Presentations
Museums for Social Harmony
University Museums and Collections as Recorders of Cultural and Natural Communities Worldwide
UMAC's 10th International Conference, in cooperation with CIPEG (International Committee for Egyptology)
7th - 12th November 2010, Shanghai, China, within the ICOM General Conference
General information: http://www.icom2010.org.cn/icomwbs/webpages/en/index.jsp
Presentations
Please note: Simultaneous translation into Chinese will be provided.
Enlightenment to Chinese Museums from University Museums
Fang Hui & Li Huizhu
Museum of Shandong Unversity, China
This paper aims to enlighten the development of Chinese museums through analyzing the experiences in raising money, quality of visitors, service of communities and so on of university museums. The following are some proposals:
I. On capital source: most of Chinese museums are State-owned. They mainly rely on national appropriation, as the result, they lack the knowledge and experience of raising money from the society. On the contrary, university museums generally take advantages of the foundations, board of directors, alumni and other organizations of universities as their capital sources.
II. The quality of the visitors to university museums represents the universal situation in the future. Teachers and students make up the main part of the visitors to university museums, who are the highest educated and centralized in society. Usually, those with a higher education show greater interest in museums. With the increasing cultural quality of the Chinese public, it is believed that more and more people will visit museums. University museums have gathered experience on how to supply varied service to the visitors mentioned above.
III. University museums are settled on campuses and serve recurring visitors. Such a trend of serving fixed communities leads to the development of modern museums. University museums not only pay close attention to the development of universities, collect and show various kinds of materials and memories related to campuses and staff members. They also hold different cultural activities in order to increase the university’s sense the end result being the formation of culture for the university as a whole. These ideas and practice should be used as a source of reference by other museums in their community service.
The University Museums’ Role in Presenting Cultural Information during World Expo
Li Rong
Museum Studies Program, Macquarie University, Australia
World Expo is a grand gathering of the world’s cultures, during which the host city welcomes people from around the world and takes this significant opportunity to advocate on behalf of its culture and spirit. Besides the new pavilions of participant countries or regions, the existing museums, galleries, theatres, heritage buildings, and much more would also attract visitors from around the globe to explore and learn about cultural diversity and harmony.
University museums as an integral part of the cultural scene of any city shall showcase their diversity and project this into the global intellectual and cultural festival. This paper investigates the university museums’ role in presenting cultural information and images during past World Expos and specifically, takes a survey on ten university museums in Shanghai and how they contributed in the Shanghai Expo 2010.
Making Relevant University Museum Collections and Contemporary Curatorial Practice in Southeast Asia
Tan Li-Jen & Ramon Lerma
University of Singapore Museum (NUS Museum), Singapore, & Ateneo Art Gallery, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines
This paper presents a preliminary, often overlooked, survey of the university museums landscape in Southeast Asia and the challenges faced by these institutions. It also touches upon the different curatorial strategies employed in relation to the specific needs of each university museum. These are issues which have hitherto been undocumented in the absence of a regional collaborative platform. Recent efforts by a group of university museums from Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia to create and expand such a platform will serve as a main point of reference in this paper. Considering the dramatic growth of museums and exhibitionary interests in Asia, these initiatives acknowledge the need for a formal network. One which encourages innovative and sustainable strategies for mobilizing university museum collections and curatorial collaboration. An objective would be the presentation of a joint exhibition for UMAC 2012 in Singapore. Such collaboration would ultimately raise the collective profile of Southeast Asian university museums internationally and facilitate critical discourse and knowledge in regards to university museums. More broadly, the university museum is viewed, beyond its traditional mandate to collect, preserve and exhibit, as a distinct and critical learning space positioned between the university as an institution of learning and contemporary museological practices. The issues addressed in this paper will, in many ways, dovetail with the UMAC 2010 conference themes, touching on the role of university museums and how these institutions and collections can be made relevant to its audience.
