Museums and the Future of Collecting

Museums and the Future of Collecting
Author: Simon J. Knell
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2017-03-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351916424

Collecting is a key function of museums. Its apparent simplicity belies a complexity of questions and issues which make all collecting imprecise and unrepresentative. This book exposes the many meanings of collections, the different perspectives taken by different cultures, and the institutional response to the collecting problem. One major concern is omission, whether this be determined by politics, professional ethics, the law or social agenda. How did curators collect during the war in Croatia? What were the problems of trying to collect the ’old’ South Africa when the new one was born? Can museums collect from groups which seem to ’deviate’ from society’s norms? How has the function of museums affected the practices of international trade? Can museums collect successfully if collecting agenda are being set externally? Museums and the Future of Collecting encourages museums to move away from the collecting of isolated tokens; to move beyond the collecting policy and to understand more clearly the intellectual function of what they do. Here examples are given from Australia, Sweden, Canada, Spain, Britain and Croatia which provide this intellectual understanding and many practical tools for evaluating a future collecting strategy.

Museum of the Future

Museum of the Future
Author: Cristina Bechtler
Publisher: Jrp Ringier
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9783037643839

Museums of contemporary art are expanding and in crisis. They attract ever-larger audiences, architects constantly redesign them, and the growing number of artists is producing more massively than ever; at the same time museum funds are dwindling in the economic crisis and an overheated art market. This text gathers together interviews with international artists, architects and curators of the contemporary art world.

Curating the Future

Curating the Future
Author: Jennifer Newell
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 603
Release: 2016-08-12
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1317217950

Curating the Future: Museums, Communities and Climate Change explores the way museums tackle the broad global issue of climate change. It explores the power of real objects and collections to stir hearts and minds, to engage communities affected by change. Museums work through exhibitions, events, and specific collection projects to reach different communities in different ways. The book emphasises the moral responsibilities of museums to address climate change, not just by communicating science but also by enabling people already affected by changes to find their own ways of living with global warming. There are museums of natural history, of art and of social history. The focus of this book is the museum communities, like those in the Pacific, who have to find new ways to express their culture in a new place. The book considers how collections in museums might help future generations stay in touch with their culture, even where they have left their place. It asks what should the people of the present be collecting for museums in a climate-changed future? The book is rich with practical museum experience and detailed projects, as well as critical and philosophical analyses about where a museum can intervene to speak to this great conundrum of our times. Curating the Future is essential reading for all those working in museums and grappling with how to talk about climate change. It also has academic applications in courses of museology and museum studies, cultural studies, heritage studies, digital humanities, design, anthropology, and environmental humanities.

The Future of Museums

The Future of Museums
Author: Gerald Bast
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2018-10-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3319939556

This book explores―at the macro, meso and micro levels and in terms of qualitative as well as quantitative studies―the current and future role of museums for art and society. Given the dynamic developments in art and society, museums need to change in order to remain (and in some ways, regain) relevance. This relevance is in the sense of a power to influence. Additionally museums have challenges that arise in the production of art through the use of permanent and rapidly changing technologies. This book examines how museums deal with the increasing importance of performance art and social interactive art, artistic disciplines which refuse to use classical or digital artistic media in their artistic processes. The book also observes how museums are adapting in the digital age. It addresses such questions as, “How to keep museums in contact with recipients of art in a world in which the patterns of communication and perception have changed dramatically,” and also “Can the art museum, as a real place, be a counterpart in a virtualized and digitalized society or will museums need to virtualize and even globalize themselves virtually?” Chapters also cover topics such as the merits of digital technologies in museums and how visitors perceive these changes and innovations. When you go back to the etymological origin, the Mouseion of Alexandria, it was a place where – supported by the knowledge stored there – art and science were developed: a place of interdisciplinary research and networking, as you would call it today. The word from the Ancient Hellenic language for museum (ΜΟΥΣΕΙΟΝ) means the “house of the muses”: where the arts and sciences find their berth and cradle. With the “Wunderkammer,” the museum was re-invented as a place for amazing for purpose of representation of dynastic power, followed by the establishment of museums as a demonstration of bourgeois self-consciousness. In the twentieth century, the ideal of the museum as an institution for education received a strong boost, before the museum as a tourism infrastructure became more and more the institutional, economic and political role-model. This book is interested in discovering what is next for museums and how these developments will affect art and society. Each of the chapters are written by academics in the field, but also by curators and directors of major museums and art institutions.

Curatopia

Curatopia
Author: Philipp Schorch
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 533
Release: 2018-11-30
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1526118211

What is the future of curatorship? Is there a vision for an ideal model, a curatopia, whether in the form of a utopia or dystopia? Or is there a plurality of approaches, amounting to a curatorial heterotopia? This pioneering volume addresses these questions by considering the current state of curatorship. It reviews the different models and approaches operating in museums, galleries and cultural organisations around the world and discusses emerging concerns, challenges and opportunities. The collection explores the ways in which the mutual, asymmetrical relations underpinning global, scientific entanglements of the past can be transformed into more reciprocal, symmetrical forms of cross-cultural curatorship in the present, arguing that this is the most effective way for curatorial practice to remain meaningful. International in scope, the volume covers three regions: Europe, North America and the Pacific.

