Museum Media E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1512

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

MUSEUM MEDIA Edited by Michelle Henning

Museum Media explores the contemporary uses of diverse media in museum contexts and discusses how technology is reinventing the museum. It considers how technological changes—from photography and television through to digital mobile media—have given rise to new habits, forms of attention and behaviors. It explores how research methods can be used to understand people's relationships with media technologies and display techniques in museum contexts, as well as the new opportunities media offer for museums to engage with their visitors.

Entries written by leading experts examine the transformation of history and memory by new media, the ways in which exhibitions mediate visitor experience, how designers and curators can establish new kinds of relationships with visitors, the expansion of the museum beyond its walls and its insertion into a wider commercial and corporate landscape. Focusing on formal, theoretical and technical aspects of exhibition practice, this in-depth volume explores questions of temporality, attachment to objects, atmospheric and immersive exhibition design, the reinvention of the exhibition medium, and much more.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

EDITOR

GENERAL EDITORS

CONTRIBUTORS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

GENERAL EDITORS’ PREFACE TO

MUSEUM STUDIES

AND

THE INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOKS OF MUSEUM STUDIES

MUSEUM MEDIA An Introduction

PART I: The Museum as Medium

1 MUSEUMS AND MEDIA ARCHAEOLOGY: An Interview with Wolfgang Ernst

Acknowledgments

Notes

References

2 MEDIA ARCHAEOLOGY OF/IN THE MUSEUM

Media archaeology and the memory booms

“The persistence of vision”

The “Big Picture Show,” Imperial War Museum North

Conclusion

Notes

References

3 MUSEUMS AND THE CHALLENGE OF TRANSMEDIATION: The Case of Bristol’s Wildwalk

Wildwalk and the NHU’s blue-chip wildlife documentaries

Wildwalk and the “new zoos”

Wildwalk as a hybrid museum

Conclusions

Notes

References

4 MEDIATIZED MEMORY: Video Testimonies in Museums

Video testimonies: Communicative memory as cultural memory

The mediatization of the witness to history

Turning video testimonies into museum objects

Turning communicative memory into cultural memory

Exhibiting video testimonies

Video testimonies as didactic means

Conclusion

Notes

References

5 VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE INSTITUTIONS: Cinema in the French Art Museum

Film studies beyond the cinema, museum studies through the screen: An overview

Setting the scene: Cinema and/in the French art museum

Cinema and curatorship: Cinema and the twenty-first-century French art museum

Cinematic rifts: Institutional tensions in the twenty-first-century French art museum

Concluding thoughts

Notes

References

6 THE MUSEUM AS TV PRODUCER: Televisual Form in Curating, Commissioning, and Public Programming

The era of expansion: Television at Long Beach Museum of Art

Television and “new institutions”

Art museums after the age of television

Broadcast form in public programming

Television production and contemporary art commissioning

Conclusion: Coproduction, partnership, and publicity

Acknowledgments

Notes

References

7 SIMKNOWLEDGE: What Museums Can Learn from Video Games

Prehistoric simulation: The case of Walking with Dinosaurs

Video games: Beyond the interactive database

Simulacral knowledge

Notes

References

Further Reading

PART II: Mediation and Immersion

8 THE LIFE OF THINGS

The values of originating communities

The power of touch

The power of touch exemplified: Time to Hope

Variable lives

Acknowledgments

Notes

References

9 LIGHTING PRACTICES IN ART GALLERIES AND EXHIBITION SPACES, 1750–1850

Patrician top lighting and sculpture galleries

Patrician top lighting and picture galleries

Royal Academy

National Gallery

Artificial light: Education in museums and galleries

Artificial light in commercial exhibition spaces

Artificial illumination in private collections

Artists’ studios and galleries

Notes

References

Further Reading

10 THERE’S SOMETHING IN THE AIR: Sound in the Museum

The mediumship of sound

Sound art

Politics of sound

Affective spaces

References

Further Reading

11 AESTHETICS AND ATMOSPHERE IN MUSEUMS: A Critical Marketing Perspective

The aesthetic economy and atmospheres

Museums, commerce, and atmosphere

Conclusion

Notes

References

12 MUSEUMS, INTERACTIVITY, AND THE TASKS OF “EXHIBITION ANTHROPOLOGY”

Freedom, control, and confusion in the art museum

To touch or not to touch?

Museums and the challenge of the smartphone

The tasks of exhibition anthropology

Notes

References

13 KEEPING OBJECTS LIVE

“May God keep us safe”

Killing off exhibits

Location, use, and museum scripts

In the company of witches

Clutter, unseen occupants, and life elsewhere

Feeling for “life”

Notes

References

PART III: Design and Curating in the Media Age

14 TOTAL MEDIA

Museums in the context of placemaking

Working from the inside out

The emergence and context of the designer’s craft and the influence of film and theater

Interactivity, digital media, objects, and audiences

Notes

References

15 FROM OBJECT TO ENVIRONMENT: The Recent History of Exhibitions in Germany and Austria

Museum exhibitions: Classification and chronology

Stagings of the 1980s: The exhibition as montage and essay

Immersion and reflection: Developments from the spirit of the 1980s

Notes

References

16 MUSEUMS AS SPACES OF THE PRESENT: The Case for Social Scenography

Please touch

Social scenography: Approaches to the concept

Museums as zones of stability in representing the present

Scenography as the creation of performative spaces

The practical realm: Stapferhaus Lenzburg

What can social scenography achieve?

References

17 (DIS)PLAYING THE MUSEUM: Artifacts, Visitors, Embodiment, and Mediality

Back and forth: Encoding, decoding, recoding

What kind of museum is at stake? What kind of knowledge? What kind of learning?

Conclusions: What kind of medium is the museum?

