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Museology or museum studies is the study of
museum
A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...
s. It explores the history of museums and their role in society, as well as the activities they engage in, including
curating,
preservation
Preservation may refer to:
Heritage and conservation
* Preservation (library and archival science), activities aimed at prolonging the life of a record while making as few changes as possible
* ''Preservation'' (magazine), published by the Nat ...
, public programming, and
education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
.
Terminology
The words that are used to describe the study of museums vary depending on language and geography. For example, while “museology” is becoming more prevalent in English, it is most commonly used to refer to the study of museums in French (muséologie), Spanish (museología), German (Museologie), Italian (museologia), and Portuguese (museologia) – while English speakers more often use the term “museum studies” to refer to that same field of study. When referring to the day-to-day operations of museums, other European languages typically use derivatives of the
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
“museographia” (French: muséographie, Spanish: museografía, German: Museographie, Italian: museografia, Portuguese: museografia), while English speakers typically use the term “museum practice” or “operational museology”
History
Development of the field
The development of museology in Europe coincided with the emergence of early
collectors
Collector(s) may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Collector (character), a fictional character in the Marvel Comics universe
* ''Collector'' (2011 film), a 2011 Indian Malayalam film
* ''Collector'' (2016 film), a 2016 Russian film
* ''Collec ...
and
cabinets of curiosity in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. In particular, during
The Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...
anthropologists, naturalists, and hobbyist collectors encouraged the growth of public museums that displayed
natural history and ethnographic objects and art in North America and Europe. In the 18th and 19th centuries, European powers’
colonization
Colonization, or colonisation, constitutes large-scale population movements wherein migrants maintain strong links with their, or their ancestors', former country – by such links, gain advantage over other inhabitants of the territory. When ...
of overseas lands was accompanied by the development of the disciplines of natural history and ethnography, and the rise of private and institutional collection building. In many cases museums became the holding places for collections that were acquired through colonial conquests, which positioned museums as key institutions in
Western Europe
Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context.
The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...
an
colonial projects.
In the 19th century, European museology was focused on framing museums as institutions that would educate and “civilize” the general public. Museums typically served nationalist interests, and their primary purpose was often to celebrate the state, country, or colonial power. Though
World’s Fairs, such as
The Great Exhibition of 1851
The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, also known as the Great Exhibition or the Crystal Palace Exhibition (in reference to the temporary structure in which it was held), was an international exhibition which took pl ...
in London or the
Chicago World’s Fair, were temporary, they were some of the first examples of large-scale exhibition spaces dedicated to nationalist agendas; both Britain and America wanted to assert themselves as international leaders in science and industry. In some cases world's fairs became the basis for museums. For instance, The Field Museum in Chicago grew out of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.
Museums Association
The Museums Association (MA) is a professional membership organisation based in London for museum, gallery and heritage professionals, museums, galleries and heritage organisations, and companies that work in the museum, gallery and heritage s ...
, the first professional membership organization for those working in the museum field, was established in London in 1889. In 1901, they developed
Museums Journal
''Museums Journal'' is an online resource and monthly print magazine published by the Museums Association. ''Museums Journal'' is a leading source of news and information for museums, galleries, heritage sites and historic houses. Simon Stephens is ...
, the first publication devoted entirely to the theory and practice of museums, and soon after other magazines appeared, like Museumskunde in Germany (1905) and the
American Association of Museum’s Museum Work in the United States (1919). With the creation of the
International Council of Museums
The International Council of Museums (ICOM) is a non-governmental organisation dedicated to museums, maintaining formal relations with UNESCO and having a consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. Founded in 1946, I ...
(ICOM) in 1946, the study of museums gained increasing momentum and exposure, though at the time most of the scholarly focus was on operational museology, or museum practice.
Beginning in the 1950s, new forms of museology were emerging as a way to revitalize the educational role of museums. One attempt to re-envision museums’ role was the concept of
Ecomuseum
An ecomuseum is a museum focused on the identity of a place, largely based on local participation and aiming to enhance the welfare and development of local community, local communities. Ecomuseums originated in France, the concept being develope ...
s, first proposed publicly at ICOM’s 9th International Conference in France (1971).
