After completing this course students are able to:
- Identify the main characteristics of the museum as public institution
- Describe some of the major players and key transformations
- Approach, describe and assess an exhibition script
- Engage concepts, methods and theories in order to analyze and explain empirical observations
- Develop a critically informed approach to the analysis of museal phenomena
- Conduct small-scale, independent research on a curatorship/ patronage-related topic
- Prepare and write an internship proposal related topic
- Prepare and write an internship proposal
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Content
Museum Studies, sometimes called Museology, deals with the birth, development and operation of the public museum as one of the key institutions of the modern world. While collections of art and other objects are probably as old and widely distributed as human society itself, collecting and preserving valued objects for public display, with state support or, increasingly, by (semi) private foundations, is a more recent phenomenon. The institution of museum is connected to Art History and other academic disciplines as the place where art works and other objects are ordered, preserved and researched by specialists, and exhibited for a broad audience. Starting in the eighteenth century, museums became one of the instruments whereby nation states created and democratized national pasts using a repertoire of objects and images that were displayed in adapted or purpose-built architecture (such as the British Museum and the Louvre). Musealisation as a process therefore involves removing art works and other objects from the original context of manufacture or use and re-installing them in a new order according to well-defined criteria – such as chronology, school, genre, or theme. Certain objects were further distinguished as masterpieces or (type) specimens, this distinction being reflected in their physical location in architectural space and in relation to comparable works installed in it.
Since the inception of the public museum, ideas and practices of exhibition (as well as storage, preservation, classification, and public education) have undergone continuous transformation. The course covers several key players – director, curator, patron, and architect – by studying key texts and through site visits and analyses; while the term essay leaves more room for exploration. Part 1 focuses on curatorship: how is art/ science/ culture/ history exhibited and what do changes in display practice reflect? Part 2 examines patronage and how twentieth-century patrons exert influence over public institutions. Students develop, write, and peer review their term paper. They also research and write an internship proposal to undertake five weeks’ practical, research- oriented learning in a museum of their choice.
Format
There are two classes per week: the first consists of a lecture, supplemented by film; and two site visits to different museums (these are scheduled on Tuesday afternoons, using class time to travel). The second weekly class consists of discussing the weekly reading and/or museum assignment.
Pre-requisite for: UCHUMHAR31 Modern Art and UCHUMHAR32 Heritage; and for the UCU Cultural Heritage Program (CHIP)
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