Museum Studies Commons^™

The Material Light: Exploring The Relationship Between Contained And Container, Oliver Brown

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Many buildings around us use the same ubiquitous boundary materials that fall short in directly influencing the disposition of the space it defines. There are many different opportunities to explore myriad material compositions to present the ambient qualities of space in a manner the puts the constructed boundary to the task to acclimatize the interior it envelopes. This thesis will explore a series of material compositions, with a focus on natural light, and how the articulation of the spatial boundary can bring out the strong qualities of daylight for visually sensitive activities. With this exploration, I will examine ways to …

A Highland Textile Tradition From The Far South Of Peru During The Period Of Inka Domination, Penelope Dransart

PreColumbian Textile Conference VIII / Jornadas de Textiles PreColombinos VIII (2019)

A group of garments and textile fragments is identified in this article as belonging to a particular textile tradition, with characteristics indicating an affiliation to communities in the highlands of the South-Central Andes. Different categories of gender-specific garments are presented. The characteristics include an all-camelid construction, warp-patterned stripes in blocks of alternating colours, the use of a discontinuous warp and transposed-warp weave. Pattern motifs include eight-pointed stars, double-headed serpents and figures based on rhombuses. Distinctive geometric designs are analysed, including ‘butterfly’ motifs and narrow stripes, consisting of paired light- and dark-coloured right-angled triangles joined to make stacks of larger isosceles …

Gendering Art History In The Victorian Age: Anna Jameson, Elizabeth Eastlake, And George Eliot In Florence, Antje Anderson

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis investigates how three professional Victorian women writers, Anna Jameson, Elizabeth Eastlake, and George Eliot, wrote about Renaissance art in Florence. As nineteenth-century women, they were excluded from certain realms of knowledge, agency, and influence. This exclusion (complicated by their privilege in terms of class, nationality, and education) influenced the way they experienced and wrote about art. The introduction addresses how changing modes of travel, broader access to publication, and art history’s gradual emergence as an academic discipline helped shape their careers as women art writers—the well-known “Mrs. Jameson” as a popularizer of art history for a broad readership; …

Annual Report 2019-2020, Margaret Leininger

Galleries at Peeler Annual Reports

Contents: A Note from the Director About Us Exhibitions Collections Administration and Finance Program Sponsors

My Family, Their History: Using Exploratory Inquiry & Pragmatic Methods To Learn History, Lowellen Sucgang

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

History education is at a crossroads. The availability of information at our fingertips has the potential to change how the non-historian sees history and the other social sciences. This capstone researched ways the non-historian can utilize the changing face of history education by implementing the pragmatic methods of John Dewey’s education philosophy called instrumentalism. Principal issues discussed include the pros and cons of out-of-classroom history education, utilization of exploratory inquiry for research and the usefulness of primary sources for a historiography. To apply instrumentalism ideals and methods, I created a historiography about my ancestors and how their lives intertwined with …

Moratoria Antibirus: Un Grande Passo Verso La Sopravvivenza Dei Musei Americani, Maria Sancho-Arroyo

Faculty Articles

This article investigates the economic impact of COVID-19 and related policy decisions of the museum industry in the United States.

Exhibiting Prejudice: How Twentieth-Century Museums Promoted The Eugenics Movement, Anna Wachtel

Museum Studies Theses

This research illustrates the impact museums have on social, political, and educational systems through the exploration of the eugenics movement in American museums. Museum professionals promoted racial hierarchies and eugenic ideologies at World’s Fairs through the exploitation of “exotic” peoples and contests designed to judge and categorize racial differences based on an individual’s physical and mental characteristics.

Following World’s Fairs, museums began displaying eugenic themed exhibits. Prominent museum professionals and government officials of the early twentieth century used their position of authority to promote the eugenics movement in National and regional American museums through educational exhibits using approachable science-based exhibit …

Anthropology Museum's "Earth Day At 50" Exhibit Shifts To Fall, Loretta Macalpine

WCU Museum in the News

No abstract provided.

Educational Equity And Informal Stem Field Trip Programming, Sal Alper

Master's Theses

Informal STEM field trip programming is a large, yet under-researched area of the education landscape. Informal STEM education providers are often serving a more privileged section of society, leading to a risk of perpetuating inequalities seen throughout the education landscape. In an attempt to address the lack of research, this thesis explores the relationship between educational equity and informal STEM field trips. The intention was to collect data using a critical ethnography approach to the methods of qualitative questionnaire and interviews of informal STEM educators. A change in circumstances from the global pandemic of COVID-19 caused a shift in this …

Our Shared Vision: Representations Of The Trans-Mississippi American West, Joshua D. Koenig

Dissertations

This dissertation examines the role played by museums in shaping our understanding of the American West. The history of the American West holds a place in American popular culture, evidenced by music, movies and television shows, novels, art, architecture, clothing, and numerous other examples. However, such examples raise questions of authenticity depending on medium and setting, Representations of the American West depict certain images or beliefs held by society. At the same time, the United States houses nearly 1,500 historic sites and museums focusing on the American West. These museums and sites are found scattered throughout thirty-eight states, in addition …

