Museum Studies Commons^™

Museums As Realms Of (Dis)Enchantment, Amy Buono

Art Faculty Articles and Research

"On the night of September 2, 2018, a blaze swept through Brazil's national museum, Museu Nacional, in Rio de Janeiro, destroying not only the colonial building, portions of which dated to the sixteenth century, but roughly 92 percent of the 20 million objects in its holdings. This was Brazil's greatest encyclopedic museum, incorporating (among many others) collections of natural history, anthropology, archaeology, and art, thus forming the most comprehensive museum collection in the nation. Along with its many unique and irreplaceable collections, the Museu Nacional was also home to the country's oldest Indigenous Brazilian and Afro-Brazilian materials (fig. 1)."

Woven By The Grandmothers: The Development Of The National Museum Of The American Indian Throughout The 1990s, Lucy Winokur

Scripps Senior Theses

In 1994, the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) opened the George Gustav Heye Center in New York City, the first of what would be three campuses. Ten years later, in 2004, the NMAI opened its main campus in Washington, D.C., already having cemented their place as leaders in a movement to center indigenous voices within museums housing indigenous material culture. By examining the history of the NMAI from the first acquisition of George Gustav Heye to its earliest approaches to exhibition design and collections management policy in the 1990s, it is possible to track the development of the …

How Contemporary Curatorial Practice Co-Opts Participatory Art, Caroline S. Eastburn

CMC Senior Theses

Instagram users post photos in art exhibitions all of the time. Contemporary art curators and museums have a role to play in this new phenomenon. Programming and curating participatory art exhibitions allows for the perfect art selfie which draws in visitors from around the world. But, how do curators and museums affect the significance of these artworks by placing them within the Instagram age? This thesis uses the three exhibitions as case studies: Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors at the Broad Museum in Los Angeles, Take Me (I'm Yours) at the Jewish Museum in New York, and "Hélio Oiticica: To Organize …

Making Memory, Making Meaning: Memorial Museums And The Participatory Audience, Hillary Kirkham

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation explores the relationship between memorial museums and visitors, reexamining the process of remembering traumatic events in United States history. My work examines this meaning-making dynamic in case studies of four memorial museums: The 9/11 Memorial Museum, The Legacy Museum: From Slavery to Mass Incarceration, Manzanar National Historic Site, and Carthage Jail. By combining textual analysis of museums with data from visitor-produced materials such as guestbooks, letters, periodicals, and Instagram posts, I examine memorial museums' aims and rhetorical strategies while analyzing visitors' roles and contributions, illustrating how both guest and site collaborate to create memory and meaning. Drawing and …

Ecological Art Exhibition As Transformative Pedagogy, Stacey Skold

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Environmental degradation is considered one of the biggest issues facing humankind. The problem is deep and global with fast fashion playing a significant, yet underrealized role. Scholars have established that developing the sustainable behaviors necessary to mitigate the effects of environmental degradation is a complex process, that knowledge of environmental degradation alone is insufficient to develop sustainable behaviors, and that both attitudinal and behavioral transformations are necessary for global environmental action and stewardship. As a result, researchers have called for new approaches to environmental education to promote transformative learning.

Art experiences can function as a powerful tool in learning and …

Obituary: Sydney Anderson (1927–2018), Scott Lyell Gardner, Robert M. Timm, Nancy Olds, Hugh H. Genoways

Scott L. Gardner Publications

On August 12, 2018, the American Society of Mammalogists (ASM) lost one of its giants of the latter half of the 20th century when Sydney Anderson quietly passed away at his home in Birmingham, Alabama, at the age of 91. “Syd,” to his many friends and colleagues, was born on January 11, 1927 in Topeka, Kansas, to Robert Grant and Evelyn Fern (Hunt) Anderson.

Anderson began his professional career at the University of Kansas, where for four years (1955–1959) he served as Assistant Curator in charge of mammals in the Museum of Natural History, and Instructor in the Department of …

The Campus Library: Supporting Research And Scholarship Since 1886, University Of Tennessee At Chattanooga

Special Collections Exhibition Records and Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Documentary Provenance And Digitized Collections: Concepts And Problems, Mats Dahlström, Joacim Hansson

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Provenance research in digitized memory institution collections is mainly devoted to documenting and mapping the trajectories of the physical source documents across time, place and contexts, primarily by developing metadata standards and data models. The provenance of the digital reproduction and its relation to one or several physical source documents is however not being subjected to much inquiry. A possible explanation for this is the face-value approach with which we tend to regard digital reproductions. Looking more closely at such reproductions and their complex digitization process suggests a far from straightforward and linear provenance relation, and begs the question of …

Minimizing The Dangers Of Air Pollution Using Alternative Facts: A Science Museum Case Study, David H. Lee

Publications and Research

A science museum exhibition about human health contains an exhibit that minimizes health impacts of air pollution. Relevant details, such as the full range of health risks; fossil fuel combustion; air quality statutes (and the local electrical utility’s violations of these statues), are omitted, while end users of electricity are blamed. The exhibit accomplishes this, not through outright falsification, but through selected “alternative facts” that change the focus and imply misleading alternate explanations. Using two classical rhetorical concepts (the practical syllogism and the enthymeme) allows for the surfacing of missing evidence and unstated directives underlying multimodal rhetoric. By stating multimedia …

The Museum Of The Infinite Scroll: Assessing The Effectiveness Of Google Arts And Culture As A Virtual Tool For Museum Accessibility, Megan K. Udell