Access to collections: Creating a Better Future through Social Harmony
Jude Philp & Leilani Bin-Juda
Macleay Museum, Sydney University Museums & Shanghai World Expo 2010; Dept of Foreign Affairs and Trade, China
In the past museums have generally had to seek first-hand contact with source community representatives (descendents of makers of a museums material culture) to reconnect them with historic cultural materials. The response to finding out that one’s history is maintained by a foreign, often remote, institution has been diverse but generally led to mutually productive relationships for the care and future benefit of the collections.
With technological advances, museums have forged a path for extending the access of collections while maintaining their duty of care for the material in their collections. This is still only a starting point to access. Knowledge about where cultural material is located has importance, however it is not the same as seeing the physical object and creating a shared history.
Allowing objects and specimens to travel from University-funded institutions, and seeking partnerships with community-based institutions has the potential to create a space where a greater number of people can see, understand and engage with collections. This is even more the case where an object may have a spiritual or religious meaning beyond its aesthetic form.
This paper discusses how a small Indigenous community in Australia, in the Torres Strait Islands, have managed to maintain their access to objects and the many projects that sprung from this. It is a true example of the possibilities for enhancing the opportunities for creative expression, to enliven and enrich those cultural expressions through direct access to objects of historical and spiritual importance. It is about creating connections to history and culture built on mutual respect, to then be able to create a better future for the next generation.
ASD - Experimental Software to Built a Small Museum Web Site
Vincenza Ferrara
Museo di Chimica, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy
In recent years online communication has become an opportunity for the promotion of cultural heritage and the dissemination of scientific culture and artistic history. Through the web you can use a new communication model that contextualizes the cultural object with the ability to make accessible to all in an appropriate language the knowledge of and within a museum. The small museums like university museums have great difficulties in developing and managing their web sites because of their human or economic poor resources. For these reasons a software was designed that will allow these institutions with few financial resources to develop their own Web sites starting from the information. The ASD (Accessible Site Developer) allows, from the information, to automatically produce XHTML Web pages according to the criteria of accessibility and organization of content provided by the MINERVA Europe. The technologies used, JAVA and XML, allow small museums to put online their cultural heritage in order to disseminate and promote themselves. The ASD doesn’t require any particular hardware and software, so that a portable system is insured and its cost is very low. Referring to the Project Minerva Europe and in particular to the quality criteria, the prototype has been realized ASD (Accessible Site Developer) already used experimentally by some museums. This project started in 2007 and first prototype was built and has been tested by museums of University of Rome "La SAPIENZA" such as Museo delle Antichità Etrusche e Italiche (http://w3.uniroma1.it/museoetruscologia/), Museo di Chimica (http://w3.uniroma1.it/museochimica/index.html), Museo di Zoologia (http://w3.uniroma1.it/museozoologia/) and of INAF such as Museo dell´Osservatorio Astronomico e Copernicano (http://w3.uniroma1.it/labinfo/minerva/museo/index.htm). Every small University Museum can require this software for free use to test and to make its own website.
Dutch University Collections Online
Steph Scholten
Heritage Collections, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
In 2010 the Dutch Foundation for Academic Heritage (SAE) initiated a nationally funded project, to build a digital infrastructure for the presentation of the Dutch Academic Collections (UNICUM). Partners in the SAE are the University of Amsterdam, Groningen University, Delft University of Technology, Leiden University and Utrecht University. These five Universities, all of them with a long and respectable history, are the keepers of numerous divers and immensely rich collections. Unfortunately, a lot of these treasures are more or less inaccessible. It's the Universities strong belief that only through solid cooperation, progress can be made with opening up the collections. This Unicum project (“University Collections and University Museums”) will be completed in 2012. It aims to reach both a professional /academic public, as well as the more general interested public. Users will be able to search through the academic collections, unhindered by the universities borders. For instance: if you are interested in a specific professor, by entering his name you might find his archive situated in Leiden, his tools in Utrecht and a statue in Groningen. Up to now, you’d have to visit all the institutions separately. This creates all kinds of opportunities, both for the public as well for collection managers (collections mobility, joint exhibitions, loan of objects etc). For a broader perspective: Europeana, the European online database, will harvest the content of Unicum on a regular basis.
Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Natural History Museum
Yingyod Lapwong
Museum Studies Program, Macquarie University, Australia
The Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Natural History Museum is part of the Prince of Songkla University in Southern Thailand. The history of the museum’s collections is briefly documented. They were originally developed to support the university’s teaching programs in the biological sciences, but have undergone rapid growth in recent years in support of research into the biodiversity of the region. The scope of the museum’s collections and associated outreach and educational programs are outlined. Administrative arrangements for the museum are analysed and it is argued that professional museum staff are required to augment the scientific expertise associated with the museum.
Strategic Planning Workshop
Peter B. Tirrell
Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, University of OklahomaUSA
A strategic plan is used to define the purpose and direction of a museum, organize its actions and resources, and create its most advantageous position for the future. The workshop is designed to assist participants with the basic elements of planning so that they can prepare a strategic plan for their museum. Participants are encouraged to bring their museum’s strategic plans to the workshop for discussion. We also will discuss strategic planning for UMAC.
Besieged: Contemporary Political, Cultural and Economic Challenges for Museums in the Academy
Raymond A. Silverman & Carla Sinopoli
University of Michigan Museum of Art & University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology, USA
Our paper will examine the recent history of the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology (UMMA). Recently, several issues have coalesced to threaten the very existence of the museum. Coping with economic challenges, the University’s administration is questioning whether or not its research museums should be sustained. The Anthropology museum is perceived as serving a limited constituency. This, coupled with recent changes in U.S. federal legislation governing collections of Native American human remains and sacred objects, and controversies associated with the representation of Native American culture in the University’s natural history museum, have put UMMA in a precarious position. The question of the institution’s relevance is at the heart of this crisis.
Indeed, it is the issue of relevance that we wish to address in this paper. The traditional raison d’etre for the museum still exists—creating and preserving collections for research and to a lesser extent interpreting the collections for various audiences. The museum is operating more or less as it has for the last several decades, but external expectations concerning what it should be and how it should function have changed, it appears to be out of sync with the larger mission of the university. Should the curators who comprise the museum’s core staff stand fast, or do these scholars need to acknowledge that the cultural and political landscape has changed and that they must engage a broader university audience, and perhaps the general public; perhaps more attention needs to be given to the political ramifications of their work in light of the rising awareness of material and intellectual property rights among communities that claim affiliation with the museum’s collections. Whatever it is we do, it is critical that we (museums in the Academy) articulate both in words and action the relevance we hold for the institutions in which we reside.
ASD – To Touch the Past: The Painted Pottery of the Mimbres People at the Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota
Lyndel King, USA
University of Minnesota, Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, USA
The Weisman Art Museum holds a large collection of Mimbres painted pottery (1000 to 1150), resulting from an excavation in southern New Mexico by University faculty and students from 1929 to 1931. Pottery, jewelry, ceramic miniatures, animal bone awls, and other tools were transferred from the department of anthropology in 1992. Today, no one in anthropology studies this collection. And, in the decades since the excavation, both the science of archaeology and perceptions about Native American’s control of their cultural heritage have changed considerably. The archaeologists who excavated the graves in which these pots were found had no doubts about the validity of their actions. Today we are not so sure. Change has prompted questions including should these pots have been unearthed at all; should they be reburied? The federal Native American Graves Protection Act (NAGPRA, 1990) requires museums to return grave goods or sacred objects to native peoples who claim them and can prove they are the legitimate descendents of the makers.
These pots, and many other objects made by ancient people around the globe, have been enshrined in climate-controlled display cases, watched by guards and security cameras, allowing everyone to see them while protecting them from the ravages of nature and man. They are no longer where their makers intended, covered with earth and hidden from view, acted upon by time and the elements. University museums are often left with the result of past excavations that would be approached much differently today.
