As part of the process of publishing The International Journal of the Inclusive Museum all submissions are sent for peer refereeing, prior to publication. Assessment, comments and guidance by the referees are an essential part of the publication process and invaluable to the authors of the submitted papers.
In recognition of the important role of referees, the international advisory board acknowledges all referees who have refereed papers as an ‘Associate Editor’ in the volume of the journal they have contributed to.
If you would like to referee papers submitted to The International Journal of the Inclusive Museum, please email journals@onmuseums.com, with your professional details, areas of expertise and contact details. If we feel you are qualified and we require refereeing for papers within your expertise, we will contact you.
The American Museum of Folk Art American Folk Art Museum is one of my favorite museums in America. It’s also one of my least favorites. I love the museum because it’s committed to showing so-called “outsider art,” which I would define as art so visionary that the “real” art world can’t process it without relegating it to this ridiculous niche. (All great art is visionary; all great artists are in some way self-taught.) I hate the museum because its horrendous building smothers the art and vision contained within. And now the institution faces a new challenge: Last week brought the sad, startling news that curator Brooke Davis Anderson has been snatched up as Deputy Director for Curatorial Planning at the ambitious Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In the last decade as AFAM’s curator, Anderson, a brilliant scholar, organized extraordinary exhibitions of Martin Ramirez, Henry Darger, and Adolf Wolfli — three of the greatest artists of the 20th century. Come September, LA’s gain will be New York’s loss. (This, by the way, makes the fourth such coup, after Anne Philbin leaving the Drawing Center to become Director of the Hammer, Michael Govan departing Dia to work as Director of LACMA, and Jeffrey Deitch being named Director of LA MoCA.) More…
Get art out of the basements,” declared Eli Broad, a Los Angeles billionaire and art collector, to a conference of museum professionals in May. “With all the money being spent to store and conserve work,” he later told the Art Newspaper, “it doesn’t make sense economically or morally not to share it with the largest possible audience.”
Sage advice, particularly in these rough times for museums, when dusting off what’s in storage is far more appealing than coordinating a big and costly show.
New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is already revelling in its decision to stage “Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art”, a magnificent in-house blockbuster we reviewed when it opened in April. The show featured hundreds of Picasso’s paintings, drawings, sculptures and ceramics from the Met’s permanent collection, most of which are typically hidden from public view. As my colleague said last week, Picasso had the Midas touch; new figures show that the exhibition drew over 703,000 visitors during its 17-week period, which ended on Sunday, making it the seventh most popular show at the museum since the Met began keeping track 50 years ago. Luring so many people to see works you’ve had all along must be like making a killing at a garage sale, but then keeping all the golf clubs, Nancy Drew paperbacks and lawn furniture. More…
To those of you that joined us at the 2010 Inclusive Museum Conference in Istanbul, or if you’ve participated in a previous conference, please share your photos of the conference with your friends and colleagues that you met while at the conference. Pictures of the conference sessions, dinner, tours and ‘down time’ are all welcome!
Join our Inclusive Museum Conference Flickr group here, and upload your pictures to easily share. Once you’ve joined, simply click on ‘Add something?’, and upload your photos or videos of the conference.
For information on sharing photos with Flickr, please read more here.
Common Ground is setting new standards of rigorous academic knowledge creation and scholarly publication.
Unlike other publishers, we’re not interested in the size of potential markets or competition from other books. We’re only interested in the intellectual quality of the work.
If your book is a brilliant contribution to a specialist area of knowledge that only serves a small intellectual community, we still want to publish it. If it is expansive and has a broad appeal, we want to publish it too, but only if it is of the highest intellectual quality.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art formally celebrated its 75th anniversary on Jan. 18 with an eye to attracting millennial generation multitaskers. The event included handing out to museumgoers iPod Touches loaded with a rich mix of pictures, interviews, video and graphics exploring 200 pieces in the institution’s permanent collection.
Like almost every major art museum in the country, according to communications officers here and in other cities, the San Francisco institution is using mobile multimedia devices — iPods, iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smartphones — to tell the stories of its exhibits in new ways.
