Topic outline

  • General

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  • Introduction to the Module

    • Through visits to ten of London’s most important institutions, this module will examine the development of how institutions curate culture from Renaissance ‘cabinets of curiosities’ to the modern ‘white cube’ gallery space. The module will equip students with the historical, theoretical, and practical knowledge necessary for studying culture through institutional collections. The class will analyse the techniques and practices museums use to collect, organise, and display their objects; we will consider the messages these institutions send through their architecture, patronage, and methods of display; and we will delve into some of the most important issues affecting cultural institutions today like decolonisation, repatriation, and social impact. Aside from the introductory class, the module will take place off campus, with seminar groups visiting a different institution in each meeting.

  • Learning Aims and Outcomes

    • Learning Aims:

      • To introduce students to London’s museum collections.
      • To present a critical overview of the key theories, approaches, and debates relevant to museums, their collections, and their displays.
      • To provide opportunities for students to apply and examine these theories, approaches, and debates during class sessions in a variety of museum spaces.

      Students who successfully complete this module will be able to:

      • Identify the role played by museums as institutional and educational bodies, both historically and in the present.
      • Discuss primary and secondary source material related to the study of museums.
      • Critically evaluate the methods and theories used to analyse museums, their objects, and their displays.
      • Apply knowledge of museum history and theory in the museum space, and evaluate, critique, and debate the way museums present themselves and their collections.   
      • Carry out in-depth independent research on a chosen topic in museology or museum history and apply key concepts to the critical analysis of displays.
      • Demonstrate how discipline-specific theories or approaches may be applied in a broader context.

  • Tuesday 2 July: Introduction to the Module


    Meeting point: QMUL Mile End Campus, Grad Centre 103

    • Suggested Background Reading

      General museum texts: 

      • Timothy Ambrose and Crispin Paine (eds.), Museum Basics (London: Routledge, 1993).
      • Graham Black, Transforming Museums in The Twenty-First Century (London: Routledge, 2012).
      • Bettina Messias Carbonell (ed.), Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004).
      • Christina Kreps, ‘Non-Western Models of Museums and Curation in Cross-cultural Perspective,’ in A Companion to Museum Studies, ed. Sharon Macdonald (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 457–472. 
      • Caroline Lang et al., The Responsive Museum: Working with Audiences in the Twenty-First Century (London: Routledge, 2007).
      • Sharon MacDonald and Helen Rees Leahy, The International Handbooks of Museum Studies, 4 volumes, (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2015).

      Museum history:

      • Germain Bazin, The Museum Age (New York: Universe Books, 1967).
      • Marjorie Caygill et al, Enlightening the British: Knowledge, Discovery and the Museum in the Eighteenth Century(London: British Museum Press, 2004).
      • J. Mordaunt Crook, The British Museum (London: Allen Lane, 1972).
      • Arthur MacGregor, Curiosity and Enlightenment: Collectors and Collections from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007).
      • Andrew McClellan, The Art Museum from Boullée to Bilbao (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press, 2008).
      • Impey Oliver and MacGregor Arthur (eds), The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985, rev 2001).
      • Nikolaus Pevsner, Academies of Art, Past and Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940).
      • Karsten Schubert, The Curator’s Egg. The Evolution of the Museum Concept from the French Revolution to the Present Day (London: One Off Press, 2000).
      • David M. Wilson, The British Museum, A History (London: British Museum, London, 2002).

      Museum theory:

      • Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London: Routledge, 1995).
      • Carol Duncan, Civilising Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums (London: Routledge, 1995).
      • Ferguson Greenberg and Sandy Nairne (eds.), Thinking about Exhibitions (London: Routledge, 1996).
      • Janet Marstine (ed.), New Museum Theory and Practice: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006).
      • Andrea Witcomb and Kylie Message, Museum Theory (Oxford: Wiley, 2015).