Notes

References

18 TRANSFORMING THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM IN LONDON: Isotype and the New Exhibition Scheme

The origins and definition of the transformer

A need for change

The development of the New Exhibition Scheme

The Hall of Human Biology

The influence and legacy of Isotype at the Natural History Museum

Conclusion

Acknowledgment

Notes

References

Further Reading

19 EMBODIMENT AND PLACE EXPERIENCE IN HERITAGE TECHNOLOGY DESIGN

Designing for embodied and emplaced heritage experiences

Outdoor heritage sites: Offering possibilities for novel interactions

“Reminisce” at Bunratty Folk Park

Exploring tangibles at Sheffield General Cemetery

Discussion and Conclusions

Acknowledgments

Notes

References

PART IV: Extending the Museum

20 OPEN AND CLOSED SYSTEMS: New Media Art in Museums and Galleries

Time and space

Interaction, and the participatory turn

Audience contributions to documentation

Audience contributions to art

Audience as curators?

Conclusions: Systems of museum media

Notes

References

21 DIFFUSED MUSEUMS: Networked, Augmented, and Self-Organized Collections

Not Here

The .museum (“Dot’s not a museum!”)

The vernacular museum

The Variable Museum

The self-organized museum

The disappearing museum

Conclusion

Notes

References

22 MOBILE IN MUSEUMS: From Interpretation to Conversation

The museum as distributed network

“From we do the talking, to we help you do the talking”

Are we there yet? Finding the participant in the mobile experience

Museum mission and the mobile economy

Notes

References

Further Reading

23 MOVING OUT: Museums, Mobility, and Urban Spaces

Transdiscursive spaces and the mobile mise-en-scène: The Recovery of Discovery

Corporate museums and cultural zones: BMW Welt and Leeum Samsung Museum of Art

Boundary zones

Social activism and collaboration

Conceptual spaces

Mapping the mobile museum

Notes

References

Further Reading

24 BEYOND THE GLASS CASE: Museums as Playgrounds for Replication

Skirting the museum: A skirmish and a scrimshander

Museums as playgrounds

Re-enactment as experimental play

Mimetic pursuits: Copying as a competitive force

Objections to the playful museum

Things happening: Museum artifacts provoking play and emulation

The return to curiosity, scrimshawing, and play: Huizinga revisited

Museums as permeable playgrounds

Acknowledgments

Notes

References

25 WITH AND WITHOUT WALLS: Photographic Reproduction and the Art Museum

The cult of originality

Forms of attention

The invention of facture

Style

The play of images

Notes

References

26 THE ELASTIC MUSEUM: Cinema Within and Beyond

The expanded museum

The condensed museum

Conclusion

Notes

References

Further Reading

INDEX

End User License Agreement

List of Illustrations

Chapter 1

FIGURE 1.1 “Who Built the Internet?” display at the National Media Museum, Bradf...

FIGURE 1.2 8 mm film cameras in storage at the National Media Museum.

Chapter 2

FIGURE 2.1 Roman Ondák, Snapshots from Baghdad, 2007. Single use camera with und...

FIGURE 2.2 Melik Ohanian, Invisible Film, 2005, video projection, 90 minutes. (F...

FIGURE 2.3 Julien Maire, Exploding Camera, 2007, exhibited in the Persistence of...

FIGURE 2.4 A precursor to the “Big Picture Show,” main exhibition hall, Imperial...

Chapter 3

FIGURE 3.1 Wildwalk, Bristol, UK.

Chapter 4

FIGURE 4.1 Pavel Boyko and Arkadi Lebedev, The Battle of Kursk: A History Lesson...

FIGURE 4.2 A still from the video testimony of Ulrike Poppe from 2010 in the Hau...

FIGURE 4.3 View of exhibition section on the beat generation in the Haus der Ges...

Chapter 6

FIGURE 6.1 Poster for CAC ту 2004.

FIGURE 6.2 Installation view of Remote Control, Institute of Contemporary Arts, ...

FIGURE 6.3 LuckyPDF’s James Early and Chloe Sims at Remote Control, Institute of...

Chapter 10

FIGURE 10.1 Castaways exhibit, 2007, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK.

FIGURE 10.2 Rupert Cox and Angus Carlyle, Air Pressure, 2012. View of installati...

FIGURE 10.3 Rupert Cox and Angus Carlyle, Air Pressure, 2012. Another view of in...

Chapter 11

FIGURE 11.1 Louis Vuitton shop window, Paris.

FIGURE 11.2 Atelier Brückner, BMW Museum, Munich.

FIGURE 11.3 Menashe Kadishman, Shalechet, Libeskind Building, Jewish Museum, Ber...

FIGURE 11.4a–c Interactional organization of a museum visit (vom Lehn 2013). A, ...

Chapter 13

FIGURE 13.1 Exterior of Museum of Witchcraft, Boscastle, UK. Note the walking st...

FIGURE 13.2 Stone circle in the Museum of Witchcraft. (For a color version of th...

FIGURE 13.3 Cabinet of protective magic: note the mirrors to the rear, Museum of...

FIGURE 13.4 Poppets arranged on a protective hagstone, Museum of Witchcraft. Pho...

FIGURE 13.5 The public bar at The Valiant Soldier, Buckfastleigh, UK.

FIGURE 13.6 Living room at The Valiant Soldier. (For a color version of this fig...

FIGURE 13.7 Exterior of Dartmoor Prison Museum, UK.

Chapter 14

FIGURE 14.1 Exhibition design model of National Maritime Museum Cornwall, UK, 20...

FIGURE 14.2 Land Venn diagram, showing the interrelationship of factors involved...

FIGURE 14.3 UK pavilion, Expo 2005, Aichi, Japan, designed by Land Design Studio...