“Essentially, we’ve liberated the audio tour,” said Peter Samis, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s associate curator of interpretation. “We’ve developed five hours of content, made it extremely portable and easy to use, and devoted it to rediscovering aspects of our collection and its history. This is not about techno-fetishism. It’s about focusing on artworks in meaningful sound and video.”
Art museums have always viewed communications as their primary mission. Never, though, have the editorial, design and production staffs of art museums been busier than they are now. Digitization has steadily brought down the cost of the software and tools of multimedia production — audio, video and interactive motion graphics. More powerful and available online access has made smartphones and other mobile devices ubiquitous and more useful. More…
The Fourth International Conference on the Inclusive Museum will be held at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Thank you to all of those who contributed to the 2010 Inclusive Museum Conference, held at Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul, Turkey. The conference brought together delegates from many backgrounds and discipline areas, continuing the conference’s commitment to inclusive dialogue.
Both delegates who attended the conference and virtual delegates may upload their presentations and videos to the Museum Conference YouTube channel. (Information on uploading your presentation available here.) You may also be a part of our Common Ground YouTube community by joining the conference group and becoming a subscriber (click on the yellow “subscribe” button in the top left corner of the screen).
Additionally, please join our online conversation by subscribing to our monthly email newsletter and subscribing to our Facebook, RSS, or Twitter feeds at http://onmuseums.com.
It is no doubt that the 2011 Inclusive Museum Conference will continue on the momentum and successes of this year’s conference, and we are pleased to be hosting the conference in Johannesburg and at the University of Witwatersrand. Please continue to check the conference webpage, newsletter and blog for further information and conference announcements at http://onmuseums.com/.
In a disaster, you focus on lives first, all else later. When the earthquake hit Haiti in January, the news was about the dead and missing, miraculous survivals, towns smashed to bits.
Behind this news came other news. One of Haiti’s proudest cultural monuments, the Episcopal cathedral of the Holy Trinity in the capital city of Port-au-Prince, had collapsed, destroying murals painted in the late 1940s by some of the great artists of what is often called the Haitian Renaissance: Philomé Obin, Castera Basile, Rigaud Benoit, Wilson Bigaud, Prefete Duffaut. Their images of verdant, fruit-colored tropical heavens had helped turn a politically volatile nation into a tourist destination, and art itself into an export industry.
The Centre d’Art, where these artists once met with André Breton, Aimé Césaire and Wifredo Lam, was seriously damaged, as was the Musée d’Art Haitien. Catastrophically, many of the 12,000 Haitian works, accumulated over half a century, in the Musée/Galerie d’art Nader were lost when the building that housed them, a family home, disintegrated. More…
Fredrich August Stueler’s 1859 Neues Museum, located on Museum Island in the heart of the former East Berlin, was initially constructed to extend the space of the Altes Museum, built immediately to the south by Stueler’s teacher, Karl Fredrich Schinkel.
The original design had formed part of an overall architectural concept for Museum Island – prompted by Fredrich Wilhelm IV – of a series of art and archaeological museums styled so as to promote a greater appreciation of classical antiquity.
Among these museums, and in terms of its construction and rich interior decoration, the Neues Museum was considered the most important monumental Prussian building of its era.
Seen today alongside the four other reconstructed museum buildings on the island, Stueler’s Neues Museum is the only structure still ruined from the war – a contrast that demonstrates ideas of history and decay in a compelling and powerful way, although throughout the building the degree of destruction varies greatly.
Certain interiors have survived almost completely, with elaborate finishes and ceiling frescoes still intact, while other building elements exist only as the enclosures of a gaping void. The power of the ruin not least stems from this exposed brickwork shell, investing the building, 150 years after it was first imagined, with the indelible presence of a picturesque classical ruin. More…
The British Museum has begun an unusual collaboration with Wikipedia, the online, volunteer-written encyclopedia, to help ensure that the museum’s expertise and notable artifacts are reflected in that digital reference’s pages.
About 40 Wikipedia contributors in the London area spent Friday with a “backstage pass” to the museum, meeting with curators and taking photographs of the collection. And in a curious reversal in status, curators were invited to review Wikipedia’s treatment of the museum’s collection and make a case that important pieces were missing or given short shrift.
