Monthly Archive for August, 2011

Museum of Liverpool – Review

Published on August 25, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

By Rowan Moore from guardian.co.uk, The Observer

It’s part of a world heritage site, but the showy Museum of Liverpool fails to complement the city’s proud past.  How can this have happened? How could so many positive words – “regeneration”, “vision”, “culture” – plus so much public and private funding, plus so much scrutiny by bodies such as the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, have led to what now stands on Liverpool’s waterfront? How could so many noble titles – Unesco world heritage site, capital of culture, the “Three Graces” – have been bestowed on what is, to use a sophisticated critical term, a godawful mess?

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Interactive Museum of the History of Lugo by Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos

Published on August 20, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Photograph by Roland Halbe and Fernando Alda

From Dezeen Magazine

Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos have completed an underground museum in Spain with weathered steel towers and cylinders that emerge above a grass lawn. The Interactive Museum of the History of Lugo exhibits objects, images and films that illustrate the historic Roman city and province. Visitors enter the building via a spiralling staircase that descends into a submerged circular courtyard. This is the third museum by Spanish architects Nieto Sobejano featured on Dezeen this summer, following one with a perforated aluminium skin and another in a ruined castle.

The building site, which until not long ago housed industrial structures- is located in a position relatively displaced from the historic centre of Lugo. However, it will soon become a point of arrival for visitors to the city. It may well seem awkward to assimilate architecture into landscape, but this is one of the cases in which we would like to think that the relationship between the two is more than a set phrase. We propose a museum-park or a park-museum, which will be linked to the sequence of green areas in the city, hiding the parking areas underground and emerging in a constellation of cylindrical lanterns scattered throughout a continuous green field.

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British Museum to Stage Exhibition Dedicated to Hajj Pilgrimage

Published on August 12, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Photo from Getideaka

By Riazat Butt from the guardian.co.uk

The British Museum is to stage a major exhibition dedicated to the hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca.

Hajj: journey to the heart of Islam will bring together historic and contemporary objects – including manuscripts, textiles, archaeological items and photography – to explore the experience and importance of the pilgrimage.

The exhibition, opening in January, will also feature the work of contemporary Saudi artists such as Ahmed Mater, who has created an installation with magnets and iron filings to symbolise hundreds of thousands of pilgrims circumambulating the Ka’bah, the black granite cube in Mecca thought to be built by Abraham and his son Ishmael. There will also be work by Shadia Alem, one of two artists who represented Saudi Arabia for its debut at the Venice Biennale earlier this year while sound cones in the Reading Room will convey a sense of being in Mecca by transmitting the labbaik, the prayer recited by pilgrims as they carry out their rituals.

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Museum Tells Story of Black Soldiers During the Civil War

Published on August 5, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

By Meredith Somers from the Washington Times

District leaders in tailored suits mingled with re-enactors portraying Union soldiers and 19th century farmwives during the grand opening Monday of the new African American Civil War Museum.

The museum is just across the street from its former location in the U Street corridor in Northwest, around the corner from the Metrorail station of the same name. But District officials hope the $5 million provided in city funds to move the museum into the former Grimke School, on Vermont Avenue Northwest, will help it tell the most accurate and complete history about black soldiers in the military.

“This museum is not just a black history story,” said Frank Smith, founder and director of the museum and nearby African American Civil War memorial. “It’s an American story of a country that changed … how people were recognized in the United States.”

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Fifth International Conference on the Inclusive Museum

Published on August 1, 2011 in Conference and Newsletter. 0 Comments Tags: , .

www.Museum-Conference.com

Inclusive Museum Conference
2-5 August 2012
University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados

Plenary Speakers

  • Lonnie G. Bunch, III, Historian, author, curator and educator, Founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC, USA
  • Alissandra Cummins, Immediate Past President of ICOM; Director, Barbados Museums and Historical Society, Barbados

Call for Papers

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.

Registration

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. 2012 Museum Conference registration options.

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