Ecomuseum
An ecomuseum is a museum focused on the identity of a place, largely based on local participation and aiming to enhance the welfare and development of local community, local communities. Ecomuseums originated in France, the concept being develope ...
s proliferated in Europe – and still exist around the world today – challenging traditional museums and dominant museum narratives, with an explicit focus on community control and the development of both heritage and sustainability. In 1988, Robert Lumley’s book The Museum Time Machine “expressed the growing disquiet about traditional museological presuppositions and operations”.
The following year, Peter Vergo published his critically acclaimed edited collection The New Museology (1989/1997), a work that aimed to challenge the traditional or “old” field of museology, and was named one of the Paperbacks of the Year by
The Sunday Times
''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...
in Britain. Around the same time, Ivan Karp co-organized two ground-breaking conferences at the Smithsonian, Exhibiting Cultures (1988) and Museums and Communities (1990), that soon resulted in highly influential volumes of the same names that redefined museums studies.
Scholars who are engaged in various “new” museological practices sometimes disagree about when this trend “officially” began, what exactly it encompasses, and whether or not it is an ongoing field of study. However, the common thread of New Museology is that it has always involved some form of “radical reassessment of the roles of museums within society”.
Critical theorists like
Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...
,
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist.
An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish mys ...
, and
Benedict Anderson
Benedict Richard O'Gorman Anderson (August 26, 1936 – December 13, 2015) was an Anglo-Irish political scientist and historian who lived and taught in the United States. Anderson is best known for his 1983 book '' Imagined Communities'', which e ...
also had a profound influence on late 20th and early 21st century museology. As other disciplines began to be critically reassessed, often adding the term “critical” to their new titles (i.e.
critical race theory
Critical race theory (CRT) is a cross-disciplinary examination, by social and civil-rights scholars and activists, of how laws, social and political movements, and media shape, and are shaped by, social conceptions of race and ethnicity. Goa ...
), a discourse of critical museology also emerged, intensifying around the turn of the 21st century. It arose from a similar critical discourse as New Museology and shares many of its features, so much so that many scholars disagree about the extent to which you can distinguish one from the other. In other words, while some scholars say that New Museology was a watershed moment in the late 20th century and critical museology is a related but separate movement in the early 21st century, others argue that New Museology is an ongoing field of study that has many manifestations and names, one of which is critical museology
The latest movements in museology tend to focus on museums being
interdisciplinary
Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, ec ...
, multi-vocal, accessible, and open to criticism. While these critical discourses dominate contemporary museology, there are many different kinds of museums that exist today, some are engaged in new and innovative practices, and others are more traditional and therefore, less critical.
Operational museology
Operational museology refers to the day-to-day operations of a museum, including its organizational and regulatory structures, institutional policies and protocols (procedural, ethical, etc.), collections management (including
conservation and restoration
The conservation and restoration of cultural property focuses on protection and care of cultural property (tangible cultural heritage), including artworks, architecture, archaeology, and museum collections. Conservation activities include prev ...
), and its
exhibitions
An exhibition, in the most general sense, is an organized presentation and display of a selection of items. In practice, exhibitions usually occur within a cultural or educational setting such as a museum, art gallery
An art gallery is a roo ...
and programs.
While there has been much scholarship around operational museology over the last 30 years, some scholars argue that it has lacked sustained analysis.
Scholarship concerning operational museology has also overlapped with critical museology and other developments in the field.
Public role of museums
Operational museology has shifted in the late 20th and 21st century to position the museum as a central institution that serves the public by informing culture, history, and art while creating space for challenging conversations. Museums are thus perceived as cultural communicators that can reconstruct and reconnect cultural memory to the viewing public by collecting, preserving, documenting, and interpreting material culture. For example, many history museums engage with public memory from a multi-vocal perspective and present critical narratives regarding current sociopolitical issues. Other history museums, however, keep nationalistic approaches pertaining to the 19th century.
[. p. 51] Some museums convey reflexive and critical narratives, while others enact as "mass mediums" oriented toward international tourist networks. These institutions tend to display spectacular exhibition designs and grant little space for complex narratives and critical messages.