Among those wandering the galleries was the museum’s first Wikipedian in residence, Liam Wyatt, who will spend five weeks in the museum’s offices to build a relationship between the two organizations, one founded in 1753, the other in 2001. More…
The new Design Museum will embody the spirit of minimalism after John Pawson was selected in an international competition to transform London’s grade II* listed former Commonwealth Institute building.
Pawson triumphed over the shortlisted David Chipperfield, Tony Fretton, Stanton Williams, Caruso St John, Haworth Tompkins and Dutch firm Claus en Kaan following a long-delayed Ojeu contest.
As BD went to press, the Design Museum had made no official announcement of the result, despite predicting a practice would be appointed in February.
Nevertheless, rival firms rushed to congratulate the winner while Sunday Times architecture critic and RIBA Journal editor Hugh Pearman predicted Pawson’s approach would complement RMJM’s 1962 Kensington building, the subject of a wider commercial development drawn up by Dutch firms OMA and West 8. More…
Museum Day Tour - Thursday, 1 July (9:00am-4:30pm)
Explore 3 of Istanbul’s most magnificent museums – Hagia Sophia Museum, Istanbul Archaeological Museums and Topkapi Palace Museum. Delegates have the opportunity to visit and see the collections in all three museums. The tour includes the cost of entrance as well as an English speak guide. Reserve tickets now.
Bosphorus Boat Tour - Thursday, 1 July (6:00pm)
Zig zag between Europe and Asia on a private boat tour. Along the way — Dolmabahce Palace, Beylerbeyi Palace, both residences of Ottoman Sultans, Rumeli Fortress from the 15th century, Bosphorus bridge and many historical seaside timber houses will be seen. Tickets now available.
The 2010 Inclusive Museum Conference delegates and plenary speakers will gather together for the annual Conference Dinner on Wednesday, 30 June, 7:00 PM at the Istanbul Modern Museum Café & Restaurant.
Located in the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art with a view of the Bosphorus and the old city, this restaurant with its spacious terrace, stylish décor and delicious menu will provide a perfect setting to dine with friends and colleagues.
To reserve your place at the dinner, or for more information, please visit the Activities and Extras webpage.
In this Dezeen podcast, curator Nina Due gives a guided tour of the Sustainable Futures exhibition now on show at the Design Museum in London, UK.
Due walks through the five themed areas of the exhibition: Cities, Energy and Economics, Materiality, Food and Creative Citizens. For more information and images…
Today the Museum Newsletter will be re-launched – marking the start of a new approach to connecting with and reaching out to our Museum Community. The newsletter will be sent out on a monthly basis and will contain important community news, conference updates, and publication information.
It is the hope of Common Ground Publishing that this newsletter will provide you with a more positive experience connecting with the Museum Community.
If you are not currently a subscriber but would like to receive future newsletter emails, please go to onmuseums.com and click on “Sign Up: Our Newsletter” in the upper right-hand corner.
If you have inquiries, concerns, or general comments, please feel free to contact the newsletter team at support@onmuseums.com.
Alissandra Cummins: Alissandra Cummins is Director of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society. She holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree with Honours in the History of Art from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, and a Masters of Arts in Museum Studies from Leicester University,UK. A recognized authority on Caribbean heritage, museum development and art, she was elected a Fellow of the Museums Association (U.K), a first for the Caribbean. More…
Margaret Anderson: Margaret Anderson is the Director of History South Australia, a position she has held since December 2000. She has worked in museums in Western Australia and South Australia, where she was inaugural director of the Migration Museum. She also lectured in history and Australian studies at Monash University, where she introduced a course in material culture studies. More…
Amareswar Galla: Born and educated in both south and north India, including Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, Professor Galla provides strategic cultural leadership in Australia and the Asia Pacific Region as the Professor of Museum Studies at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. (http://www.emsah.uq.edu.au) More…
Sitting in the dark, knees crossed, looking up at the stars projected on the planetarium dome, the fourth-grade class might have been on a field trip to the Museum of Science in Boston.
But instead, they were having what Katie Slivensky, an educator from the museum, calls a “backwards field trip” in a portable, inflatable planetarium set up for the morning in the old gym at Sutton High School — a 50-minute lesson on the stars, moon and planets, tied to state learning standards for physical science, earth and space.