FIGURE 14.4 British Music Experience, Table Talk, The O2, London, 2009–2014. Pho...

FIGURE 14.5 Dinobirds, Natural History Museum, London.

Chapter 16

FIGURE 16.1 Self-enactment: the scene at the entrance to the exhibition A Matter...

FIGURE 16.2 “Believer” or “Nonbeliever” USB sticks to be worn by visitors to the...

FIGURE 16.3 Checkpoint surveying individuals’ belief profiles in A Matter of Bel...

FIGURE 16.4 Round table finale: the exhibition A Matter of Belief assigns visito...

FIGURE 16.5 What does Switzerland believe? These representative objects gathered...

Chapter 17

FIGURE 17.1 The Mirakulosum. (For a color version of this figure, please see the...

FIGURE 17.2 The color-mixer.

Chapter 18

FIGURE 18.1 (a) Otto Neurath, 1944. (b) Marie Neurath.

FIGURE 18.2 The Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum, Vienna ca. 1927.

FIGURE 18.3 Alma Wittlin’s “The Enchanted Loser” from the Transformation Reader....

FIGURE 18.4 Memo from NHM Archives (originally attached to copies of pages from ...

FIGURE 18.5 (a) Traditional curator/designer model used at the NHM before the Ne...

FIGURE 18.6 The Hall of Human Biology, ca. 1977, Natural History Museum, London....

FIGURE 18.7 “Survival of the Fittest in SW7,” Sunday Times Weekly Review, May 24...

Chapter 19

FIGURE 19.1 Cottage on display at Bunratty Folk Park, Co. Clare, Ireland.

FIGURE 19.2 The Interactive Desk, with a tangible token visible inside the baske...

FIGURE 19.3 A view of the Sheffield General Cemetery, UK: gravestones and memori...

FIGURE 19.4 The Bird Box prototype from sketch to realization. Photos: Nick Dula...

FIGURE 19.5 The Binoculars prototype from sketch to realization. Photos: Nick Du...

FIGURE 19.6 The Companion Novel prototype from sketch to realization. Photos: Ni...

Chapter 20

FIGURE 20.1 Talkaoke at the Barbican Centre, London, 2012. Photo: Hektor P. Kowa...

FIGURE 20.2 Osman Khan and Omar Khan, SEEN – Fruits of Our Labor, 2006, installe...

FIGURE 20.3 Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Pulse Room, 2010, Manchester Art Gallery, Manc...

Chapter 21

FIGURE 21.1 Not Here exhibition, as viewed by mobile phone, showing John Cleater...

FIGURE 21.2 John Bell, The Variable Museum.

FIGURE 21.3 Physical marker indicating the presence of an artwork in John Bell’s...

FIGURE 21.4 “Feed the Beast” launcher showing mod pack.

Chapter 22

FIGURE 22.1 The home screen of Halsey Burgund’s app, Scapes.

Chapter 26

FIGURE 23.1 BMW Welt, Munich. (For a color version of this figure, please see th...

FIGURE 23.2 BMW Museum, Munich.

FIGURE 23.3 “Going to the Schirn is not art,” Frankfurt. (For a color version of...

Chapter 24

FIGURE 24.1 John displays one of his scrimshawed powder horns, August 2008. Phot...

FIGURE 24.2 Iroquois scouts present themselves to the audience preceding a re-en...

FIGURE 24.3 Mark Dion, “Cabinet of Curiosities,” Musée Océanographique, Monaco. ...

Chapter 25

FIGURE 25.1 Hans Holbein the Younger, The Ambassadors, 1533. Note the famous dis...

FIGURE 25.2 Officials gather around Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa on its return ...

FIGURE 25.3 Matti Braun’s Gost Log at Arnolfini, Bristol, UK, 2012.

Guide

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Museum Media

Edited by

Michelle Henning

General Editors

Sharon Macdonald and Helen Rees Leahy

This paperback edition first published 2020

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Edition history: John Wiley and Sons Ltd (hardback, 2015)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

The right of Michelle Henning, Sharon Macdonald, and Helen Rees Leahy to be identified as the authors of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with law.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Museum media – The international handbooks of museum studies / edited by Michelle Henning / general editors: Sharon Macdonald, Helen Rees Leahy. – First edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4051-9850-9 (cloth) | ISBN 978-1-119-64202-2 (pbk)

1. Museums. 2. Museum exhibits. I. Macdonald, Sharon. II. Leahy, Helen Rees.

AM5.I565 2015

609–dc23

2015003407

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Cover Design: Wiley

Cover Image: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Pulse Room, 2010, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, UK. © DACS 2014 / VEGAP. Photo by Peter Mallet.