Scholars have identified a recent transformation in the way museums define their functions and produce their programming strategies as these have become spaces for encounters and meaningful experiences. For instance, in ''The Metamorphosis of the Museal: From Exhibitionary to Experiential Complex and Beyond'',
Andreas Huyssen
Andreas Huyssen (born 1942) is the Villard Professor Emeritus of German and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he taught beginning in 1986. He is the founding director of the university's Institute for Comparative Literature and ...
observes the museum, formerly conceived as "a container of the past and its accumulated objects” is now conceived as “a site of activity and experience in and for an ever-expanding present.”
Critical museology
Overview of the field
Critical museology has emerged as a key discourse in contemporary museology. It is a broad field of study that engages critically with museums, calling into question the foundation assumptions of the field.
This demonstrates critical museology’s close connection to New Museology, which also challenges foundational assumptions in museology. Critical museology may also extend beyond the traditional
museum
A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...
to include
cultural centres,
heritage sites
A national heritage site is a heritage site having a value that has been registered by a governmental agency as being of national importance to the cultural heritage or history of that country. Usually such sites are listed in a heritage regist ...
,
memorial
A memorial is an object or place which serves as a focus for the memory or the commemoration of something, usually an influential, deceased person or a historical, tragic event. Popular forms of memorials include landmark objects or works of a ...
s,
art galleries
An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The lon ...
, and so on.
Development of the field
Given that museums are historically linked to
colonialism
Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose their relig ...
,
imperialism
Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic and ...
, and European
missionary
A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Tho ...
work, they have a morally and politically problematic past. While some of the objects museums hold were purchased – though not always fairly and often to the exclusive benefit of the collector – a large proportion of museum collections were taken as spoils of war, or otherwise removed without the consent of the people or community that owned them. Museums, along with their collections – and collectors – played a key role in establishing and reiterating the dominance of colonial Europe and narratives of cultural superiority. Critical museology was developed through questioning the foundational assumptions of museum studies and museums, including their history, architecture, display, programming, and the provenance of their objects.
Recent work has also analyzed exhibition design to show how the diverse media combined in exhibitions communicate and shape visitors' interpretations and values. While
anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...
s and the field of
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...
were actively engaged in problematic collecting practices for two centuries, anthropologists have also been central to the emergence of critical museology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
This has included reconstructing and analyzing those collection histories and the relationships that grew around them, as in the Pitt Rivers Museum's "Relational Museum" project. They have also led interdisciplinary working groups that developed new approaches to globalizing processes in critical museology, as foregrounded in Museum Frictions, a third innovative volume co-edited by Ivan Karp. Additionally, anthropologists have spearheaded recent methodological and pedagogical developments in critical museology including “curatorial dreaming”, curating labs like th
Making Culture Labat
Simon Fraser University
Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, with three campuses, all in Greater Vancouver: Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, and Vancouver. The main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located from ...
, th
Curating and Public Scholarship Labat
Concordia University
Concordia University ( French: ''Université Concordia'') is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1974 following the merger of Loyola College and Sir George Williams University, Concordia is one of the t ...
, and th
Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage(CARMAH) in Berlin, as well as courses like th
In other contexts, historians have been at the forefront of interventions in critical museology.
Decolonizing and indigenizing museums
In North America, Australia, and New Zealand in particular, critical museology attempts to address the problematic colonial pasts of museums through the decolonization and Indigenization of museums.
Once viewed as the formal process of handing over the instruments of government, decolonizing is now recognized – particularly in Canada – as a long-term process that involves dismantling the bureaucratic, cultural, linguistic, and psychological legacies of colonial power
While there is no agreed upon end-goal of decolonization, the process of decolonizing the museum is aimed at “assist
ngcommunities in their efforts to address the legacies of historical unresolved grief by speaking the hard truths of colonialism and thereby creating spaces for healing and understanding”.
Collaboration, consultation, and
repatriation
Repatriation is the process of returning a thing or a person to its country of origin or citizenship. The term may refer to non-human entities, such as converting a foreign currency into the currency of one's own country, as well as to the pro ...
are key components of decolonizing museums. Australian museums have been leaders in developing repatriation processes, consultation, and collaboration with Indigenous communities, beginning in the late 1980s. Projects involving collaboration and consultation with source communities have taken many forms, ranging from developing traveling exhibits, revising collection catalogues, to establishing community cultural centers and working with photographic collections together. In Canada, collaboration and consultation were first formally suggested by the 1994 Task Force Report on Museums and First Peoples, and are now seen by many museums as being an essential practice for any institution that holds collections belonging to
Indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
.