Over the last few years, many schools have eliminated or cut back on museum trips, partly because of tight budgets that make it hard to pay for a bus and museum admission, and partly because of the growing emphasis on “seat time” to cover all the material on state tests. More…
Paper abstract: New media discourse brings to the table discussions about interactivity, about how humans interact with media and technology in terms of engagement and meaning making. New media, is the result of old media becoming computerised, that is, produced, stored and distributed in a numerical form. It includes media such as the web, computer games and DVDs. Virtual reality environments also employ new media.
This paper questions whether new media interactivity fundamentally differs from interactivity in general. More specifically it explores whether new media enhances the museum experience or trivialises it. Does it democratise knowledge, or is it a form of ‘dumbing down’ in order to appeal to the greatest possible number of people?
Two museums are analysed, both in the Johannesburg area, namely, the Origins Centre and the Maropeng Visitors Centre. Both have themes of mankind’s origin and early development in Africa. Their approach to interactivity however, differs considerably, thereby providing fertile contexts for comparison.
If you have read this paper and would like to make comments please add a review.
If you intend to present a paper at the conference, your participation begins by submitting a paper proposal. More information on proposals, presentation types, and other options available here. If your proposal is accepted, you will then need to register for the conference.
Those who submit paper proposals should register following the acceptance of the proposal. Conference delegates who do not intend to present may register at any time. 2010 Museum Conference registration options.
It’s hard to talk about museums’ after-hours programs without getting confused. Differentiating among Nightlife (at the California Academy of Sciences), After Dark (the Exploratorium) and L@TE (Berkeley Art Museum) — in name, and in concept — is not easy.
As in New York and Los Angeles, these events have become de rigueur in the Bay Area. Some institutions, like the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, with its Big Idea Night parties, offer free programs. Its latest Big Idea Night — which included D.J.’s, dancers and various artists, as well as the opportunity to explore exhibitions — attracted about 2,500 visitors, the highest tally since the program began in January 2009. More…
French architect Jean Nouvel has unveiled his design for the new National Museum of Qatar. The museum will comprise a series of interlocking discs of varying dimensions and curvatures, which will form walls, ceilings, floors and terraces. Each disc will be made of a steel truss structure clad in glass-reinforced concrete and the voids between discs will be glazed. This new structure will be built around an existing palace.
From the Qatar Museums Authority…
Marking the next stage of its program to develop Qatar into a hub of culture and communications for the Gulf region and the world, the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA) today revealed its plans for the new National Museum of Qatar, as expressed in a striking and evocative design by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel.
Embodying the pride and traditions of Qatar’s people while offering international visitors a dialogue about rapid change and modernization, the National Museum of Qatar will be the setting for a program in which entire walls become cinematic displays, “sonorous cocoons”, shelter oral-history presentations and hand-held mobile devices guide visitors through thematic displays of the collection’s treasures. Though built around an historic structure, the Fariq Al Salatah Palace, which had served as a museum of heritage since 1975, the National Museum of Qatar is conceived and designed as a thoroughly new institution, in keeping with the high aspirations that animate QMA. More…
Visiting the California Academy of Sciences was like going to an undiscovered tropical jungle in a private patio next door. Not only had I had spent several months of gleeful obliviousness to its understated existence in the Golden Gate park right next door to my abode, I had relegated the rectangular block of grey concrete in my mind to a less glamorous cousin of the more prevailing de Young Museum located directly opposite it. I felt it looked like it would host a dry natural history equivalent of the interiors and proceeds of a City Hall or a United Nations jerry-build, only with an even more dull manuscript’s taste. I went for regular runs in the park for months, paying more heed and silent mental visits to the Japanese Tea garden and the botanical gardens, amidst the montage of foliage, chirping birds, scrawny lakes, tennis courts, a northern windmill and cascading waterfalls embellished with pudgy green ducks at their base.