    • Day 1 PowerPoint File
      22.3 MB

  • Wednesday 3 July: Power, Politics, and the Museum Space: The National Gallery

    Meeting Point: 

    Morning Session, 10AM Grad Centre 103

    Afternoon session, 1PM in front of the Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery (closest Tube stop: Charing Cross or Embankment). If you're facing the facade of the building in the picture above, with Trafalgar Square behind you, the Sainsbury Wing is to your left, under scaffolding. 

    • Essential Reading (ALL ATTACHED BELOW): 

      1. Tony Bennett, ‘The Exhibitionary Complex’, in The Birth of the Museum (London:  Routledge, 1995), pp. 59-88.
        • DEFINE: Michel Foucault's theory of panopticism. Google "Michel Foucault panopticon" 
        • QUESTION: What does Bennett mean by an "exhibitionary complex"?
      2. Hans Haacke, ‘Museums, Managers of Consciousness’ in Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum, ed. Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago (London: Routledge, 2004), 400–413.
        • QUESTION: According to Haacke, which people/groups have a political influence on museums? List them.
      3. Denise Scott Brown and Ellis Woodman, ‘In Defence of the Sainsbury Wing’, Building Design Online, 22 July 2011.
      4. Adam Nathaniel Furman, ‘Building of the Month: National Gallery Sainsbury Wing, London’, Twentieth Century Society, February 2016.
      5. John Hill, ‘Selldorf's Sainsbury Plans Approved,’ World-architects.com, December 2022.
        • QUESTIONS (after reading all three articles about the Sainsbury Wing):
          • How was Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates' design of the Sainsbury Wing a compromise? What views was it a compromise between? 
          • Why are the current plans to update the Wing contentious today? 


      Further Reading: 

      • Carol Duncan, ‘From the Princely Gallery to the Public Art Museum: The Louvre Museum and the National Gallery, London’ in Representing the Nation: A Reader (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 304-331.
      • Duncan Cameron, ‘The Museum, a Temple or Forum’, Journal of World History 14, no. 1, (1971): 191-202.
      • Paul Q. Hirst, ‘Power/knowledge – constructed space and the subject’, in Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago (eds.), Grasping the World; the Idea of the Museum (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 380-400. 
      • Charles Jencks, ‘National Gallery—Sainsbury Wing, Robert Venturi, David Vaughan and Charles Jencks—An Interview’, in Andreas Papadakis (ed.) Post-modern Triumphs in London (London: Architectural Design, 1991), 48–57.
      • Helen Rees Leahy, Museum Bodies (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012).
      • Charles Saumarez Smith, ‘Architecture and the Museum’: the Seventh Reyner Banham Memorial Lecture, in Journal of Design History, 8, no 4, 1995, 243-56. 


    • Bennett - Exhibitionary Complex File
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    • Haacke - Museums: Managers of Consciousness File
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    • Scott Brown - In Defence of the Sainsbury Wing File
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    • Furman - National Gallery Sainsbury Wing URL
    • Hill - Selldorf's Sainsbury Plans Approved URL

  • Thursday 4 July: The Collecting Impulse: The Natural History Museum


    Meeting Point:

    Morning Session 10AM: Grad Centre 103

    Afternoon Session 1PM: Outside entrance to the Treasures Gallery, Natural History Museum (closest Tube: South Kensington). The Treasures display (Cadogan Gallery) is at the top of the main staircase in the entrance hall. Go up the lefthand staircase to find one of two entrances to Treasures. We'll meet by benches at that entrance, next to the skeleton of a giant moa bird.

    Download the museum floor plan here (Treasures is in the Green Zone, designated by a dodo skeleton): 

    https://www.nhm.ac.uk/content/dam/nhmwww/visit/map/Museum-map.pdf

    • Essential Reading (ALL ATTACHED BELOW): 

      1. Sharon Macdonald, ‘Collecting Practices’, A Companion to Museum Studies (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006).
        • DEFINE: Curiosity cabinet (aka cabinet of curiosities)
        • DEFINE: Taxonomy
      2. Susan Pearce, ‘The Urge to Collect’, Interpreting Objects and Collections (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 157–9.
        • QUESTION: Pearce explores definitions of collecting. List three of those definitions.
      3. Jean Baudrillard, ‘The System of Collecting’, The Cultures of Collecting (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994).
        • DEFINE: the "anal stage" according to Sigmund Freud. How does Baudrillard apply Freud's idea to collecting?
        • QUESTION: What does Baudrillard mean when he says 'it is invariably oneself that one collects'?