Set in 11/13pt Dante by SPi Global, Pondicherry, India

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Color plate section

2.2 Melik Ohanian,

Invisible Film

, 2005

2.3 Julien Maire,

Exploding Camera

, 2007

4.1 Pavel Boyko and Arkadi Lebedev,

The Battle of Kursk: A History Lesson

6.2 Installation view of

Remote Control

, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London

6.3 LuckyPDF’s James Early and Chloe Sims at

Remote Control

10.2 Rupert Cox and Angus Carlyle,

Air Pressure

, 2012

10.3 Rupert Cox and Angus Carlyle,

Air Pressure

, 2012

11.3 Menashe Kadishman,

Shalechet

, Jewish Museum, Berlin

13.2 Stone circle in the Museum of Witchcraft

13.6 Living room at The Valiant Soldier

14.1 Exhibition design model of National Maritime Museum Cornwall

14.3 UK pavilion, Expo 2005, Aichi, Japan

16.1 Self-enactment: the scene at the entrance to

A Matter of Belief

exhibition

16.5 What does Switzerland believe? Representative objects in

A Matter of Belief

17.1 The

Mirakulosum

18.6 The Hall of Human Biology, ca. 1977, Natural History Museum

19.2 The Interactive Desk, Bunratty Folk Park

20.3 Rafael Lozano-Hemmer,

Pulse Room

, 2010, Manchester Art Gallery

21.3 John Bell,

The Variable Museum

23.1 BMW Welt, Munich

23.3 “Going to the Schirn is not art,” Frankfurt

24.3 Mark Dion, Cabinet of Curiosities, Musée Océanographique, Monaco

25.1 Hans Holbein the Younger,

The Ambassadors

, 1533

Chapter illustrations

1.1 “Who Built the Internet?” National Media Museum, Bradford

1.2 8 mm film cameras in storage at the National Media Museum

2.1 Roman Ondák,

Snapshots from Baghdad

, 2007

2.2 Melik Ohanian,

Invisible Film

, 2005

2.3 Julien Maire,

Exploding Camera

, 2007

2.4 A precursor to the “Big Picture Show,” Imperial War Museum North, Manchester

3.1 Wildwalk, Bristol, 2007

4.1 Pavel Boyko and Arkadi Lebedev,

The Battle of Kursk: A History Lesson

4.2 Still from video testimony of Ulrike Poppe in the Haus der Geschichte

4.3 Exhibition section on the beat generation in the Haus der Geschichte

6.1 Poster for CAC TV, 2004

6.2 Installation view of

Remote Control

, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London

6.3 LuckyPDF’s James Early and Chloe Sims at

Remote Control

, Institute of Contemporary Arts

10.1

Castaways

exhibit, 2007, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester

10.2 Rupert Cox and Angus Carlyle,

Air Pressure

, 2012, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester

10.3 Rupert Cox and Angus Carlyle,

Air Pressure

, 2012

11.1 Louis Vuitton shop window, Paris

11.2 Atelier Brückner, BMW Museum, Munich

11.3 Menashe Kadishman,

Shalechet

, Jewish Museum, Berlin

11.4a–c Interactional organization of a museum visit

13.1 Exterior of Museum of Witchcraft, Boscastle

13.2 Stone circle in the Museum of Witchcraft

13.3 Cabinet of protective magic, Museum of Witchcraft

13.4 Poppets arranged on a protective hagstone, Museum of Witchcraft

13.5 The public bar at The Valiant Soldier, Buckfastleigh

13.6 Living room at The Valiant Soldier

13.7 Exterior of Dartmoor Prison Museum

14.1 Exhibition design model of National Maritime Museum Cornwall

14.2 Land Venn diagram, showing interrelationship of factors in the design process

14.3 UK pavilion, Expo 2005, Aichi, Japan

14.4 British Music Experience, Table Talk

14.5 Dinobirds, Natural History Museum, London

16.1 Self-enactment: the scene at the entrance to

A Matter of Belief

exhibition

16.2 “Believer” or “Nonbeliever” USB sticks

16.3 Checkpoint surveying individuals’ belief profiles

16.4 Round table finale: visitors assigned to new faith profiles

16.5 What does Switzerland believe? Representative objects in

A Matter of Belief

17.1 The

Mirakulosum

17.2 The color-mixer

18.1a Otto Neurath, 1944

18.1b Marie Neurath

18.2 Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum, Vienna ca. 1927

18.3 Alma Wittlin’s “The Enchanted Loser” from the

Transformation Reader

18.4 Memo from NHM Archives

18.5a Traditional curator/designer model used at the NHM before the New Exhibition Scheme

18.5b Neurath’s team model from the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum

18.5c Miles’s post-1975 NES team model

18.6 The Hall of Human Biology, ca. 1977, Natural History Museum

18.7 “Survival of the Fittest in SW7,”

Sunday Times Weekly Review

, 1981

19.1 Cottage on display at Bunratty Folk Park, Co. Clare, Ireland

19.2 The Interactive Desk, Bunratty Folk Park

19.3 Sheffield General Cemetery

19.4 The Bird Box prototype from sketch to realization

19.5 The Binoculars prototype from sketch to realization

19.6 The Companion Novel prototype from sketch to realization

20.1

Talkaoke

at the Barbican Centre, London, 2012

20.2 Osman Khan and Omar Khan,

SEEN – Fruits of Our Labor

, 2006

20.3 Rafael Lozano-Hemmer,

Pulse Room

, 2010, Manchester Art Gallery

21.1

Not Here

exhibition, as viewed by mobile phone, showing John Cleater’s

Sky Pavilions

21.2 John Bell,

The Variable Museum

21.3 Physical marker indicating the presence of an artwork in John Bell’s

The Variable Museum

21.4 “Feed the Beast” launcher showing mod pack

22.1 Home screen of Halsey Burgund’s app, Scapes

23.1 BMW Welt, Munich

23.2 BMW Museum, Munich

23.3 “Going to the Schirn is not art,” Frankfurt

24.1 John displays one of his scrimshawed powder horns

24.2 Iroquois scouts before re-enactment of a French and Indian Wars skirmish

24.3 Mark Dion, Cabinet of Curiosities, Musée Océanographique, Monaco

25.1 Hans Holbein the Younger,

The Ambassadors

, 1533

25.2 Return of Leonardo da Vinci’s

Mona Lisa

to Paris, 1914

25.3 Matti Braun’s

Gost Log

at Arnolfini, Bristol, 2012

EDITOR

Michelle Henning is Professor in Photography and Cultural History in the London School of Film, Media and Design at the University of West London. She is a practicing photographer and designer and has written widely on museums, media, and photography in her books Museums, Media and Cultural Theory (Open University Press, 2006) and Photography: The Unfettered Image (Routledge 2018) as well as in numerous collections.