On the day of the visit, the museum teemed with extraordinary biodiversity, but without the discomfort of spiders or stray rattlesnakes, and though obviously organized and mundane as a zoological park might feel, it gave you no excuse to dismiss it as remotely anything but real. On the upside, your attention could be fully applied to enjoying the assortment of a rain-forest as showy of its stuff as the Amazon, but you didn’t have to divert your energies to the heightened sense of self-preservation you tend to build in primeval wilderness. A four-story rainforest was bathed in acrid humidity and sounded of dripping water off the tips of giant leaves, and of frogs croaking to the beat of the jungle. Macaws and other new world parrots were presented with equal emphasis as leafcutter ants, while carnivorous plants stood pretty and bulbed, inconspicuous to their prey. Strings of slimy toads and camouflaged lizards stood still like rocks and made me want to flit to the next exhibit fast enough, lest they emerge suddenly out of their seeming lifelessness into the reality of movement, which I wished to escape witnessing. Exotic ants, butterflies, geckos, lemurs, toads and plants from Madagascar, Borneo and Costa Rica were housed in their represented habitats. More…
Zahava D. Doering Zahava D. Doering, a University of Chicago trained sociologist, has had many years experience in social science research and studies in museums and educational institutions. In 1987, she was the founding director of the Institutional Studies Office (ISO), now part of the Office of Policy and Analysis at the Smithsonian Institution (SI). Doering’s museum activities include serving as Editor of Curator: The Museum Journal, past co-chair of AAM’s Committee on Audience Research and Evaluation (CARE), active participation in the Visitor Studies Association (VSA) and pro bono Research and Evaluation consultant to the Council of American Jewish Museums (CAJM) and its member museums.
“Iron Chink” proclaims the raised words on a cast-iron sign, once mounted on a fish-processing machine. In the early 1900s in Seattle the machine had been invented to replace Chinese laborers, who presumably were constructed of weaker mettle.
Now, of course, its casual slur inspires some shock. It is a companion piece to another object, a cap-gun toy from the 1880s, when the “Chinese Question” (as objections to Chinese immigration was called) turned violent: pull the trigger, and a suited gentleman kicks a braided Chinese man in the rear, setting off the miniature explosion. More…
From Carol Vogel in The New York Times Arts Special Section: Museums…
Some 150 yoga fanatics, mats in hand, gathered in the second-floor atrium of the Museum of Modern Art one recent Saturday morning. They were there to “Put the oM in MoMA,” as the invitation read.
Assembled in a circle, the group practiced poses while on the walls surrounding them flowed giant images of budding tulips, slithering worms and a pig in a verdant meadow biting into a juicy apple, all part of the Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist’s monumental video installation “Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters).” The free 75-minute class was such a success that there is talk of holding another in the museum’s sculpture garden.
“In these difficult times we want to hit as many buttons as we can,” said Glenn D. Lowry, director of the museum. “We’re doing everything possible to connect with people.” More…
The Federal Government says it will overhaul the processes for the repatriation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander remains and cultural material from international institutions to make them more inclusive of Indigenous aspirations. Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin announced on Friday that the Government would establish a new International Repatriation Advisory Committee to steer the review.
Ms Macklin said she would call for expressions of interest and the committee would be appointed in September.
“The committee will advise the Government on a range of issues, including reviewing current international repatriation policy and finding a more effective way to deliver on international repatriation,” she said.
The development came at the International Conference on the Inclusive Museum held at the University of Queensland (UQ) in Brisbane on Friday, just before a panel of Indigenous people from the Torres Strait, the Kimberley, Groote Eylandt and South Australia shared some of their experiences of repatriation.
Ulrichs is an authoritative knowledgebase of information about more than 300,000 serials of all types from around the world—academic and scholarly journals, peer-reviewed titles, online publications, newspapers and other resources. Bibliographic records provide details such as ISSN and title, publisher, online availability, language, subject area, abstracting & indexing coverage, searchable tables of contents, and full-text reviews.
Plans revealed for the redesign of the ‘faceless’ Science Museum on London’s Exhibition Road are to recreate the space as a ‘Museum of the Future’, aiming for completion by 2015. As part of a wider regeneration of the Exhibition Road revitalisation as the ‘cultural heartland of London’, the Science Museum will undertake a redevelopment designed by Wilkinson Eyre Architects which incorporates a new facade, new galleries, lifts and SkySpace - a cavernous rooftop space and ‘destination cafe’ dedicated to cosmology. More….