      Further Reading: 

      • James Morgan, ‘Museum “Cocoon” Prepares to Open’, BBC News, 2 September 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7594295.stm#:~:text=The%20spectacular%20new%20wing%20of,encased%20within%20a%20glass%20atrium.
      • Pierre Cabanne, The Great Collectors (London and New York: Cassell, 1963). 
      • E. H. Gurian, ‘What is the Object of This Exercise? A Meandering Exploration of the Many Meanings of Objects in Museums’ in Reinventing the Museum, Gail Anderson (ed.) (Oxford: AltaMira, 2004), pp.269–283.
      • J. Owen, ‘Collecting Artifacts, Acquiring Empire; Exploring the relationship between Enlightenment and Darwinist Collecting and Late- Nineteenth-Century British Imperialism’, Journal of the History of Collections 18, no. 1 (2006): 9-25.
      • Susan Pearce, On Collecting: An Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition (London and New York: Routledge, 1995).
      • S. Weil, ‘Collecting Then, Collecting Today; What’s the Difference?’, in Making Museums Matter (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 2002), pp.141-150.


    • Macdonald - Collecting Practices File
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    • Pearce - Urge to Collect File
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    • Baudrillard - System of Collecting File
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  • Monday 8 July: Originality and Authenticity: The Victoria & Albert Museum

    Meeting Point: 

    Morning Session: V&A Museum (the closest tube stop is South Kensington), Room 74 on Level 2, at the entrance to the Design 1900–Now display (enter the museum from the main entrance on Cromwell Road, walk through the main shop until you reach the long sculpture gallery; turn left and walk as far as you can until you reach the stairs. Go up the stairs to Level 2. The entrance to the display is right there.). See the V&A's floor plan below, and if you are in any doubt about where to go, please ask a member of staff or visit the information desk at the main entrance: 

    https://www.vam.ac.uk/features/digitalmap/?highlightId=FAC0000_49720&floor=2

    Afternoon session: V&A Cast Courts (Level 0, Room 46A [see above linked map])

    • Essential Reading (ALL ATTACHED BELOW): 

      1. Bruce Robertson, ‘The South Kensington Museum in Context: An Alternative History’, Museum and Society 2, no. 1 (2004): 1–14. 
        • QUESTION: According to Robertson, what things did the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) do to promote education?
      2. Malcolm Baker, ‘The History of the Cast Courts’, Victoria & Albert Museum, 2007. 
        • QUESTION: What was plaster casting used for? And why was it later abandoned?
      3. Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, 1936; repr. in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (London: Fontana, 1973), 211–244.
        • DEFINE: "Aura." What does Benjamin mean by this term? 
        • QUESTION: Does Benjamin see mechanical reproduction (like photography) as an advantage or as a threat to art?


      Further Reading: 

      • M Baker and B Richardson (eds.), A Grand Design: The Art of the Victoria and Albert Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc/The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1997).
      • Tim Barringer, ‘Re-presenting the Imperial Archive: South Kensington and its Museums’, in Journal of Victorian Culture 3, no 2 (1998), 357-73.
      • Spencer R. Crew and James E. Sims, ‘Locating Authenticity: Fragments of a Dialogue’ in Exhibiting Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display (Washington: The Smithsonian Institution, 1991), pp.159-175.
      • Richard Dorment, ‘Weston Cast Court Reopens, V&A: “Better than Ever”’, The Telegraph, 24 November 2014. 
      • Tanya Harrod, ‘The Cast Courts at the V. & A. London’, The Burlington Magazine 127, No. 983 (1985), pp. 110-111. 


    • Robertson - South Kensington Museum in Context URL

      Download PDF from this page.