In North America, and around the world, some of the objects in those collections – particularly sacred objects or human remains – have been
repatriated
Repatriation is the process of returning a thing or a person to its country of origin or citizenship. The term may refer to non-human entities, such as converting a foreign currency into the currency of one's own country, as well as to the pro ...
or returned to their communities of origin.
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990) formalized the process of
repatriating Indigenous cultural objects in the United States. While Canada does not have a formal policy around repatriation, many museums have their own internal policies and many objects have been returned to Indigenous communities that way. Though repatriation policies are typically well intended, the process has often been complicated by institutional, community, and government politics, and have had varying degrees of success.
A newer concept, the
Indigenization
Indigenization is the act of making something more native; transformation of some service, idea, etc. to suit a local culture, especially through the use of more indigenous people in public administration, employment and other fields.
The term is ...
of museums, moves away from focusing exclusively on collaborative methods and towards employing Indigenous people to work in positions of power within museums as a means of opening up the museum to sustained Indigenous influences, and restructuring the museum to reflect Indigenous approaches to knowledge sharing. Examples of indigenizing museum practice include
Art Gallery of Ontario
The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO; french: Musée des beaux-arts de l'Ontario) is an art museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The museum is located in the Grange Park neighbourhood of downtown Toronto, on Dundas Street West between McCaul and Beve ...
's 2016 appointing of
Wanda Nanibush
Wanda Nanibush (born 1976) is an Anishinaabe curator, artist and educator based in Toronto, Ontario. She is the Curator of Indigenous Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the author of the 2017 book ''Violence No More: The Rise of Indigenous Wom ...
as the Curator of Canadian and Indigenous Art, Wood Land School’s takeover of the SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art in Montreal, the appointment of Aboriginal curators at the South Australia Museum, the Australian Museum, the National Museum of Australia, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, and the creation of the Reciprocal Research Network, which is an interactive online resource co-developed by the
Musqueam Indian Band
The Musqueam Indian Band ( ; hur, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm ) is a First Nations band government in the Canadian province of British Columbia. It is the only First Nations band whose reserve community lies within the boundaries of the City of Vancouv ...
, the
Sto:lo Nation Tribal Council, the U’mista Cultural Centre, and the
Museum of Anthropology at UBC
The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada is renowned for its displays of world arts and cultures, in particular works by First Nations of the Pacific Northwest. As well as ...
, to facilitate collaborative research and knowledge exchange between communities, scholars, and cultural institutions in Canada and internationally.
While there is no linear trajectory of decolonizing/Indigenizing work in museums, major milestones in Canada include the
Indians of Canada Pavilion
The Indians of Canada Pavilion was a pavilion at the 1967 International and Universal Exposition in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
The Pavilion, constructed as a temporary structure for public exhibition at Expo 67, contained works of Indigenous a ...
at
Expo 67
The 1967 International and Universal Exposition, commonly known as Expo 67, was a general exhibition from April 27 to October 29, 1967. It was a category One World's Fair held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is considered to be one of the most su ...
’; The
Lubicon Cree
The Muskotew Sakahikan Enowuk or Lubicon Lake Nation ( cr, ᒪᐢᑯᑏᐤ ᓵᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ) is a Cree First Nation in northern Alberta, Canada. They are commonly referred to as the Lubicon Lake Nation, Lubicon Cree, or the Lubicon Lake C ...
’s boycott of
The Spirit Sings, a
Shell
Shell may refer to:
Architecture and design
* Shell (structure), a thin structure
** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses
** Thin-shell structure
Science Biology
* Seashell, a hard o ...
sponsored exhibition at the
Glenbow Museum
The Glenbow Museum is an art and history regional museum in the city of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The museum focuses on Western Canadian history and culture, including Indigenous perspectives. The Glenbow was established as a private non-profi ...
in 1988, and the resulting Task Force Report on Museums and First Peoples in 1994;
and
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’
s 20
15 final report, with Calls to Action that specifically address museums and archives.