Michelle Henning London School of Film, Media and Design University of West London London, UK

GENERAL EDITORS

Sharon Macdonald is Alexander van Humboldt Professor in Social Anthropology at the Humboldt University Berlin where she directs the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage – CARMAH. The centre works closely with a wide range of museums. Sharon’s edited and coedited volumes include the Companion to Museum Studies (Blackwell, 2006), Exhibition Experiments (with Paul Basu; Blackwell, 2007), and Theorizing Museums (with Gordon Fyfe; Blackwell, 1996). Her authored books include Behind the Scenes at the Science Museum (Berg, 2002), Difficult Heritage: Negotiating the Nazi Past in Nuremberg and Beyond (Routledge, 2009), and Memorylands: Heritage and Identity in Europe Today (Routledge, 2013). Her current projects include Making Differences: Transforming Museums and Heritage in the 21st Century.

Professor Sharon MacdonaldAlexander van Humboldt Professor in Social AnthropologyInstitute for European EthnologyHumboldt University of BerlinBerlin, Germany

Helen Rees Leahy is Professor Emerita of Museology at the University of Manchester, where, between 2002 and 2017 she directed the Centre for Museology. Previously, Helen held a variety of senior posts in UK museums, including the Design Museum, Eureka! The Museum for Children, and the National Art Collections Fund. She has also worked as an independent consultant and curator, and has organized numerous exhibitions of art and design. She has published widely on practices of individual and institutional collecting, in both historical and contemporary contexts, including issues of patronage, display and interpretation. Her Museum Bodies: The Politics and Practices of Visiting and Viewing was published by Ashgate in 2012.

Professor Emerita Helen Rees LeahyCentre for MuseologySchool of Arts, Languages and CulturesUniversity of ManchesterManchester, UK

CONTRIBUTORS

Alice Barnaby, University of Bedfordshire, UK

John Bell, University of Maine, USA

Brigitte Biehl-Missal, BSP Business School Berlin Potsdam, Germany

Fiona Candlin, Birkbeck, University of London, UK

Jenny Chamarette, Queen Mary, University of London, UK

Luigina Ciolfi, Sheffield Hallam University, UK

Maeve Connolly, Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Ireland

Rupert Cox, University of Manchester, UK

Steffi de Jong, University of Cologne, Germany

Wolfgang Ernst, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany

Ivan Gaskell, Bard Graduate Center, New York City, USA

Seth Giddings, Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, UK

Beryl Graham, University of Sunderland, UK

Bettina Habsburg-Lothringen, Universalmuseum Joanneum, Austria

Beat Hächler, Swiss Alpine Museum, Switzerland

Karin Harrasser, University of Art and Design Linz, Austria

Michelle Henning, University of West London, UK

Peter Higgins, Land Design Studio, UK

Amy Holdsworth, University of Glasgow, UK

Andrew Hoskins, University of Glasgow, UK

Erkki Huhtamo, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Jon Ippolito, University of Maine, USA

Petra Tjitske Kalshoven, University of Manchester, UK

Nils Lindahl Elliot, independent scholar, UK

Sue Perks, Perks Willis Design, UK

Nancy Proctor, Baltimore Museum of Art, USA

Mark W. Rectanus, Iowa State University, USA

Dirk vom Lehn, King’s College London, UK

Haidee Wasson, Concordia University, Canada

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This volume of the International Handbooks of Museum Studies could not have been compiled without the extensive help of Gill Whitley, project manager for Wiley Blackwell, the copy-editor Jacqueline Harvey, and the Handbooks’ editors Sharon Macdonald and Helen Rees Leahy. I would also like to thank Jen Rhodes who was an invaluable research assistant during the early development of the project, and Niall Hoskins, who translated Beat Hächler’s chapter. Both Jen and Niall were funded by the Digital Cultures Research Centre at the University of the West of England, Bristol, and I would like to thank the then director of the center, Professor Jon Dovey, and especially the research administrator, Nick Triggs, for making this possible. The project was also made possible by the research leave I received from the faculty of Arts, Creative Industries and Education at the University of the West of England, and by the support of my ex-colleagues in Media and Cultural Studies. For a long time, this was a wonderfully diverse research and teaching environment in which it was possible to teach classes such as “The Politics of Collecting and Display” along side the history and practice of photography and new media, and to follow the most unusual research paths with encouragement. Although many of us have now gone on to other places and roles, and this tolerant and stimulating environment has changed, it strongly informed my view that museum studies and media studies have interesting things to say to each other. My work on this book was facilitated by the support, understanding, and intellectual companionship of Jane Arthurs, Helen Kennedy, Gillian Swanson, Richard Hornsey, and Rehan Hyder. Above all, this book would have been impossible without the many kindnesses of my partner John Parish, and of my daughters Honor and Hopey Parish. Finally, I am immeasurably grateful to all the contributors, many of whom must have wondered at times if this book would ever actually materialize, for their patience with my editorial lapses and nitpicking, and for their generosity in the production of these chapters. They are academics, artists, curators, exhibition designers, and museum directors, and their chapters are very different but all, I believe, offer fascinating insights into media in the museum, museums’ relationship to different media, and how media concepts inform museum practice.

GENERAL EDITORS’ PREFACE TO MUSEUM STUDIES AND THE INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOKS OF MUSEUM STUDIES

Museum Media

As general editors of The International Handbooks in Museum Studies, we – Sharon Macdonald and Helen Rees Leahy – are delighted that Museum Media is now appearing in paperback, as a self-standing volume. So too are the other volumes, which is testament to the strength of these volumes individually, as well as collectively, and to the importance of the issues that they each address. Museum Media clearly concerns a fundamental area of museum studies – museums can be said to in a sense be media, as well as to deploy a wide range of different forms of media. Despite the fact that media are fundamental to museums – and thus to museum studies – there is not, however, an established consensus on precisely what might be covered under the label “museum media”. One reason for this is the relative recency of museum studies as a field. A second reason is that museum studies draws on a wide range of disciplines, each themselves renewing their toolkits in various ways, resulting in new impulses for thinking about the media in museums. In addition, and perhaps of most significance, is the fact of change in the media available for use in museums. This results in fresh thinking about the possibilities for deploying such media, as well as for consideration of its potential consequences not only for engaging new audiences but also for rethinking what the museum already does, as well as what it might do in new ways.