    • Baker - The History of the Cast Courts URL
    • Benjamin - The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction File
      12.5 MB

  • Tuesday 9 July: Nation and Community: Tate Britain


    Meeting Point: 

    Morning Session: Grad Centre 103

    Afternoon Session: Tate Britain (please bring all your belongings, lunch, umbrella, etc. so that we can travel together). If you get separated from us, the closest Tube stop is Pimlico (take the District Line to Victoria, switch to the Victoria Line southbound to Pimlico). Meet in Room 5: "Troubled Glamour." See the Tate Britain floor plan here: 

    https://media.tate.org.uk/aztate-prd-ew-dg-wgtail-st1-ctr-data/galleries/TB_map.pdf

    • Essential Reading (ALL ATTACHED BELOW): 

      1. Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, ‘Picturing the Ancestors and Imag(in)ing the Nation’, in Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 23–49.
        • DEFINE: "Master narrative"
      2. Benedict Anderson, ‘Introduction’ [extract], in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983) pp. 48–59.
        • QUESTION: In what ways does Anderson consider a nation to be an "imagined community"?
      3. Waldemar Januszczak, 'Tate Britain: Finally, a gallery rehang that works', The Times, February 5 2023.

       

      Further Reading:  

      • D. Boswell & J. Evans, Representing the Nation: A Reader (London: Routledge, 1999).
      • J. Clifford, ‘Museums as Contact Zones’ in Representing the Nation: A Reader (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 435-457.
      • Carol Duncan, ‘Art Museums and the Ritual of Citizenship’, in Ivan Karp and Stephen Lavine (eds.), Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display (Washington DC/London: The Smithsonian Institution, 1991), 88-103. 
      • Mark Hallett, Reynolds: Portraiture in Action (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014).
      • Stephen Lavine, ‘Audience, Ownership, and Authority: Designing Relations Between Museums and Communities’ in Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), pp. 137-157.
      • Sheila Watson (ed.), Museums and Their Communities (Abingdon/New York: Routledge, 2007).


    • Hooper-Greenhill - Picturing the Ancestors File
      39.6 MB
    • Anderson - Imagined Communities File
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    • Januszczak - Tate Britain: Finally, a gallery rehang that works URL

      Sign in to the Lexus database with your QM account. Click "academic sign in," log in with your QM account, and then try clicking this link again.

  • Wednesday 10 July: Ethnographic Display Today: The Horniman Museum


    Meeting Point: 

    Morning and Afternoon sessions: Music Gallery Performance Space (a room inside the Music Gallery, on the lower level) of the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill, South London. To get to Forest Hill from QM, take the District Line to Whitechapel, then take the Overground southbound from Whitechapel to Forest Hill. Make sure to get on an Overground train that goes via Forest Hill, as not all of them do! (Please note that I was wrong yesterday—when you get off the Overground at Forest Hill, if you are coming from QM, you DO need to cross over via the bridge and exit via the opposite northbound side.) The museum is a 10 minute walk from the station. Be sure to check Google Maps or the Citymapper app for train times and walking directions before you leave. 

    • Essential Reading (ALL ATTACHED BELOW): 

      1. Timothy Mitchell, ‘Orientalism and the Exhibitionary Order’, in The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology, ed. Donald Preziosi (2009), pp. 455-472.
        • LOOK  UP AND DEFINE: "Orientalism"
        • QUESTION: According to Mitchell, in what ways did European viewers see the world as an exhibition (and also see exhibitions as representative of the world)?
      2. Annie E. Coombes, ‘Museums and the Formation of National and Cultural Identities’, Oxford Art Journal 11, No. 2 (1988), pp. 57-68. 
        • LOOK UP AND DEFINE: "Ethnography"
      3. Tom Seymour, ‘“A model for how a traditional museum can become relevant”: Horniman Museum in London wins Art Fund’s Museum of the Year Award’, The Art Newspaper, 14 July 2022, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/07/14/a-model-for-how-a-traditional-museum-can-stay-relevant-horniman-museum-in-london-wins-art-funds-museum-of-the-year-award.

