Museology

Arseny Zhilyaev in conversation with Boris Groys: "Contemporary art is the theology of the museum". This recent conversation is part of the Center for Experimental Museology, a collaborative project between COLTA.RU and the V-A-C Foundation. The material was published on e-flux conversations for the first time in english.

One of the most momentous cross-cultural collisions occurred in the Caribbean in 1492, heralding a period of rapid change in both ‘New’ and ‘Old’ Worlds. During the early years of the colonial period, when new relationships were being established, material objects became active agents in the interactions between the indigenous Taíno and the Spanish. The Taíno gifted the Spanish with objects that had significance in their own world, in an attempt to enmesh the Spanish into Taíno socio-political and economic networks. In turn, Spanish objects entered into Taíno value
systems. Glass and jet beads, mirrors and brass ornaments were integrated into prestigious objects, such as the two surviving Taíno cotton sculptures that form the focus of this paper: a belt in the collections of the Weltmuseum Wien and a composite sculpture in the Museo Nazionale
Preistorico Etnografico ‘Luigi Pigorini’, Rome. These pieces offer a glimpse into how Old World exotics were reinterpreted and integrated into indigenous value systems during a period of cultural transition and change.

Full, open access volume:
http://www.archaeopress.com/Public/displayProductDetail.asp?id=%7B75FFD4AC-966D-406F-A3A7-CBE6F4CF613B%7D

This paper reflects on the changing role of the guardian or keeper in museums and art collections from the seventeenth
century to the present. Starting from the lexical meaning of the Italian word ‘custode’, thanks to archival documentation, the research
reconstructs the use of this word in the historical lexicon of museums and their professions, in different geographical and cultural
contexts. Comparing the historical regulations of museums and art collections in different Italian regions, the paper argues that the
profound changes associated with the functions and the professional profile of the keepers transformed them from curators of collections
to mere guardians of rooms.

Given the growing awareness of the museum field's foundation in white colonial power, museums have started to take action, utilizing the word "decolonize" to expand community partnerships and removing sculptures that celebrate white domination while reanalyzing their own past/present collection practices. On the surface, public-facing façade, we have seen a movement toward change, with more inclusive language, accessibility, and programming, while acknowledging that our field has much more work ahead.

However, if museums are to truly understand and acknowledge their colonial history and connection, this self-examination must go beyond how they received their collections and explore how they continue to interpret them. This essay examines how museums perpetuate a colonial mindset in interpreting their collections. Specifically, by looking at ancient Egyptian collections, I will examine how museums have participated in creating a Western-based narrative that has appropriated ancient Egyptian history, thereby fragmenting Egyptian history, culture, and identity, and thus creating an incomplete and simplified narrative. The impact of this incomplete and simplified narrative can be seen in the over-valuing of ancient Egypt over modern Egypt, which in turn has real-world implications on tourism and even civic planning.

La tesi di Laurea in Architettura dal titolo “L’ISOLA DELLA PENA, L’ARCHITETTURA DEL RISCATTO. Castiadas, la più grande Colonia penale agricola d’Italia”, riguarda lo studio dell’ex Colonia penale agricola di Castiadas e dei suoi fabbricati.
L’intento è stato quello di ricercare ed analizzare i documenti, molti dei quali inediti, secondo un approccio di tipo scientifico, per poter ricomporre i processi storici, politici ed architettonici che hanno contraddistinto la nascita e l’evoluzione dell'ex Carcere, dall'impianto nel 1875 ai successivi ampliamenti, fino alla sua chiusura.

Actas de las XIII Jornadas Museológicas Chilenas realizadas en Valdivia en el año 2016.
Organizadores: ICOM-Chile y Dirección Museológica de la Universidad Austral de Chile.
Coordinador general: Simón Urbina.
Comité editorial: Luis Alegría, Gabriela Alt, Marcelo Godoy, Leonardo Mellado, Ricardo Mendoza, Simón Urbina, Valeria Vera, Fernando Vergara y Karin Weil.
Edición: César Altermatt.
Diseño: Milka Marinov.
Maquetación: Alejandra Rosas.
Traducción de conferencias magistrales: Valentina Pires A. / VPA Communications.

