012

UCL, Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre, Wilkins Building, South Wing, Gower Street (access via Gower Street / Main Quadrangle or Gordon Street)

Session two: HANDLING

Chair: Mechthild Fend (Art Historian, London)

10.00 Petra Lange-Berndt (Art Historian, London): Subsculpture: Assembling a Museum of Attractions

10.45 Steve Baker (Artist and Art Historian, Norfolk): “Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead”

11.30 Tea Break

12.00 Angela Matyssek (Art Historian, Marburg / Maastricht): “Museumlifes”: Mould, Decay and the History of the Object

12.45 Lunch break

Session three: DISPLAYING

Chair: Bergit Arends (Curator Contemporary Art, The Natural History Museum, London)

14.30 Panel discussion on “Curating Specimens” with Claude d’Anthenaise (Director, Musée de la chasse et de la nature, Paris), Christine Borland (Artist, Glasgow), Lisa O’Sullivan (Director, Center for the History of Medicine, New York Academy of Medicine), Johannes Vogel (Director, Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin)

16.00 Tea break

16.30 Anke te Heesen (Historian of Science, Berlin): Displaying the Infinite Amount

17.15 Nélia Dias (Anthropologist, Lisbon): The Fate of Human Remains from the Musée de l’homme to the Musée du quai Branly

18.00 Final discussion

Conference organised by Petra Lange-Berndt and Mechthild Fend.

The event is open and free for all, but please register with Pandora Syperek, pandora.syperek.09@ucl.ac.uk