The question is not how to make these objects relevant to the public – they are greatly admired by our visitors – but how to fill our mission of education while respecting the original makers’ intentions and the desires of their
Human Remains in Museum Collections and their Restitution: The Case of the Museum of Natural History of the University of La Plata – Argentine
Graciela Weisinger Cordero & Maria del Carmen Maza
Buenos Aires, Argentina
The intention of this presentation is to reflect on the challenges that museums face when collections include the human remains of indigenous communities. How can we harmonize the cultural policies of the past and the legitimate rights of the descendants from these communities? How do museums confront and solve these social responsibilities? To debate the topic, the case of the Museum of Natural History of La Plata was taken into consideration. In 1884, the government of Buenos Aires arranged its construction and was inaugurated in 1889. It shelters the collection of Francisco P. Moreno, explorer of the Patagonia, who was its Director. By 1890 the museum was already famous and soon reached national as well as international recognition. From 1905 the museum has been dependent on the University of La Plata.
Part of the collection concerns the final stage of the "Conquest of the Desert", epoch in which the army caught the last chiefs and a group of indigenous - elders, women and children - who still were resisting the offensive in Junín of the Andes. The Museum held captive the living aborigines for their study until September 1894, when the last one, the young Yamana man Maish Kenzis died and his remains were showed for more than one century in a glass cabinet.
The claims for repatriation were publicized in the 70’s, in several parts of the world. The communities of North America and Australia marked the initial course. In our country, the first claims to the authorities of the University Museum of La Plata were registered by the mid 80’s. To date, the museum has repatriated the remains of a Tehuelche chief (1994) and a Ranquel chief (2001) to their communities.
The problem of the repatriation of human remains, as well as the cultural objects associated with them, is an attempt to allow these diverse aboriginal communities to manage their own cultural inheritance in the manner that they deem most appropriate. Bringing ethical principles into play, they recover their cultural identity. It also addresses the bases upon which the anthropologic science constructed its "object of study": the appropriation of fragments of the human reality to investigate and display them in exhibitions and museums. However, the demands by the different indigenous communities for the return of their ancestors increase. This has caused a division in the scientific community with some agreeing in the matter of repatriation, while others see the remains as belonging to the museums and that if they are repatriated they will then be lost to scientific research.
Material Models as Recorders of Academic Communities: A New Project on University Collections in Germany
Cornelia Weber
Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
Transdisciplinary research on university collections is most rewarding. Such studies give insights into the history and the origin(s) of collections and knowledge as well as the material cultures of universities.
From this perspective, material models in university collections are excellent objects for study. In their double role as both products and sources of scientific knowledge, models are key instruments of science. Until today, however, a full historical overview of the material models employed across the different scientific branches has not been compiled. Against this background, the recently launched project material models in teaching and research: Indexing, documentation and analysis of models in university collections can be considered a seminal research contribution to scientific material culture. It will systematically record and document material models in German academic collections, and will present them via a globally accessible multimedia online-database.
The paper will provide a brief overview of the initial steps and results of this project and promote transdisciplinary research as a possibility of invigorating academic interest in university museums and collections.
Special Exhibition about Research Projects – A New Form of Scholarly Communication
Gabriele Pieke
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Germany
The main task of a university museum and collections has always been to bridge the gap between research and the public. But it is a very recent development that the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the German Research Foundation, has changed their articles. As a result, special exhibitions are now considered as a serious scholarly approach and can therefore be funded by research money. More and more grant applications in Germany include a public presentation of their state of the art science in the form of a special exhibition with the objective of imparting their knowledge to the community.
Under the title of “Topoi – The Formation and Transformation of Space and Knowledge in Ancient Civilizations”, an interdisciplinary research association currently investigates ancient civilizations from the 6th millennium BC to Late Antiquity at Berlin. More than 200 scientists from diverse disciplines investigate the formation and transformation of space and science in about 50 research groups, which are pooled in five research areas. Within this framework, one of the research groups is further responsible for the concept and organization of a huge special exhibition, which will present the relevant fields of TOPOI to a wider audience. The planned venue for autumn 2012 is the Pergamonmuseum on the Museums Island in Berlin. At the same time, the exhibition marks the end of the research project. Short of their own university museums in the relevant fields, the exhibition has to be based on a unique cooperation between the different antiquity collections belonging to the Staatlichen Museum / Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz and the participating universities in Berlin. It is intended not only to strengthen the traditional alliance between the museums and universities, which goes back to their foundation in the 19th century, but also to present current scholarly results, at least temporarily, to a broader public.