Feminist critique and feminist curating
Given that museums and their collection strategies are historically linked to patriarchal values and marked by androcentric bias, critical feminist museology has developed as a distinct analytical approach. Scholars have identified that power relations of class, gender, and race are inscribed in the museum. Histories, theories, and practices of feminist curating have been explored in a series of conferences and symposia.
New methodologies
Vienna Method
The Vienna Method, subsequently called
ISOTYPES was developed by the
Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum
Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum (Museum for Social and Economic Affairs) is a museum located in Margareten, Vienna.
History
Following World War I, Vienna experienced extreme devastation and deprivation which radicalized architects and designe ...
(Museum for Social and Economic Affairs),
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
. With the support of
Otto Glöckel
Otto Glöckel (8 February 1874 in Pottendorf, Lower Austria – 23 July 1935 in Vienna) Socialism, social-Democracy, democratic politician and school-reformer during the First Austrian Republic. First Minister of Education during the First Aust ...
of the
Vienna City Council
Vienna ( ; german: Wien ; bar, Wean, label=Bavarian language, Austro-Bavarian ) is the Capital city, capital, largest city, and one of States of Austria, nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's List of cities and towns in Austria, most populou ...
the Museum sought to make sociological and economic information accessible to the whole population regardless of their level of education
Museum interventions
Interventions in museums were
Art intervention, first employed by artists like
Marcel Duchamp
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...
, who were looking to challenge both established elite art traditions and the expectations of museum visitors. By the late 20th century, interventions had become a methodology used not only by artists, but also by other groups – including activists, museum visitors, and even museums themselves – as a way to democratize exhibitions, challenge dominant narratives, problematize the provenance of museum objects, and so on.
Artist interventions
A central aspect of
Institutional Critique, some artist’s interventions have been co-organized or commissioned by museums themselves – like
Fred Wilson’s Mining the Museum (1992) at the
Maryland Historical Society
The Maryland Center for History and Culture (MCHC), formerly the Maryland Historical Society (MdHS), . founded on March 1, 1844, is the oldest cultural institution in the U.S. state of Maryland. The organization "collects, preserves, and inte ...
,
Michael Nicholl Yahgulanaas’ Meddling in the Museum (2007) at UBC’s
Museum of Anthropology
This is a list of museums with major collections in ethnography and anthropology. It is sorted by descending number of objects listed.
# Canadian Museum of History, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
#: 3.75 million artifacts
# Musée du quai Branly, P ...
, or the Artists' Interventions at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford – while others have been done without explicit permission, like
Andrea Fraser
Andrea Rose Fraser (born 1965) is a performance artist, mainly known for her work in the area of Institutional Critique. Fraser is based in New York and Los Angeles and is currently Department Head and Professor of Interdisciplinary Studio of th ...
’s Museum Highlights (1989) at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...
.
One of the best known artist interventions in a museum is
James Luna’s ''Artifact Piece'', which was first performed at the San Diego Museum of Man in 1987, and then again at ''The Decade Show'' in New York in 1990. Luna, a
Luiseño
The Luiseño or Payómkawichum are an indigenous people of California who, at the time of the first contacts with the Spanish in the 16th century, inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging from the present-day southern part of L ...
artist, lay almost naked in a display case filled with artifacts in order to challenge representations of Indigenous peoples in museums and the narratives that accompanied those representations, which suggested that Indigenous people and cultures were dead. The objects in the case included Luna's favorite books and music, his divorce papers, his university degree, photos, and other mementos, alongside labels describing the scars on his body and how he had acquired them. The work was critically acclaimed for its challenge of conventional narratives of Indigeneity and Indigenous experience. A few years later, two artists – Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco – developed a traveling performance art piece called
The ''Couple in the Cage: Two Amerindiens Visit the West'' that reflected on the treatment and representation of Indigenous peoples in colonial contexts, and was performed in many different spaces, including
Covent Gardens, the
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, t ...
, the Smithsonian's
National Museum of Natural History
The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. In 2021, with 7 ...
, the
Australia Museum, and the
Field Museum.
Activist interventions
While there is overlap between artist and activist interventions, specific activist groups such as the
Guerrilla Girls
Guerrilla Girls is an anonymous group of feminist, female artists devoted to fighting sexism and racism within the art world. The group formed in New York City in 1985 with the mission of bringing gender and racial inequality into focus within t ...
have long been creating exhibitions and public advertisements – through the use of billboards, stickers, posters, and projections – to critique power dynamics related to sexism, racism, and class privilege in museums.