Ancient Latin American Objects In The Archive: Selections From The George And Louise Patten Collection Of Salem Hyde Cultural Artifacts At The University Of Tennessee At Chattanooga, University Of Tennessee At Chattanooga, Olivia Wolf, Heather Allen, Rebekah Assid, Caitlin Ballone, Shaurie Bidot, Katlynn Campbell, Mckenzie Cleveland, Keturah Cole, Kyle Cumberton, Morgan Craig, Mallory Cook, Nora Fernandez, Briana Fitch, Aaliyah Garnett, Hailey Gentry, Riley Grisham, Chelsey Hall, Abby Kandrach, Casper Kittle, Jodi Koski, Anna Lee, Peter Li, Sammy Mai, Amber Mcclane, Silvey Mcgregor, Brcien Partin, Kaitlyn Seahorn, Cecily Salyer, Stephanie Swart, Cameron Williams, Lauren Williamson, Hannah Wimberly Lowe

Special Collections Exhibition Records and Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Rockhounding, Seafaring, And Other Material Tales For The End Of The World, Noemie Fortin

The Goose

In the face of accelerated environmental degradation and climate instability, the future of the Earth and of all life on earth is difficult to visualize. Therefore, the different mediums through which we consider environmental issues are just as important as the actions we take to address them. Focusing on three projects combining art, science, and activism, this article suggests a compilation of material tales. They tell stories of plastic rocks and aluminum nuggets where the protagonists are partly finely crafted objects, partly waste materials, and sometimes both at once. Artists Kelly Jazvac, Yesenia Thibeault-Picazo, and the collective Studio Swine collaborate …

The Making Of An Exhibit, Emma Bickerstaffe

WCU Museum in the News

No abstract provided.

La Prevalenza Delle Donne: I Problemi Di Una Professione Femminile, Maria Sancho-Arroyo

Faculty Articles

This article investigates the problems associated with the fact that the museum industry in the United States is one that is dominated by women in its workforce.

Memory And Nostalgia In Chow Chin Chuan’S Art, Jia Wen Cheng

Student Works (2020-2029)

The bicycle as a form of wheeled transport appeared to be the main transportation that was used to carry passengers and goods during the old times, has consistently become the subject matter of Chow Chin Chuan’s artworks over 20 years. Chow is an active artist within the Chinese artist community in Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Penang area. Currently, there was no well-written research about Chow’s bicycle themed paintings although he has been participated in numerous group art exhibition in oversea countries and also has a total of 8 solo exhibitions in Malaysia as of year 2017. Moreover, currently, there are …

Weaving Forms Of Resistance: The Museo De La Solidaridad And The Museo Internacional De La Resistencia Salvador Allende, Carla Macchiavello Cornejo

Publications and Research

From the starting point of a 1975 artwork made by Norwegian artist Kjartan Slettemark in Sweden to stop a tennis match in resistance to the Chilean military dictatorship, this article reframes the linear image of networks of solidarity and resistance through the gaps and connectivity of a mesh. It expands the figure of the mesh taken from critical materialism into the affective realm of art, historiography, and art institutions by exploring the cases of the museums Museo de la Solidaridad (1971–1974) and Museo Internacional de la Resistencia “Salvador Allende” (1975–1990). As this article delves into various knots and lacunas of …

The Precolumbian Textiles In The Roemer- And Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim, Germany, Lena Bjerregaard

Zea E-Books Collection

Along the coast of Peru is one of the driest deserts in the world. Here, under the sand, the ancient Peruvians buried their dead wrapped in gorgeous textiles. As organic material keeps almost forever when stored without humidity, light and oxygen, many of the mummies excavated in the last hundred years are in excellent conditions. And so are the textiles wrapped around them. Their clear colors are still dazzling and the textile fibers in good condition. Textiles were highly valued objects in ancient Peru – used for expressing status and diverse messages in these non-literate but highly organized and very …

Digital Libraries, Intelligent Data Analytics, And Augmented Description: A Demonstration Project, Elizabeth Lorang, Leen-Kiat Soh, Yi Liu, Chulwoo Pack

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

From July 16-to November 8, 2019, the Aida digital libraries research team at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln collaborated with the Library of Congress on “Digital Libraries, Intelligent Data Analytics, and Augmented Description: A Demonstration Project.“ This demonstration project sought to (1) develop and investigate the viability and feasibility of textual and image-based data analytics approaches to support and facilitate discovery; (2) understand technical tools and requirements for the Library of Congress to improve access and discovery of its digital collections; and (3) enable the Library of Congress to plan for future possibilities. In pursuit of these goals, we focused our …

Medicine And The Museum: An Experiential Case Study In Art History Pedagogy And Practice, Marcia Brennan

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

This article brings three scholarly and professional perspectives to bear on museum-based learning experiences for undergraduate pre-medical and STEM students. In the first section, Marcia Brennan describes the seminar on “Medicine and the Museum: Clinical Aesthetics and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston” that she teaches at Rice University. Brennan is a modernist art historian, and her discussion focuses on the ways in which classes such as this can contribute meaningfully to undergraduate pre-medical and STEM education. Brennan collaborated with Joshua Eyler, who served as Executive Director of Rice University’s Center for Teaching Excellence. In the second section, Eyler discusses …

Feminist Curating: What It Means And Why It Matters, Sally Brown

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This article outlines a proactive feminist curatorial methodology to encourage feminist curated exhibitions leading to greater recognition for under and misrepresented artists and impacting statistics of representation.