Confronted by the fast-changing world of new media, as well as fascinating redeployments of older media, the editor of Museum Media, Michelle Henning, in consultation with us as general editors, faced a task of how to achieve a volume that would cover approaches that have become central to consideration of museum media, while also being sure to include as much as possible of the new directions and ideas that have been emerging in recent years. That this was achieved so well is evident from the resulting volume. The range of topics included and the ways in which they are tackled, provide a sound and also cutting-edge coverage of museum media.

The International Handbooks in Museum Studies

Collectively, The International Handbooks in Museum Studies include over a hundred original, state-of-the-art chapters on museums and museum studies. As such, they are the most comprehensive review to date of the lively and expanding field of museum studies. Written by a wide range of scholars and practitioners – newer voices as well as those already widely esteemed – The International Handbooks provide not only extensive coverage of key topics and debates in the museum field, but also make a productive contribution to emerging debates and areas, as well as to suggest how museum studies – and museums – might develop in the future.

The number of excellent contributors able and willing to write on museum topics is itself testimony to the state of the field, as was recognition by the publishers that the field warranted such a substantial work. Bringing together such a range and quantity of new writing about museums was accomplished through the deep knowledge, extensive networks, and sheer labour of the volume editors – Andrea Witcomb and Kylie Message, Museum Theory; Conal McCarthy, Museum Practice; Michelle Henning, Museum Media; and Annie E. Coombes and Ruth B. Phillips, Museum Transformations. All enthusiastically took up the mandate to go out and recruit those they thought would be best able to write useful and timely essays on what they defined as the most important topics within their area of remit. Their brief was to look widely for potential contributors, including unfamiliar, as well as familiar, names. We – and they – were especially interested in perspectives from people whose voices have not always been heard within the international museum studies conversation thus far. This breadth is also a feature of the expanded and expanding field itself, as we explain further below.

Diversification and democratization

The editors of the four volumes that constitute The International Handbooks are based in four different countries – Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Canada; and contributors have their institutional homes in over a dozen more. Yet these numbers alone do not fully convey the trend to diversification that we see in these volumes, and in museum studies more widely. “Internationalization” is a term that might be used but does not, we think, adequately characterize what is involved. Certainly, there is more traffic between nations of ideas about museums and about how to study them. Debates travel from one part of the globe to another, with museums and exhibitions in one location being used as models for emulation or avoidance in another. The massive expansion of professional training in museum studies that has taken place over the past three decades helps establish a shared discourse, not least as many students study away from their home countries or those in which they will later work. So too do texts in and about the field, certain key ones often being found on reading lists in numerous countries and also republished in successive readers. Such developments establish the basis for a conversation capable of transcending borders.

It is evident from the contents of The International Handbooks of Museum Studies, however, that the democratization runs deeper than the traffic of discourse and practice across national borders, and, in particular, that the traffic is more multidirectional than it was previously. Not only do contributors have their primary work bases in a range of different countries, and not only do many have experience of training or working in others, they also often give attention – sometimes through the direct engagement of collaborative work or study – to a wide range of groups and populations in a variety of countries, including their own. In doing so, they strive not merely to incorporate but also to learn from and be challenged by people and perspectives that have not been part of mainstream museological debate. The attention to the (not unproblematic) category of the indigenous is especially marked in these International Handbooks, most notably in the Transformations volume, although it also finds its way into the others. Like attention to other forms of absence from the existing mainstream museum conversation, this is symptomatic of a broader move toward finding alternative ways of seeing and doing, ways that both add to the range of existing possibilities and also, sometimes, unsettle these by showing how, say, particular theorizing or practice relies on unspoken or previously unrecognized assumptions.

Diversification takes other forms too. These volumes are not organized by type of museum – a format that we think restrictive in its lack of recognition of so many shared features and concerns of museums – and do not use this as a classification of content. Nevertheless, it is easy to see that the volumes include a great range of museum kinds, and even of forms that might not always be considered museums, or that challenge the idea of the museum as a physical space. Museums of art, history, and ethnography – and also those more general and eclectic museums that have sometimes been described as encyclopedic – have powered a good deal of museum theorizing and debate, and they are amply represented here. But they are accompanied also by examples from museums of natural history, science, technology, and medicine, as well as heritage sites and out-of-gallery installations. Alongside national museums, which were the backbone of much important theorizing of the role of museums in the making of national identity and citizenship, are numerous examples of smaller museums, some of which are devoted to a specific topic and others of which have a regional or local foundation and focus. These museums may be less well endowed with staff, buildings, or funds, but are nevertheless doing important, even pioneering, work that deserves attention from museum studies. That attention contributes not only to extending the range of types and cases but also helps to illuminate the variety of specific features of museums that need to be taken into account in formulating more comprehensive approaches. As many chapters across the volumes show, one size does not fit all – or, to put it better perhaps, one theoretical perspective or set of guidelines for practice, one apt choice of media or transformative activity, does not fit all types and sizes of museums. Adding more to the mix does not just provide greater coverage or choice but also helps to identify better what is at stake and what might be possible in different kinds of situations, constellations, or conjunctures (to use a word favored in Museum Theory). As such, it helps those of us engaged in and with museums to get a better grasp on what is and what might be shared, as well as on what is distinctive and needs to be understood in more fine-grained ways.