This chapter brings the practice of soundwalking, walking the landscape with a focus on listening to one’s environment to the museum, expanding the roaming pursuit of walking into the locale of its galleries, to use the boundariless ephemerality of sound to illuminate museological conventions and traditions and the way we interact with these. in this context the soundwalk stages a journey of exploration, a phonographic expedition, whose aim is to re-experience, question and expand stayed assumptions about the museum, curatorial practice and the contemplation of art.

Chapter in The Multisensory Museum Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space, Nina Levent and Alvaro Pascual-Leone (eds), Alta Mira Press, 2014

The aim of this paper is to show how the collection of
Coptic fabrics “Ramon Soler Vilabella” of Montserrat
Museum was formed. This fact is associated with Albert
Gayet archaeological campaigns of the early twentieth
century. The importance of these campaigns and the textile
collection formed, lies in all written documentation
that allowed us to give a context and a rough chronology,
both as training materials thereof.

Literary museums today must respond to new challenges; the traditional image of the author’s home museum as a sacred place of literary pilgrimage centered around a national hero has been questioned, and literary museums have begun to develop new strategies centered not only on biography, but also literary texts, imagined spaces, different readers, historical contexts, architectural concepts, and artistic interventions. As this volume shows, the changing of spaces ask how literary museums create new ways of interlinking real and literary spaces, texts, objects, readers, and tourists.

"Vienna’s Museum für Vökerkunde holds in its collections a rare sixteenth-century Taíno cotton
belt from Hispaniola (today’s Dominican Republic/Haiti) – one of only two surviving Taíno
cotton artefacts to feature European ‘exotics’, including mirrors, jet beads and brass. This complex
woven structure – a wearable work of art – offers a rare window on to one of the most prestigious
of Taı´no valuables, a personal ornament that literally wrapped the wearer in wealth, status and
spiritual power. The paper charts the original context and use of Taı´no belts, and provides a
detailed account of the Vienna belt’s collection history, its construction and its chronological
placement (radiocarbon-dated using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) to AD 1475–1635). The
question of how and when the European materials were incorporated into the belt is explored,
critically engaging the entangled histories of association between the two."

Su AMAZON: https://www.amazon.it/musei-forme-dello-Storytelling-digitale/dp/8825533691/ref=zg_bs_508769031_14?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=68JRVFPG2WMTFC3FTXX1

Questa ricerca intende illustrare le diverse e molteplici esperienze adottate fino ad oggi nei musei e nel mondo culturale nel campo dello storytelling digitale, per orientare la futura progettazione di soluzioni digitali narrative, che siano calibrate sulle specifiche esigenze di valorizzazione delle singole realtà e dei diversi contesti culturali, con lo scopo primario di trovare la migliore soluzione di accessibilità digitale al racconto della cultura, sviluppando così adeguate politiche di audience engagement e di user experience, nell’ottica delle più recenti indicazioni ministeriali in materia. Ovviamente, non si ha la pretesa di aver analizzato tutte le best practices in ogni campo, ma si è voluta fornire una traccia, il più possibile completa, del percorso che lo storytelling digitale ha avviato e delle differenti soluzioni messe in campo in questo specifico settore della comunicazione culturale.
Nello specifico sono individuate e analizzate 14 tipologie in tutto:

1) Lo storytelling orale
2) Lo storytelling scritto
3) Il videostorytelling
4) Lo storytelling visuale
5) Lo storytelling animato
6) Lo storytelling interattivo
7) Lo storytelling immersivo
8) Il social media storytelling
9) Lo storytelling partecipativo
10) Lo storytelling generativo
11) Il geo-storytelling
12) Il multimedia mobile storytelling
13) Lo storytelling crossmediale
14) Lo storytelling transmediale

All’interno di queste macrocategorie nei casi dello storytelling visuale, animato, interattivo e immersivo saranno distinte delle sottocategorie, cercando di restituire un quadro il più possibile completo di come queste forme di storytelling digitale si siano sviluppate e si stiano tuttora sviluppando in molteplici varianti ed espressioni, sulla base dell’evoluzione e della differente applicazione delle nuove tecnologie digitali nella creazione, nella comunicazione, nella visualizzazione e nella fruizione di tali contenuti.
Come avremo modo di discutere nelle conclusioni a questo volume, intitolate “È tempo che..”, si vuole proporre in questa sede una nuova visione di museo, un nuovo modello che, partendo dalla visione antiquaria e francamente ottocentesca del museo di collezione e oltrepassando la trasformazione già in parte in corso di museo di narrazione, giunga a quello che si è voluto definire un museo di connessione o di narrazione connessa.