       

      Further Reading: 

      • Michael Ames, Cannibal tours and glass boxes: the anthropology of museums (Vancouver: University of British Colombia Press, 1992).
      • Yve-Alain Bois, ‘La Pensée Sauvage’, Art in America, April 1985, pp. 178-189.

      • Christa Clarke, ‘From theory to practice: exhibiting African art in the twenty-first century’ in Andrew McClellan (ed.), Art and Its Publics: Museum Studies at the Millennium (Oxford/Malden MA: Blackwell, 2003), 164-181.
      • James Clifford, ‘Quai Branly in Process’ October, no. 120 (Spring 2007): 3-23.

      • James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988).

      • Hal Foster, ‘The “Primitive” Unconscious of Modern Art’, October, no.34 (Fall 1985), 45-70. 
      • Ivan Karp, Christine Mullen Kreamer and Steven D Lavine (eds.), Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture (Washington DC/London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992).
      • Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Routledge, 1978). 
      • Kirk Varnedoe, ‘On the Claims and Critics of the “Primitivism” Show’, Art in America (May 1985): 11-21. 

    • Mitchell - Orientalism and the Exhibitionary Order from Art of Art History File
      15.8 MB
    • Coombes - Museums and the Formation of National and Cultural Identities URL

      Log in through your QMUL account for access.

    • Seymour - Horniman Museum URL

      You may be prompted to create a free account with the Art Newspaper to read the article. 

  • Thursday 11 July: Decolonisation, Restitution, Repatriation: The British Museum

    Meeting Point:

    Morning and Afternoon Sessions: Will take place at the British Museum. At 10am, meet at the Benin Bronzes in Room 25, Masterpieces of African Art (take the Central Line from Mile End to Tottenham Court Road and walk 8 minutes to the museum). To find Room 25, go down the stairs in Room 24 (“Living and Dying: The Wellcome Trust Gallery”). Once in Room 25, follow the floorplans on the introductory signs towards the Brasscasting display on the west side of the room or ask for directions. You can also look at the floor plan here (the Benin Bronzes are marked with a yellow L on page 3): 

    https://www.britishmuseum.org/sites/default/files/2024-01/British-Museum-map-January-2024.pdf


    • Essential Reading (ALL ATTACHED BELOW): 

      • Museums Association, ‘Supporting Decolonisation in Museums’, 2021.
        • QUESTION: What does it mean to decolonise a museum? What approaches are used to do so? 
      • Two links from The British Museum website about the Parthenon Sculptures and the Benin Bronzes.
        • DEFINE: Parthenon Sculptures
        • DEFINE: Benin Bronzes
      • Watch the Open University's video about the Benin Bronzes: https://youtu.be/YJIkhMi_6PU?si=NhzNC2mzaKnaJNx3
      • The Victoria & Albert Museum, ‘Gallery Text at the V&A: A Ten Point Guide’, 2013.
        • QUESTION: What qualities are shared by the most effective museum wall texts?


      Further Reading: 

      • Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn, Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum (London:Routledge, 1998).
      • Tony Bennett, Pasts Beyond Memory: Evolution, Museums, Colonialism (London: Routledge, 2004).
      • Katy Bunning, Negotiating Race and Rights in the Museum (London: Routledge, 2020).
      • Annie E. Coombes and Ruth Phillips, eds., Museum Transformations: Decolonization and Democratization (Oxford: Wiley, 2020).
      • James Cuno, Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle over our Ancient Heritage (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).
      • Laurence Gourievidis, Museums and Migration: History, Memory and Politics (London: Routledge, 2014). 
      • Dan Hicks, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution (London: Pluto Press, 2020).
      • Gaby Hinsliff, ‘Cream Teas at Dawn: Inside the War for the National Trust’, The Guardian, 16 October 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/16/cream-teas-at-dawn-inside-the-war-for-the-national-trust.
      • Shino Konishi, Maria Nugent, and Tiffany Shellam, eds., Indigenous Intermediaries: New Perspectives on Exploration Archives (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2015).
      • Tiffany Jenkins, Contesting Human Remains in Museum Collections (London: Routledge, 2010).
      • Sharon Macdonald, Difficult Heritage: Negotiating the Nazi Past in Nuremberg and Beyond. (London: Routledge, 2008).
      • Karl E. Meyer, ‘Who (Really) Owns the Past?’ World Policy Journal 23, no. 1 (Spring 2006).
      • Alice Proctor, The Whole Picture: The Colonial Story of the Art in Our Museums and Why We Need to Talk About It, (London: Cassell, 2020).