The Private Museum of the Future

The Private Museum of the Future
Author: Cristina Bechtler
Publisher: Jrp Ringier
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2018-06
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9783037645208

Given the current panorama of growing private initiatives, The Private Museum of the Future tackles this central issue in museology and contemporary society.It asks the questions: What inspires private collectors to build a museum? How do they view their relationship with other institutions? What plans they have for the future of their museums? In what forms private museums can contribute to innovative ways of dealing with contemporary art? What can they do that other institutions cannot? And how can they establish an ongoing relation with the public and society?Private museums have existed for a long time, but over the past decade many major collectors have founded new museums all over the world, from Cape Town to Dhaka, Athens to Los Angeles. These projects are often greeted as generous initiatives combining innovative architecture with the visibility of contemporary art. They could also be seen as competitors to public institutions.This book features interviews with 24 renowned private museum founders including: Ziba Ardalan (Parasol unit, London), Eli Broad (The Broad Museum, Los Angeles), Jochen Zeitz (Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town), Eugenio López Alonso (Museo Jumex, Mexico City), and Dakis Joannou (Deste Foundation, Athens), among various others.Essays by the editors, Cristina Bechtler and Dora Imhof, and also an afterword by Chris Dercon (General Director of the Volksbühne Theater, Berlin and former Director of Tate Modern, London) explore the topic and the relationship between public and private institutions and museums worldwide.The book is part of the Documents series, co-published with Les presses du réel and dedicated to critical writing.

Collecting the New

Collecting the New
Author: Bruce Altshuler
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2013-10-24
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1400849357

Collecting the New is the first book on the questions and challenges that museums face in acquiring and preserving contemporary art. Because such art has not yet withstood the test of time, it defies the traditional understanding of the art museum as an institution that collects and displays works of long-established aesthetic and historical value. By acquiring such art, museums gamble on the future. In addition, new technologies and alternative conceptions of the artwork have created special problems of conservation, while social, political, and aesthetic changes have generated new categories of works to be collected. Following Bruce Altshuler's introduction on the European and American history of museum collecting of art by living artists, the book comprises newly commissioned essays by twelve distinguished curators representing a wide range of museums. First considered are general issues including the acquisition process, and collecting by universal survey museums and museums that focus on modern and contemporary art. Following are groups of essays that address collecting in particular media, including prints and drawings, new (digital) media, and film and video; and national- and ethnic-specific collecting (contemporary art from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and African-American art). The closing essay examines the conservation problems created by contemporary works--for example, what is to be done when deterioration is the artist's intent? The contributors are Christophe Cherix, Vishakha N. Desai, Steve Dietz, Howard N. Fox, Chrissie Iles and Henriette Huldisch, Pamela McClusky, Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, Lowery Stokes Sims, Robert Storr, Jeffrey Weiss, and Glenn Wharton.

Care of Collections

Care of Collections
Author: Simon Knell
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2005-11-04
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1134830459

This volume provides a practical guide to all aspects of collections care including conservation practice, the monitoring of control of light, relative humidity and atmospheric pollution, biological infestation and disaster planning.

The Participatory Museum

The Participatory Museum
Author: Nina Simon
Publisher: Museum 2.0
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2010
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0615346502

Visitor participation is a hot topic in the contemporary world of museums, art galleries, science centers, libraries and cultural organizations. How can your institution do it and do it well? The Participatory Museum is a practical guide to working with community members and visitors to make cultural institutions more dynamic, relevant, essential places. Museum consultant and exhibit designer Nina Simon weaves together innovative design techniques and case studies to make a powerful case for participatory practice. "Nina Simon's new book is essential for museum directors interested in experimenting with audience participation on the one hand and cautious about upending the tradition museum model on the other. In concentrating on the practical, this book makes implementation possible in most museums. More importantly, in describing the philosophy and rationale behind participatory activity, it makes clear that action does not always require new technology or machinery. Museums need to change, are changing, and will change further in the future. This book is a helpful and thoughtful road map for speeding such transformation." -Elaine Heumann Gurian, international museum consultant and author of Civilizing the Museum "This book is an extraordinary resource. Nina has assembled the collective wisdom of the field, and has given it her own brilliant spin. She shows us all how to walk the talk. Her book will make you want to go right out and start experimenting with participatory projects." -Kathleen McLean, participatory museum designer and author of Planning for People in Museum Exhibitions "I predict that in the future this book will be a classic work of museology." --Elizabeth Merritt, founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums

Curating the Future

Curating the Future
Author: Jennifer Newell
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2016-08-12
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1317217969

Curating the Future: Museums, Communities and Climate Change explores the way museums tackle the broad global issue of climate change. It explores the power of real objects and collections to stir hearts and minds, to engage communities affected by change. Museums work through exhibitions, events, and specific collection projects to reach different communities in different ways. The book emphasises the moral responsibilities of museums to address climate change, not just by communicating science but also by enabling people already affected by changes to find their own ways of living with global warming. There are museums of natural history, of art and of social history. The focus of this book is the museum communities, like those in the Pacific, who have to find new ways to express their culture in a new place. The book considers how collections in museums might help future generations stay in touch with their culture, even where they have left their place. It asks what should the people of the present be collecting for museums in a climate-changed future? The book is rich with practical museum experience and detailed projects, as well as critical and philosophical analyses about where a museum can intervene to speak to this great conundrum of our times. Curating the Future is essential reading for all those working in museums and grappling with how to talk about climate change. It also has academic applications in courses of museology and museum studies, cultural studies, heritage studies, digital humanities, design, anthropology, and environmental humanities.