Impulsionado pelos impactos da crise do Ocidente em meados do século XX, o Brasil reconfigurou-se no âmbito da Política Internacional, buscando adequar-se às novas demandas mundiais. Nesse contexto, situa-se a descolonização de países africanos e o estímulo da UNESCO na desconstrução das falsas doutrinas da desigualdade das raças, bem como o encorajamento dos princípios da igualdade. A África, para o presidente Jânio Quadros (1961), foi tomada como o palco perfeito para a expansão econômica do Brasil. Para tal, o governo brasileiro abriu embaixadas no oeste da África – nos planos da Política Externa Independente – e nomeou Raymundo Souza Dantas, um jornalista negro, como embaixador no país de Gana. Gasparino Damata serviu como adido de imprensa nesta embaixada, entre 1962 e 1963, e, além de atuar como diplomata, exerceu também o papel de colecionador de arte africana. Neste contexto, Jânio Quadros também elegeu, em 1961, José Roberto Teixeira Leite ao cargo de diretor do Museu Nacional de Belas Artes (MNBA-RJ), com o propósito de atualizar, modernizar e dinamizar a instituição. Nessa conjuntura, Teixeira Leite adquiriu a coleção de arte africana montada por Damata durante as viagens realizadas pelo adido em países da África Ocidental. Nesse sentido, esse trabalho abordou três aspectos: a Política Africana do Brasil em Gana; as narrativas sobre a África e os jogos de poder utilizados por Damata na consagração dos objetos africanos em arte; e, por fim, as negociações e os conflitos enfrentados pelo diretor do MNBA na compra e no processo de musealização das peças africanas, em 1964.

A 1a e a 2a edições deste livro foram lançadas pela Editora Medianiz em 2013 e 2014, respectivamente.

Em 2019 a tiragem destas edições estava esgotada e, considerando a demanda pelo livro, a Editora Padula realizou a 3a edição. A aquisição pode ser feita diretamente com a editora.
www.padulalivros.com.br
Telefone: (51) 3022-7888  Whatsapp: (51) 98055-5634

With articles by Noémie Drouguet, Areti Adamopoulou, Esther Solomon, Jonathan Paquette, Christopher Gunter, Éric Giroux, and Karen Worcman.
------ See also follow up article "Museums Without (Scholar-)Curators: Exhibition-Making in Times of Managerial Curatorship" published in Museum International (2016):

https://www.academia.edu/33024164/Museums_Without_Scholar-_Curators_Exhibition-Making_in_Times_of_Managerial_Curatorship

Reshaping Museum Spaces: Architecture, Design, Exhibitions is a book edited by Suzanne MacLeod, emerged out of a conference held at the University of Leicester in April 2004. The book is composed of seventeen chapters, written by different authors, which are divided in four sections that would like to lead to one idea: how come museums had such a radical reshaping in the recent years. Each author explains, with some examples, his own opinion about what are the most evident reasons of these changes, both on the architectural (inside and outside), social and cultural aspects. The authors keep questioning what kind of types the new museum spaces are required, and highlighting a range of possibilities for creative museum design.

The authors reflect about the complexity, significance and malleability of museum space, which is always open to change. In the recent years, while museums became consciously «recognized as drivers for social and economic regeneration, the architecture of the museum has developed from its traditional forms into often-spectacular one-off statements and architectural visions».
Unfortunately, the most highlighted example of this phenomenon, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao designed by Frank O. Gehry, that succeededto transform a provincial city in Spain into a touristic destination, isn’t explained enough but only mentioned as the «Bilbao Effect» (known as the power of iconic architecture to place a city on the cultural map). Also other iconic museum architectures such as Berlin’s Jewish Museum or Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati are absent.