Master's Projects and Capstones

As technology evolves, the concept of the virtual museum continues to come into focus. Google Arts and Culture (formerly the Google Art Project) has been a leading platform in virtual exhibitions and digital collections since 2011. Arts and Culture presents itself as a democratic platform that allows any museum, regardless of size or resources, access to the same new digital technologies. However, its model tends to favor institutions with more staff time to spend on their virtual presence. By analyzing Google Arts and Culture within the context of larger museum trends in virtuality and interviewing museum professionals responsible for their …

“Tell Me, Bambi Or Yogi Ever Hunt You Back?” The Windigo Myth: A Metaphor For Imperialism And Mental Illness, Christine Carlough

Senior Capstone Theses

The Canadian indigenous myth of the windigo, originating from Algonquian-speaking tribes of the subarctic Northeast like Ojibwe and Cree, is a manifestation for a multitude of fears. This myth originated hundreds of years ago in order to explain the horror and lack of understanding of a mental illness, which would later be known as Windigo Psychosis. Windigo Psychosis is a culture-bound syndrome for an insatiable desire to consume human flesh. A culture-bound syndrome is recognizable and unique only within a specific society or culture, so in other words, Windigo Psychosis is specific to this area in Canada due to a …

Queen Nanny, A Case Study For Cultural Heritage Tourism: The Archaeology Of Memory And Identity, Lacy Risner

Liberal Arts Capstones

This research project is intended to provide a foundation of knowledge of the Maroon culture in Jamaica, through the legends of one of their most prominent founders, Queen Nanny, as an aid for those who want to educate themselves before approaching community leaders about tourism development. Documentation of Queen Nanny’s life is contested and shrouded in mystery. Yet, that is part of what makes her memory so powerful. The various roles that Queen Nanny is associated with feature her adamant pursuit of an independent life for herself and her Maroons. Whether she is catching bullets or teaching the Maroons how …

Mission-Driven Recordkeeping: The Need For Rim Staff In U.S. Nonprofit Organizations, Emily Mercer

School of Information Student Research Journal

As a robust and growing industry, often with strong ties to communities served, there is much potential for nonprofit organizations to harness powerful and rich databases of cultural information not found in any other sector. Yet research shows that in most cases, nonprofit organizations operate on limited budgets, tight deadlines, and may see the task of properly managing records as counter-productive to the mission of the organization. This research examines the systems of recordkeeping in nonprofit organizations in the U.S. and argues that record keeping staff must be considered an essential component for a nonprofit organization to survive and thrive.

Genealogical Plagiarism And The Library Community, Katherine S. Richers

School of Information Student Research Journal

Plagiarism is regarded as an academic crime, but can affect hobbies that rely on research and information sharing such as genealogy. The issue is well-known within the genealogy community. However, information professionals who aid genealogists in their research may not know enough about the issue. How can the library field respond constructively to the issue of uncontrolled plagiarism in genealogy? While the genealogy community condemns plagiarism and offers resources to correct it, current library practices concentrate on services and not on plagiarism education in the genealogy context, concentrating more on copyright and legal problems. The library field can help professionals …

The Information Behaviors Of Fiction Writers: A Systematic Approach To An Understudied Information Community, Lisa Lowdermilk

School of Information Student Research Journal

Within the context of creative information communities in general, fiction writers remain a relatively understudied community. This article seeks to rectify that gap by highlighting the information behaviors of fiction writers, including the ways in which they network, as well as the processes they use when writing. In doing so, it reveals that fiction writers of all genres have many experiences in common, such as the "seed incident" that serves as the starting point when writing fiction. In addition, it examines fiction writers' impact on readers, with the implication that everyone--writers and non-writers alike--would benefit from understanding fiction writers' information …

Understanding Diversity And Intellectual Freedom As #Corevalues, Deborah Hicks

School of Information Student Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Srj: Leading The Genre-Defying Lis Profession, Greta Snyder

School of Information Student Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Ischool Student Research Journal, Vol.9, Iss.2

School of Information Student Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Ciencia De Las Mujeres: Experiencias En La Cadena Textil Desde Los Ayllus De Challapata, Denise Y. Arnold, Elvira Espejo

Textile Research Works

En el contexto de la crisis económica que atravesó Bolivia en los años ochenta, una comunidad de puna de pastores andinos, Livichuco, que forma parte integral del ayllu mayor de Qaqachaka, emprendió por iniciativa propia un proceso de mejoramiento de su producción textil, con un programa de rescate de los tintes naturales de la región. Con recursos mínimos, los comunarios compraron ollas y bateas metálicas, y comenzaron a preguntar a las personas mayores sobre sus conocimientos prácticos tradicionales en el ámbito de la tinción de textiles. Durante un período de diez años, y en coordinación con varias instituciones —incluida la …

The Museum Of Experiential Living Art: Strategic Plan, Danielle D. Delia

Museum Studies Projects

How can a museum support the new work of artists? Can a Tri-fold business plan offer a sustainable way to support an artists in residency program? Will the local community welcome a new museum into their town? What will be the benefit to the local economy? This capstone project presenting a strategic plan proposes the development of a new art museum located in Buffalo New York called, the Museum of Experiential Living Art (MoELA). The purpose of MoELA is to support practicing artists through an artist in residency program; by providing dedicated time, space, tools, materials, housing and nourishment while …