Another feature of diversification that deserves comment here is the temporal. There has been a considerable amount of outstanding historical research undertaken in museum studies and the International Handbooks both review some of this and contribute further to it. Such work is important in its own terms, helping us to understand better the contexts in which museums emerged and have operated, and the concerns, constraints, personalities, and opportunities in evidence in particular times and places. It also contributes in vital ways to contemporary understandings, both by adding to the range of cases available for analysis and by showing the longer historical trajectories out of which various current approaches and practices emerged. Sometimes – and there are examples in all of the volumes here – their message is salutary, showing that what seemed like an innovation has been tried before, and perhaps with the distance of time allowing a more critical perspective than might feel comfortable today. The past shows change but also continuities and the re-emergence, or even repackaging, of what has gone before.

Disciplinarity and methodology

Research on past museum innovation and practice shows the importance of historical method, and of history as a discipline, within museum studies. This brings us to the wider issue of disciplinarity and methodology. To talk of museum studies as interdisciplinary has become a truism. The volumes here are a clear illustration that those involved in museum studies have been trained in and may have primary institutional locations in a wide range of disciplines and areas of study, including anthropology, archaeology, architecture, area studies, cultural studies, economics, education, geography, literature, management, media studies, political science, and sociology, as well as history and art history. Beyond that, however, they are also carving out new niches, sometimes institutionally recognized, sometimes not, in areas such as digital curation and creative technologies, as well as in art gallery, museum, and heritage studies, in various combinations or alone. Moreover, in addition to disciplines and a multitude of academic specialisms, practitioner contributors bring diverse professional expertise in areas including exhibition design, community engagement, conservation, interpretation, and management.

Alongside the diversity of concepts and methodologies offered by various disciplines and diverse forms of practical expertise, is also the distinctive feature of museum studies – its engagement with the past, present, and future world of museums. Such work, to varying extents, confronts researchers and academics with the actual concerns, predicaments, objects, spaces, media, and people all, in various ways, involved in museum collections and exhibitions. Increasingly, this means actual collaboration, and the development of methodological approaches to enable this. Examples in these volumes include those who consider themselves to be primarily academics, artists, or activists being directly involved in the production of collections, media (e.g., new media apps or forms of display), and exhibitions. The nature of museum work is, inevitably, collaborative, but in some cases it also involves more explicit attempts to work with those who have had little previous engagement in museum worlds and draws on methodology and ethical insight from disciplines such as social and cultural anthropology to do so. Such actual engagement – coupled with what we see as more fluid traffic between academia and museums also powers new forms of theorizing and practice. This productive mobility affords museum studies its characteristic – and, in our view, especially exciting – dynamic.

Organization of the International Handbooks

As we originally planned these International Handbooks, dividing their coverage into the four volumes of Theory, Practice, Media, and Transformations made good sense as a way of grouping key areas of work within the field. Our idea was that Theory would bring together work that showed central areas of theorizing that have shaped museum studies so far, together with those that might do so in the future. We envisaged Practice as attending especially to areas of actual museum work, especially those that have tended to be ignored in past theorizing, not in order to try to reinstate a theory/practice division but, rather, to take the opportunity to transcend it through theorizing these too. We saw Media as the appropriate label to cover the crucially important area for museums of their architecture, spaces, and uses of diverse media primarily, though not exclusively, for display. Transformations was intended to direct its attention especially to some of the most important social, cultural, political, and economic developments that are shaping and look likely to reshape museums in the future.

In many ways, what has resulted fits this original remit. We always knew that there would inevitably be areas of convergence: in particular, that theory can derive from practice, and vice versa; that the development and expansion of social media is propelling some of the most significant transformations in museums, and so forth. Yet it is probably true to say that there are more synergies than we had imagined, perhaps because museum work has itself become more open to change, new ideas and practice, and unconventional practitioners and participants, from what would previously have been considered outside. To make distinctions between practitioners and theorists continues to make sense in some contexts. What we see, however, is an increasing band of critical practitioners and practice-based researchers – those who operate in both worlds, drawing inspiration for new practice from areas of theorizing as well as from adaptations of cases from elsewhere. Equally they use practice to think through issues such as the nature of objects, the role of media, or sensory potentials.

It is interesting to note that at an analytical level, the volumes all contain chapters that give emphasis to specific cases and argue for the importance of paying close attention to grounded process – what actually happens, where, who, and what is involved. Although not all are informed by theoretical perspectives of actor network theory or assemblage theory, there is much here that recognizes the significance of material forms not just as objects of analysis but as agents in processes themselves. There is also much work across the volumes that gives explicit attention to the affective dimensions of museums, exploring, for example, how different media or spaces might afford certain emotional engagements. The sensory is also given new levels of consideration in what we see as, collectively, a more extensive attempt to really get to grips with the distinctiveness of museums as a medium, as well as with their sheer variety.

Various forms of collaborative engagement with specific groups – sometimes called communities – as well as with individual visitors, is also a notable theme cutting across the various volumes. Certainly, the idea of a generic “audience” or “public” seems to be less present as a central but abstract focus than in the past. Divisions along lines of gender or class are made less frequently than they might have been in earlier critical perspectives – though when they are, this is often done especially well and powerfully, as, for example, in some contributions to the discussion of museum media. Interestingly, and this is a comment on our times as well as on social and political developments in which museums are embroiled, the work with “communities” is framed less in terms of identity politics than would probably have been the case previously. No longer, perhaps, is the issue so much about making presence seen in a museum, increasingly it is more about mutually enriching ways of working together, and about pursuing particular areas or issues of concern, such as those of the environment or future generations. Yet politics is certainly not absent. Not only is the fundamental question about whose voice is represented in the museum a thoroughly political one, the chapters also show political concerns over relatively subtle matters such as methodology and reformulations of intimacy, as well as over questions of sponsorship, money-flow in the art world, the development of mega-museums in Gulf states, environmental destruction, and so forth. Indeed, there is a strong current of work that positions the museum as an activist institution and that shows its potential as such – something perhaps indicative of at least one future direction that more museums might take.