Following on the success of MoMA’s 2007 India Now exhibition, The New India presents sixteen contemporary Indian feature and short-length films, including eight New York theatrical premieres. The selection captures the astonishing range of fiction and documentary styles and genres in Indian cinema today. Among the celebrated actors and directors who will present their films are Naseeruddin Shah, Nandita Das, Abhay Deol, and the Academy Award–winning documentarian Megan Mylan. The New India opens with the New York premiere of Megan Doneman’s Yes Madam, Sir, a riveting portrait, narrated by Helen Mirren, of one of India’s most inspiring and controversial public figures, Kiran Bedi. Both Doneman and Bedi will introduce the opening-night screening. More…
Nguyen Van Huyenthusiastically took part in field trips of the Vietnam Institute of Ethnology to remote and mountainous areas bordering China and Laos in the 1960’s, surveying then little known ethnic minority groups. As early as 1980s, while working toward the completion of a Ph.D. in Ethnology (1988, Hanoi University), Nguyen pioneered a new direction in ethnological research, i.e. sociological approach. Leading colleagues to conduct the first sociological surveys of ethnic groups across the country, Nguyen directed his interests to contemporary issues of socio-economic development of ethnic minorities and ethnic relations. These years of grounded experience with, solid scholarly insights of and deep concerns for the minorities formed a core of Nguyen’s advocacy for local voices through his new adventure as the founding director of the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology (1995-2006). More…
Henry (Jatti) Bredekamp, Iziko Museums of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa www.Museum-Conference.com
Professor Henry (Jatti) Bredekamp is the CEO of Iziko Museums of Cape Town since November 2002; and since October 2006 President of the South African National Committee of ICOM (International Council of Museums). His origins are firmly rooted in the Overberg of the Western Cape. Born at the Genadendal Mission Station by the end of the Second World War, he began his career as a farm school teacher near Leeu Gamka in the Great Karoo. He later joined the University of the Western Cape, which he had served for twenty-seven years. He holds Master degrees in History, obtained as a Fulbright scholar from the Wesleyan University in Connecticut, USA, and the UWC in South Africa. More…
Paper abstract: Museum discourse is not inclusive in that it neglects or negates the affective potential of museums. Affect is precognitive sensation, it is unexpected, and leaves a more lasting impression than re-cognition. The museum’s role in the shaping of histories, and its origins in class and gender exploitation are important areas of discourse, however, the focus on these issues also limits discourse. Ideologically driven critique seems unable to explain the experiential affect of exhibits of art and material culture. Arguably, an alternative museum with a contradictory set of meanings has always existed alongside the rational museum of critical discourse. Some critics do acknowledge that their disciplines seem unable to grapple with this ‘alternative museum’, however, there is not a critical vocabulary of affect with which to give it appropriate expression. Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical ideas give relevance to affect, and are useful in shaping or ‘shocking’ a way toward a more inclusive critical discourse, which might lead toward more inclusive museum practices.
If you have read this paper and would like to make comments please add a review.
“For years, with school budgets declining in so many American cities, museums have provided a parallel universe for learning. Now, with the Obama administration poised to support arts education with increased financing, museums nationwide are eager to align themselves with those efforts” - Dorothy Spears
To read more of this article on The New York Times website please click here.
“The Neues Museum briefly reopened here last weekend (was reborn, seems more like it), and local newspapers reported that more than 35,000 Berliners, many of them waiting hours in the cold in lines stretching nearly half a mile, filed into the still empty building over three days to see it” - Michael Kimmelman
The Neues Museum in Berlin
To read more of this article on the New York Times website please click here.
You will first need to submit a presentation proposal for the conference as either an attending or virtual participant. If accepted you will be able to submit your full paper for refereeing and possible publication in the Journal.
Brisbane, Australia, 8-11 July 2009
UQ CENTRE CONVENTION CENTRE
The University of Queensland
Brisbane Qld 4072
Australia
Phone: +61(07) 3346 9654
Fax: +61(07) 3346 9656
http://www.uq.edu.au/
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