Collection and Display

Why was the post war period a revolution for British museums

Before war museums had been for the people, but not off the people

Bennet quote about Beamish

embodies an institutionalised mode of amnesia

Make 2 points about the politics of the Beamish museum

Changes in interior design shown without linking it to miners strikes

Museum set on grounds of Beamish hall, suggesting middle and lower classes lived together peacefully

Even though visitors can read against the grain of the museum…

it still presents a dominant peopling of the past

Name a museum which successfully tells the story of the lower classes

Hyde Park Barracks

Australian museums tend to avoid addressing the topic of European settlement…

even though they have the resources to go back to Aboriginal time

What needs to happen for museums to truly represent the people?

Total overhaul to the aims of curators

What was the original intention of removing items from private collections?

Stop their meanings being arbitrary

Having them open to at least some of the public

What should a museum be doing by the end of the 19th century (Vergo)

Contribute to advancement of knowledge

Arranged in a recognisable scheme of classification

Not owned by one individual

Accessible to public

Vergo

high idealism and the academic intentions which lay behind the foundation of museums are in danger of being forgotten

What is the main problem with items being displayed in museums?

Assumed that once they are in a neutral environment, their meaning will be correct and static

Give a piece which meaning is lost by its display in a museum

V and A, Saxon God, Thuner

Explain the issue with the Saxon God Thuner

Had not been cleaned having been stored in a garden

Sits on a pedestal which doesn’t match the status of sculptor

Surrounded by works of different genre

Name 3 areas of museums which need to change to establish true meaning

conservation

methods of display

museum scholarship

Pollitt

Rome became a museum of greek art

What did Augustus say about the display of greek art?

Greek art should henceforth be considered public property and that it should only be used in the service of the state

What was the purpose of displaying Greek statues in Rome?

indication of personal and empirical power

What is important about Aldrovandi’s Naturalia?

Kept opposite his study rather than off his bedroom because it was getting public attention

Waddy

not only for the private delectation of their owners; they were also part of their public reputations

McCellan

question of public museums was not so much who was admitted … but how museums would be called upon to shape the public

Elsner

and the world itself… has always relied on its appointed collectors

Name examples of collection which prove the world needs collectors

Tax collectors

Harvesters

Church collects souls

Why can it be argued everyone is a collector?

Become collectors of things which make up our identities

The concept of collection depends highly upon…

the concept of classification

collecting had the ability to be pioneering but collectors…

rarely move against the grain

Name 3 broad areas of collection studies (Pearce)

Collection policies

History of collections

Why people collect

Name 2 modes of collection

souvenirs

fetish objects

Give an example of a fetish collection

Sandford bequest was 10,000 cigarette cards

What were museums used as in the Victorian period?

Active agents of transformation

What did the Great Exhibition of the Works of All Nations do?

offered a less brutal form of leisure for the unwashed masses

McCellan 2

Long before the first picture had been hung the republicans recognised in the Louvre a symbol of Revolutionary achievement

Who does Bowness argue art needs to be approved by?

Peers

Serious critics

Collectors

Dealers

Gombrich

There is no such things as art, only artists