There is also a tradition of activist interventions being used as responses to the censorship of exhibited artworks. In 1989, after the
Corcoran Gallery of Art
The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University.
Overview
The Corcoran School of the Arts & Design ...
cancelled
''The Perfect Moment'', an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe’s explicit photography, protesters projected Mapplethorpe’s photos on the exterior of the museum. Similar protests occurred when
David Wojnarowicz
David Michael Wojnarowicz ( (September 14, 1954 – July 22, 1992) was an American painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, songwriter/recording artist, and AIDS activist prominent in the East Village art scene. He incorp ...
’s film
''A Fire in My Belly'' was removed from the
''Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture'' exhibit at the
National Portrait Gallery in 2010.
Internal institutional interventions
While most interventions are directed at museums from outside sources, museums also engage interventions as a way of performing self-critique. For example, in 2015
MoMA
Moma may refer to:
People
* Moma Clarke (1869–1958), British journalist
* Moma Marković (1912–1992), Serbian politician
* Momčilo Rajin (born 1954), Serbian art and music critic, theorist and historian, artist and publisher
Places
; Ang ...
mounted a meta-intervention exhibit called ''Messing with MoMA: Critical Interventions at the Museum of Modern Art 1939 – Now''. In a similar way, ethnographic exhibitions have been incorporating contemporary art as a way to disrupt conventional expectations and narratives.
Another critical intervention in museums is the conception of permanent exhibitions, which are long-lasting galleries presenting the museum collections that critically reveal and approach the connections between the institution, its history and practices, and the cultural and social context in which the institution is embedded. This practice seeks to highlight the transformations in the paradigms that have determined the messages and languages of museums in the past, and invites visitors to reflect on the diverse roles of museums through history. The display of the collections of the
Museum of Antioquia
The Museum of Antioquia (''Museo de Antioquia'') is an art museum in Medellín, Colombia. It houses a large collection of works by Medellín native Fernando Botero and Pedro Nel Gómez.
It was the first museum established in Antioquia depar ...
(Medellín, Colombia) exemplifies this practice. The design of the gallery ''Historias para re-pensar'' (Histories to re-think) focuses on the 19th century and first half of the 20th century, and proposes a critical review of the region’s art history thereby inquiring about the role of collectors and the Museum in the construction of aesthetic paradigms. The gallery includes contemporary works in order to install a dialogue between the past and the presen
Additionally, the section of the permanent exhibition titled ''Galleries for decolonial dialogues: The persistence of the dogma'' displays an anachronistic array of works and documents in order to convey how enduring colonial dogmas determined the country’s cultural values and visual experiences during the 19th centur
The project of redeveloping the Museum’s permanent galleries is part of a larger institutional transformation that makes the Museum of Antioquia a great example of comprehensive critical museology practice
Another example of this Museum’s critical approach is the artistic residency project of artist
Nadia Granados
Nadia Granados(Nadia M. Granados Delgado) (born May 3, 1978 in Bogotá, Colombia) is a Colombian performance artist who uses her body concept in combination with multi-media technologies to explore relationships between the representation o ...
who, with curator
Carolina Chacón
Carolina may refer to:
Geography
* The Carolinas, the U.S. states of North and South Carolina
** North Carolina, a U.S. state
** South Carolina, a U.S. state
* Province of Carolina, a British province until 1712
* Carolina, Alabama, a town in ...
and a group of sex workers based in downtown Medellín, developed in 2017 the award-winning cabaret/performance ''
Nadie sabe quién soy yo
''Nadie'' is the third EP by the Japanese doom metal band Corrupted, released in 1995. This was recorded at L.M. Studio in Osaka, Japan on May 27, 1995.
Track listing
References
{{Corrupted
1995 EPs
Corrupted (band) EPs ...
'' (No one knows who I am). From then on, the performers funded the group
Las Guerreras del Centro, a collective to highlight the lives and stories of sex workers through artistic performances, knitting circles and other community actions.