    • Museums Association - Supporting Decolonisation in Museums File
      2.8 MB
    • The British Museum - The Parthenon Sculptures URL
    • The British Museum - Benin Bronzes URL
    • Open University video: Art, Loot and Empire: The Benin Bronzes URL
    • Gallery Text at the V&A: A Ten Point Guide URL
    • Video of George the Poet performing “The Benin Bronze” URL

  • Monday 15 July: The Modern Art Museum: Tate Modern

    Meeting Point: 

    Morning Session: On the QMUL campus, Arts One 1.25

    Afternoon session: Tate Modern (take the District Line to Blackfriars). Go to the "Artist and Society" permanent display on Level 2 of the Natalie Bell Building and meet in Room 2 (this room is also called "A View from Sao Paolo: Abstraction and Society"). The meeting point is on the fourth page of this floor plan: 

    https://media.tate.org.uk/aztate-prd-ew-dg-wgtail-st1-ctr-data/galleries/TM_map.pdf

    • Essential Reading (ALL ATTACHED BELOW): 

      1. Carol Duncan, ‘The Modern Art Museum: It’s a Man’s World’ and ‘Conclusion’ in Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 103–34.
        • QUESTION: How is modern art typically presented in museums? And what is the problem with that approach, according to Duncan?
      2. ‘Roundtable:  Tate Modern’, October 98 (2001): 3-25.
        • QUESTION: What is Tate Modern's approach to presenting modern art and how does it break with the "typical" approach many museums have taken to presenting modern art (from your answer to the question above)?


      Further Reading: 

      • Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach, ‘The Museum of Modern Art as late capitalist ritual: an iconographic analysis’, reprinted in Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago (eds.), Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 483-500.
      • Hal Foster, ‘It's Modern but is it contemporary?’, London Review of Books, vol.26, no. 24, 16 December 2004, 23-25. 
      • J. Pedro Lorente, Cathedrals of Urban Modernity: The First Museums of Contemporary Art, 1800-1930 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998). 
      • Franco Moretti, ‘MoMA 2000: The Capitulation’, New Left Review, no.4 (July-August 2000), 98-102. 
      • Nicholas Serota, Experience or Interpretation: The Dilemma of Museums of Modern Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996).
      • Mary Staniszewski, The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art (Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 1998). 


    • Duncan - The Modern Art Museum File
      5.9 MB
    • Roundtable: Tate Modern URL

      Log in through your QMUL account for access.

  • Tuesday 16 July: The Postmodern Museum: Museum of London Docklands

    Meeting Point: 

    Morning and afternoon sessions: Quayside Room, Museum of London Docklands. Meet just inside the entrance  where someone will show us to the Quayside Room. If you are late, ask for directions to the Quayside Room at the information desk. The nearest DLR stop is West India Quay; nearest Tube stop is Canary Wharf. [Please note: Make sure you go to the correct Museum of London! This one is located in the Docklands, East London, near Canary Wharf.] 

    • Essential Reading (ALL ATTACHED BELOW): 

      1. Nick Prior, ‘Having One’s Tate and Eating It: Transformations of the Museum in a Hypermodern Era’ in Andrew McClellan (ed.), Art and its Publics: Museum Studies at the Millennium (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), pp. 51–74.
        • QUESTION: What is a "postmodern" museum? And who is the postmodern museum goer?
      2. David Spence, ‘Making the London Sugar and Slavery Gallery at Museum of London Docklands’, in Representing Enslavement and Abolition in Museums, Laurajane Smith et al. (eds.) (London: Routledge, 2011), 149–163.
        • QUESTION: What is postmodern about the way the "London, Sugar and Slavery" Gallery was devised and curated?