In parallel, Suzanne MacLeod and the other authors try to analyze the reciprocal relationship between construed and curated space, or in other words, between museum building, exhibition and exposed objects. The difference of approaches about the book’s topics result as a mix of descriptions; in certain cases the description is structured by the author’s opinion on a specific topic (architecture or exhibition) lead by some examples. In other cases the authors choose to give only a detailed description of one/two museums and their exhibition, in order to touch both arguments (architecture and exhibition) which results more complicated to understand.
I think that an interesting result of this book stays on the comparison between the different opinions on the same topics, and in this way I try to compose this summary. I followed the book four sections, trying, from one hand, to bring all author’s viewpoints, and from the other hand to have a logical connection between the different parts, considering also my own position and adding some comments from other books.

Dalla fine del XX secolo, i tentativi di rileggere le collezioni museali sono stati declinati in alcuni casi attraverso narrazioni non lineari che non rispettano le tradizionali categorie della storia dell'arte. L'articolo intende indagare le cause di questa tendenza globale dal punto di vista culturale, sociopolitico e teorico. Queste pratiche si sono avvicinate alle collezioni museali come ad una forma di archivio e sono state sviluppate negli ultimi trent'anni in particolare da diverse istituzioni dedicate all'arte contemporanea, rimodellando gli allestimenti e il loro ruolo istituzionale. Attraverso l'analisi di tre casi studio, il Centre Pompidou di Parigi con la mostra Modernités plurielles (2013-2015), il Van Abbemuseum di Eindhoven con The Making of Modern Art (2017-2021) e il Museo Sztuki di Łódź con Atlas of Modernity (2014-oggi), l'articolo analizza la necessità istituzionale dei musei contemporanei di rileggere e riscrivere la storia della "modernità" e delle loro collezioni nel XXI secolo attraverso l'uso di narrazioni dialettiche. Il rapporto tra l'istituzione, le collezioni e la loro narrazione sarà analizzato come carattere distintivo dell'identità e della missione del museo.

In 1899 the great exhibition devoted to Alessandro Volta was meant to open a new season of richness for Como and the Lake. Nonetheless, in 1927 the second exhibition organized for the centennial anniversary of Volta's death was promoted by city's institutions and local businessmen as moment of improvement in the fields of economics, culture and tourism. Around the 1927 exhibition new buildings and facilities were built redesigning the historical downtown and its surroundings, such as the Sinigaglia Stadium built in the 1899 exhibition site, the Faro Voltiano on the Brunate hill, in the place of an ephemeral tower. The paper aims to reconstruct some events in Como's urban history in the first three decades of 19 th century, following both stylistic and architectural issues and connections with municipal identity and then fascist propaganda.

Peut--on, comme d’autres ont défini des lieux de mémoire, ou des lieux de savoirs, envisager certains lieux aujourd’hui comme des espaces (publics) plus propices que d’autres à la pratique de la pensée, comme des lieux de pensée ? Dans quelle mesure, comment, et à quelles fins, des lieux – le musée, le théâtre, la bibliothèque... – peuvent-ils impulser, élaborer ou modeler de la pensée ? Quels sont les dispositifs (institutionnels, architecturaux, scénographiques) que mobilise et construit une telle volonté des pratiques professionnelles et artis- tiques de s’inscrire dans des enjeux de pensée ? Quels sont les enjeux, les bornes, les moyens, les e ets de ces dispositifs ?
Les études de cas réunies dans cet ouvrage permettent de mettre à l’épreuve une hypothèse : que ces lieux déterminent des modes d’exercice de la pensée qui leur sont propres, tant du côté de ceux qui y « œuvrent » que du côté des publics – visiteurs, spectateurs ou usagers ; qu’ils peuvent, conjointement, être conçus – c’est à dire fabriqués, pensés, analysés, interprétés – comme des espaces de pra- tique de la pensée, voire de l’exercice philosophique, en son sens le plus ouvert de pratique d’une pensée contemplative, réflexive ou critique.