''Nadie sabe quién soy yo'' was the beginning of a series of curatorial and educational collaborations between Las Guerreras del Centro and the Museum of Antioquia. Such collaborative projects are destigmatizing and empowering critical museology practices that generate new spaces for exchanges and social dialogues. These spaces emerge from the museum, forge links beyond museum walls, and drastically transform the museum’s relationship with its social environmen
Another example of a museum presenting a critical review of messages conveyed by the institution in the past can be found in the
Royal Ontario Museum
The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is a museum of art, world culture and natural history in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is one of the largest museums in North America and the largest in Canada. It attracts more than one million visitors every year ...
permanent exhibition, specifically in its Canadian history galleries. In this case, ROM curators have repurposed old
diorama
A diorama is a replica of a scene, typically a three-dimensional full-size or miniature model, sometimes enclosed in a glass showcase for a museum. Dioramas are often built by hobbyists as part of related hobbies such as military vehicle mode ...
s as a way to reflect critically on past uses of dioramas to portray indigenous people’s cultures. The new ironic diorama questions this common practice in museums and points out the stereotypes such practices promoted in the past (e.g., the depiction of indigenous peoples as belonging to another time or somehow as primitive or extinguished cultures).
Curatorial dreaming
Curatorial Dreaming was originally developed as a challenge to museum critics, who are typically not expected to provide practical solutions to the issues they identify in the exhibits they critique, to develop their own imagined exhibitions. It is intended as “an alternative mode of critical, intellectual practice – a form of ‘theorizing in the concrete’”.
Curating workshops, courses and labs
Over the last three decades there has been a proliferation of curating workshops, courses, and labs that engage with New Museology and critical museology in museum spaces, in universities, and elsewhere. For instance, the
Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College
Founded in 1990, the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) is an exhibition and research center dedicated to the study of art and exhibition practices from the 1960s to the present. The Center initiated its graduate program in 1994 ...
in New York was founded in 1990 and began offering a graduate program in 1994. In Germany, th
Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritageis engaging with the social, cultural, and political issues facing contemporary museums. In Canada, two of the most innovative curating labs are th
Making Culture Labat
Simon Fraser University
Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, with three campuses, all in Greater Vancouver: Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, and Vancouver. The main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located from ...
in Vancouver and th
Curating and Public Scholarship Labat
Concordia University
Concordia University ( French: ''Université Concordia'') is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1974 following the merger of Loyola College and Sir George Williams University, Concordia is one of the t ...
in Montreal, which offered its inaugura
International Field School in Critical Museologyin May 2017. Th
African Programme in Museum and Heritage Studiesin Cape Town includes a curatorial module within a comprehensive diploma and M.A. program that engages critically with museum and heritage studies, the leading program on the continent.
See also
*
Conservation-restoration of cultural heritage
The conservation and restoration of cultural property focuses on protection and care of cultural property (tangible cultural heritage), including artworks, architecture, archaeology, and museum collections. Conservation activities include prev ...
*
Museum anthropology
Museum anthropology is a domain of scholarship and professional practice in the discipline of anthropology.
Characteristics
A distinctive characteristic of museum anthropology is that it cross-cuts anthropology's sub-fields (archaeology, cultural ...
*
Museum education
Museum education is a specialized field devoted to developing and strengthening the education role of informal education spaces and institutions such as museums.
In a critical report called ''Excellence and Equity'' published in 1992 by the Ameri ...
*
Natural history museum
A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more. ...
*
World's fair
A world's fair, also known as a universal exhibition or an expo, is a large international exhibition designed to showcase the achievements of nations. These exhibitions vary in character and are held in different parts of the world at a specif ...
References
Bibliography
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* Curating and Public Scholarship Lab (CaPSL) http://capsl.cerev.ca/
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*
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* Whyte, M. (2016) Wanda Nanibush Named AGO’s First Curator of Indigenous Art. Toronto Star. Retrieved from: https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/visualarts/2016/07/22/wanda-nanibush-named-agos-first-curator-of-indigenous-art.html
External links
Calls to Action – Truth and Reconciliation Commission of CanadaCentre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage* Curatorial dream
Curating and Public Scholarship LabGuerrilla Girls
International Council of MuseumsMaking Culture LabTask Force Report on Museums and First PeoplesTruth and Reconciliation CommissionTRC - 94 Calls to Action{{Authority control
Museology,