One thing that is clear from these volumes, however, is that there is no single trajectory that museums have taken in the past. Neither is there a single track along which they are all heading, nor one that those of us who have contributed would agree that they should necessarily all take. The diversity of museums themselves, as well as of those who work in, on, and with them, and of the perspectives that these volumes show can be brought to bear upon them – as well as their very various histories, collections, contexts, personnel, publics, and ambitions – has inspired the diversified museum studies represented in these International Handbooks. Our hope is that this more diversified museum studies can contribute not only to new ways of understanding museums but also to new, and more varied, forms of practice within them – and to exciting, challenging futures, whatever these might be.

Acknowledgments

Producing these International Handbooks of Museum Studies has probably been a bigger and more demanding project than any of us had anticipated at the outset. Assembling together so many authors across four different volumes, and accommodating so many different timetables, work dynamics, styles, and sensitivities has been a major task over more years than we like to recall for both us as general editors, and even more especially for the editors of our four volumes: Andrea Witcomb, Kylie Message, Conal McCarthy, Michelle Henning, Annie E. Coombes, and Ruth B. Phillips. As general editors, our first thanks must be to the volume editors, who have done a remarkable task of identifying and eliciting so many insightful and illuminating contributions from such a wide field, and of working with authors – not all of whom were experienced in academic writing and many of whom were already grappling with hectic schedules – to coax the best possible chapters from them. We thank our volume editors too for working with us and what may sometimes have seemed overly interventionist assistance on our part in our push to make the volumes work together, as well as individually, and for all contributions, as well as the International Handbooks as a whole, to be a substantial contribution to the field. We also thank our volume editors for sharing so much good humor and so many cheering messages along the way, turning what sometimes felt like relentless chasing and head-aching over deadlines into something much more human and enjoyable. All of the contributors also deserve immense thanks too, of course, for joining the convoy and staying the journey. We hope that it feels well worth it for all concerned. Without you – editors and contributors – it couldn’t have happened.

There is also somebody else without whom it couldn’t have happened. This is Gill Whitley. Gill joined the project in 2012 as Project Editor. In short, she transformed our lives through her impeccable organization and skillful diplomacy, directly contacting contributors to extract chapters from them, setting up systems to keep us all on track with where things were up to, and securing many of the picture permissions. She has been a pleasure to work with and we are immensely grateful to her.

The idea for a series of International Handbooks of Museum Studies came from Jayne Fargnoli at Wiley Blackwell and we are grateful to her for this and being such a great cheerleader for the project. She read a good deal of the work as it came in and knowing that this only increased her enthusiasm for the project boosted everyone’s energy as we chased deadlines. We also thank other staff at Wiley Blackwell for their role in the production processes, including, most recently, Jake Opie, for helping to at last allow us to bring out the individual volumes in paperback format.

Because of its extended nature and because things don’t always happen according to initial timetables, editorial work like this often has to be fitted into what might otherwise be leisure time or time allocated for other things. Luckily, both of our Mikes (Mike Beaney and Mike Leahy) were sympathetic, not least as both have deeply occupying work of their own; and we thank them for being there for us when we needed them.

Lastly, we would like to thank each other. We have each benefited from the other’s complementary expertise and networks, from the confidence of having that insightful second opinion, and from the sharing of the load. Having somebody else with whom to experience the frustrations and joys, the tribulations and amusements, has made it so much more fun. Not only has this helped to keep us relatively sane, but it has also made The International Handbooks of Museum Studies so much better than they would otherwise have been.

Sharon Macdonald and Helen Rees LeahyAugust 2014 and July 2019

MUSEUM MEDIA An Introduction

Michelle Henning

On January 2, 2014 the award-winning journalist John Pilger presented a segment on the BBC Radio 4 Today program entitled “Is Media Just Another Word for Control?” He succinctly articulated two familiar analyses of the media: first, that media institutions serve the powerful by assuming consensus and by producing “censorship by omission” (“we in Britain have been misled by those whose job is to keep the record straight”); second, that media forms and technologies distract us from what is actually happening in the world, not just through their content but through the affective relationship we have with them, particularly our smart-phones, which we “caress ... like rosary beads” (Pilger 2014).1

The reaction to the program by right-wing British newspapers was rapid and hostile. In articles based almost entirely on harvesting selected “tweets” from the social media platform Twitter, they were quick to claim there was a consensus among listeners that the program was unbalanced, biased, and “unfairly left-wing” (Chorley and Robinson 2014; Marsden 2014). Pilger argued that the media are “hijacked” rather than inherently and inevitably repressive, and the press reaction suggests that control is not impenetrable or infallible, that this program was a rupture in the fabric, something that needed to be quickly contained and disarmed. The reaction was what Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky describe as “flak” – “a means of disciplining the media” – here, almost entirely contrived by the press (Herman and Chomsky 1988, 2).

As an illustration of Chomskian media theory, this argument and the reaction to it are almost perfect, but they also point to a new complexity when “media” refers to powerful corporations like the BBC, CNN, Reuters; the institutions of the press, television, and radio broadcasting; and also to Twitter and smartphones. “The media” are now providers of content to be consumed on different digital “platforms,” or media, via computers, smartphones, and tablets, as well as television, radio, and the press. This complex material and technical infrastructure does not leave content unchanged: as Seth Giddings puts it in in this volume, “media are not simply conduits or channels ... through which messages and meanings flow, more or less effectively” (Chapter 7