      Further Reading: 

      • Douglas Crimp, On the Museum’s Ruins (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1993).

      • Douglas Davis, The Museum Transformed: Design and Culture in the Post-Pompidou Age (New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1990).
      • Andrea Fraser, ‘From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique’, Artforum 44, no. 1 (2005) in Alberro and Stimson (eds.), Institutional Critique, (London: MIT Press, 2009).
      • Jonathan Harris (ed.), Art, Money, Parties: New Institutions in the Political Economy of Contemporary Art (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004) 
      • Robert Janes and Richard Sandell (eds.), Museum Activism (London: Routledge: 2019).
      • Rosalind Krauss, ‘Postmodernism’s museum without walls’, in Reesa Greenburg, Bruce W Ferguson and Sandy Nairne (eds.), Thinking About Exhibitions (London/New York: Routledge, 1996), 341-348.
      • Andrew McClellan, (ed.), Art and Its Publics: Museum Studies at the Millennium (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003).
      • Jennifer Newell, Libby Robin, and Kirsten Wehner, Curating the Future Museums, Communities and Climate Change (London: Routledge, 2017).
      • Griselda Pollock, (ed.), Museums after Modernism: Strategies of Engagement (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007).
      • Franklin Robinson, W, ‘Learning by looking: the future of museums’, in Hugh H. Genoways (ed.), Museum Philosophy for the Twenty-first Century (Lanham MD: AltaMira Press, 2006), 161-164.
      • Richard Sandell, Museums, Moralities and Human Rights (London: Routledge, 2017).
      • Charles Saumarez Smith, ‘The future of the museum’, in Sharon Macdonald (ed.), A Companion to Museum Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 543-554.


    • Prior - Transformations of the Museum in a Hypermodern Era File
      15.7 MB
    • Spence - Making the London, Sugar and Slavery Gallery File
      5.6 MB

  • Wednesday 17 July: Museum as Memorial: The Imperial War Museum

    Meeting Point: 

    Morning and Afternoon Sessions: The Imperial War Museum (nearest Tube: Elephant & Castle). In the morning, meet at the entrance to the “Witnesses to War” display on the first floor. When you enter the museum from the main front entrance, there is a bookshop to your right. Walk through the bookshop to the exit at the opposite end. Meet just outside the bookshop exit, near the sign for the “Witnesses to War” display.

    • Essential Reading (ALL ATTACHED BELOW): 

      • Susan A. Crane, ‘Memory, Distortion, and History in the Museum’, History and Theory 36:4 (1997): 44-63. 
        • QUESTION: What does Crane mean by the "distortions" caused by the ways museums represent history? And what does she propose museums do about it?
      • Gaynor Kavanagh, ‘Museum as Memorial: The origins of the Imperial War Museum’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 23, no. 1 (January 1988), 77–97. 
        • QUESTION: What purposes was the IWM designed to serve when it was founded? 

       

      Further Reading: 

      • Tim Benton, Understanding Heritage and Memory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010).
      • Peter Burke, ‘History as Social Memory’, in Thomas Butler ed., Memory:  History, Culture and the Mind (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989).
      • Adrian Forty and Suzanne Kuchler (eds), The Art of Forgetting (Oxford: Berg, 1999).
      • Patrick Hutton, History as an Art of Memory (Hanover, NH: University Press of Vermont, 1993).
      • Pierre Nora, ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’, Representations No. 26 (Spring, 1989), 7–24.
      • Lorena Rivera-Orraca, ‘Are Museums Sites of Memory?’, The New School Psychology Bulletin 6:2 (2009): 32–37. 
      • Richard Terdiman, Present Past:  Modernity and the Memory Crisis (Ithaca:  Cornell University Press, 1993).
      • Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
      • Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan (eds.), War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).


    • Crane - Memory, Distortion, and History in the Museum URL

      Log in through your QMUL account for access.

    • Kavanagh - Museum as Memorial URL

      Log in through your QMUL account for access.