The great exhibition of Volta in 1899 and the exhibition of Ercole Ferrata and the Intelvesi masters held in Pellio in 1910 had the merit of focus the attention of scholars on a historical and artistic heritage still largely unexplored as warned Francesco Malaguzzi Valeri and Peter Toesca, engaged on the territory in cataloging campaigns and on the press in complaint action. After the end of World War I, in 1920, they were held exhibitions aimed to present to a wider audience the works of art admitted to wartime in warehouses set up in Rome and returned to their places of origin, under the guidance of Nello Tarchiani. This exhibition program had a dual purpose: on the one hand the public awareness towards heritage, on the other the celebration of victory, and the effectiveness of the protection measures implemented by the military command and the organs of the Ministry of Education. In this vein it is located, a few decades later, the publication of the Inventario degli oggetti d’arte della provincia di Sondrio, the ninth volume of a historic ministerial series, published in 1938. However, when that same year it was organized in Sondrio a big exhibition of painting and portrait from the XVth to the XIXth century, the intent were far from conservation and protection and turned to nationalistic propaganda. The article means to establish the mixed reception by scholars and the public, through the study of reviews and museographic programs, highlighting the connection with the activities of protection and cataloging in the territory and with the historical research.

1. World Youth Hostel
The medieval Altena Castle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altena), former residence of the Counts of the Mark, is home  of the world's first youth hostel. Even today you can see how the idea of a guesthouse took shape, especially for wandering young people, because the rooms were left in their original condition.
In 1909 the teacher Richard Schirrmann developed the idea of youth hostels wherever wanderers, especially young people, were travelling.
This led to the oldest youth hostel in the world, which Schirrmann set up in 1912 at Altena Castle.  This World Youth is the "mother" of all the more than 4000 youth hostels in 90 countries. The World Youth Hostel is therefore a continuing learning venue for multiculturalism and tolerance with regard to all people of different origins, skin colour, religion and culture.
2. The Poet Anton Wilhelm Florentin von Zuccalmaglio
A tombstone in the courtyard of the castle points to another, less well known history of the region, that of Anton Wilhelm Florentin von Zuccalmaglio, the poet of many folk songs, including "Kein schöner Land".

David Maskill.
Imperial Lines: Harold Wright (1885–1961): Printmaking and Collecting at the End of Empire
Harold Wright (1885–1961) was the founder of a scholarship to study the print collection of the British Museum, which was the extension of a process of education and acquisition that he conducted throughout his life as the major advisor to private print collectors and public institutions in Australia and New Zealand. At Colnaghi’s, the Bond Street dealers he served for over fifty years, Wright presided over the last flourish of the so-called Etching Revival, tirelessly promoting the work of its key members until the Great Depression made them unmarketable and deeply unfashionable. He believed, as they did, that these British printmakers were the true heirs of the great tradition of European printmaking. While this view is at odds with the prevailing canon of modern printmaking, it offers us an alternative history, one which has directly informed the early print collecting of some of our major institutions.

The Lalit Kala Akademi is the National Academy of Art, charged, in the preamble to its Constitution, to achieve a two fold objective, to foster and coordinate activities In the sphere of creative visual arts, and, to promote thereby the cultural unity of the country. The Constitution spells out the programmatic functions for achieving this twin objective as also powers. The first category of powers and functions is academic, the encouragement and promotion of study and research in creative arts with a special focus on survey, preservation, encouragement and projection of folk, tribal and traditional arts, crafts and artists and craftspersons. This is proposed to be achieved through recognition, scholarship and prizes to deserving artists and art institutions, publication, aid and social security. A second category of powers and functions is infrastructural, to be achieved through the establishment, encouragement, coordination of regional arts centres. State Lalit Kala Akademis, acquisition, maintenance, disposal of land, property and funds for promoting its objects and works.

The presentation will focus on ICOM Switzerland‘s works concerning training designed for museums professionals. Its implication in this field is increasing, within the framework of its own offer of continuous education, as well as within partnerships with other external institutions (for example universities).In September 2008, the first Master in Museology in Switzerland (Master en etudes museales) will be launched, as a result of the cooperation of ICOM Switzerland, the University of Neuchâtel and l‘Association des musees suisses (the National Swiss Museums Association).ICOM Switzerland is involved in reflections with museum professionnals. For instance, it collaborated with Swiss museum educators (the mediateurs culturels) in order to define quality standards for their working areas. This year also, a certification has also been set up, regarding training for museums professionals. The project has been presented in Vienna last year and it is now operational.