  • Thursday 18 July: Inclusivity and Social Engagement: The National Maritime Museum

    Royal Museums Greenwich в Twitter: „Pacific Encounters opens today. One of four #NewGalleries at the National Maritime Museum. https://t.co/J8GNws6FHO https://t.co/P2ruqgUUef“ / Twitter

    Meeting Point: 

    Morning and afternoon sessions: The ReThink space in the Sammy Ofer Wing of the National Maritime Museum (nearest DLR station is Cutty Sark; nearest rail stations are Maze Hill or Greenwich). Enter the museum via the Parkside entrance inside Greenwich Park, near the ship in the bottle sculpture. Ask for directions to ReThink from a member of staff at the entrance. It's just behind the info desk, to the left.

    • Essential Reading (ALL ATTACHED BELOW):

      • National Maritime Museum, Royal Museums Greenwich, ‘Creating a More Inclusive Museum: Learning from the Endeavour Galleries Project’ (2019).
      • Museums Association and Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund, ‘Measuring Socially Engaged Practice: A Toolkit for Museums’ (2018).

       

      Further Reading: 

      • Annie E. Coombes and Ruth Phillips, eds., Museum Transformations: Decolonization and Democratization (Oxford: Wiley, 2020).
      • J. M. Fladmark (ed), Heritage and Museums: Shaping National Identity (Shaftesbury: Donhead, 2000), 41-52.
      • Rhiannon Mason, ‘Conflict and Complement: An Exploration of the Discourses Informing the Concept of the Socially Inclusive Museum in Contemporary Britain’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 10, no.1 (March 2004): 49-73.
      • Museums Association, ‘Redundancies in the museums sector after one year of Covid: A review of Museums Association Redundancy Tracker data’ (2021).
      • Katherine Parker, ‘Coming to Terms with Captain Cook: Exhibiting the 250th Anniversary of the EndeavourVoyage’, Journal of Historical Geography 64, pp. 98–103.
      • ‘Character Matters: Attitudes, Behaviours and Skills in the UK Museum Workforce’ by BOP Consulting with The Museum Consultancy, commissioned by Arts Council England, Museums Galleries Scotland, Museums Association, and Association of Independent Museums (September 2016).


    • National Maritime Museum - Creating a More Inclusive Museum File
      1.9 MB
    • Museums Association - Measuring Socially Engaged Practice File
      2.6 MB

  • Resources

    • Teaching and Learning Profile Page
    • Chicago Manual of Style Guides URL

      Here is a link to the Chicago Manual of Style's Quick Guide for their Notes and Bibliography Style.

      The free online guide only provides access to part of the full Chicago Manual and does not provide an example of how to cite museum wall text or caption artworks. Here are examples of how you may cite these in Chicago Style:

      Wall Text:
      Format of information (wall text, object label, brochure), Gallery/Room Name, Number or Exhibition Title, Museum Name, City, State.

      Example for Wall Text Footnote:
      Wall text, Britain becomes a World Power, National Portrait Gallery, London.

      Example for Wall Text Bibliography:
      Wall text. Britain becomes a World Power. National Portrait Gallery, London.

      Figure Caption for Artworks:
      Figure Number: Artist, Title, date. Medium, measurements. Museum Name, City.

      Example for Artwork Caption:
      Figure 1: Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, 1839. Oil on canvas, 90.7 x 121.6 cm. National Gallery, London.


  • Assessment Information

      • In Class Presentation (10 minutes): To take place during class time, 20% of mark.
      • Exhibition Proposal (1500 words): Due Monday 22 July 2024, 10am, 80% of mark.


    • Assignment coversheet URL
    • Exhibition Proposal Submission Point Assignment
      Opened: Monday, 24 June 2024, 12:00 AM
      Due: Monday, 22 July 2024, 10:00 AM
    • In-Class Presentation Assignment
      Opened: Thursday, 27 June 2024, 12:00 AM
      Due: Thursday, 18 July 2024, 12:00 AM

  • In-Class Presentation

  • Exhibition Proposal