Towards a Network of Italian University Museums in a Web Portal
Elena Corradini
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy
Italian University museums have a fundamental role in the preservation and valorization of historic-scientific heritage. They are an expression of the different disciplines that are the core of their research and educational activities. They must develop their abilities to work within a network in order to become centers, with an interdisciplinary synthesis of knowledge. Only then can they be a resource for the production and diffusion of knowledge and lifelong learning, as well as providers of services for the scientific community and the public.
The diffusion and strengthening of the Internet during the last few years promoted the creation of web pages dedicated either to single museums or to different museum systems. These sites are quite inhomogeneous in their presentation and in their content, as is shown in the results of a systematic study that I have done and will present on this occasion.
Reflections on this scenario generated a proposal to create a work group to activate synergies and create an interactive work place specialized in conveying information. The idea is the result of an initial seminar held in the University of Modena in December 2009. During the conference I will present an idea for a web portal for Italian University Museums.
Through the integration and valorisation of the resources of University Museums web sites, the portal will become a perfect medium to exchange and to increase historical and scientific knowledge and to improve the services on the web. It will be also updated with the results of a research project, in which I am involved, that the Museums Commission of CRUI (Conference of Italian University Rectors, www.crui.it) is now developing to create a complex qualifying platform for historic-scientific and natural heritage. It will integrate the General Informative System for Catalogue (SIGEC) implemented by the Central Institute for Catalogue Documentation of the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage (www.iccd.beniculturali.it). This project is also supported by the unique Masters course, at the Modena University, on the General Informative System of the Catalogue (www.cibec.unimore.it).
Contemporizing Conventions: Integrating Heritage and Contemporary Art Practice through Museum Collections
Jocelyn T. Calubayan
UST Museum of Arts and Sciences, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Philippines
This paper will focus on the imperative role of university museums in integrating cultural heritage and artistic practice in art education. It will discuss two undertakings aimed to link tradition, theory and contemporary practice: the Thomasian Chalk Festival and the adaptation of the subject Natural Science to the Advertising Arts curriculum of the UST College of Fine Arts and Design. Both programs aspire to strengthen awareness and understanding of the cultural heritage to the younger generation by providing activities that are based on traditions, associated with contemporary art and design practice, using the museum collection.
I. The Thomasian Chalk Festival, initiated by the Museum of Arts and Sciences of the University of Santo Tomas, is a community-based art project focusing on the performative and ephemeral nature of chalk art. By utilizing the museum’s collection of Philippine art, the student-participants will be guided as they create temporary culture-themed artworks on the campus grounds. This concept broadens the scope of the museum collection’s audience through the flow of thoughts from conceptualization of the makers, to the creation of work, to the appreciation and understanding of the casual observer, resulting to a harmonious sharing of ideas of the community though visual, tactile and aural learning experience.
II. Natural Science is included in the curriculum mandated by the Philippine Commission for Higher Education. The UST College of Fine Arts and Design in consortium with the UST Museum of Arts and Sciences, adapted the subject as cultural heritage studies. As creative outputs, design students are encouraged to study culture by utilizing the artefacts of the museum as reference and influence, as they create innovative designs by contemporizing the traditional. Sample designs of students will be shown as case studies to defend the thesis of the importance of the museum as co-curricular arm of the university in teaching culture and heritage.
Turning the Museum inside out: The Biological Sciences at MacQuarie University, Sydney, Australia
Andrew Simpson
Macquarie University, Australia
The recent development of new biological sciences laboratories, with a range of advanced learning technologies to cater for large numbers of undergraduate students at Macquarie University provided the opportunity to develop an extended series of integrated exhibition spaces. This distributed model of university exhibition work, effectively turning the museum inside out, has not compromised the role of the fixed exhibition space, or museum, within the biological sciences precinct. Instead it has acted as a catalyst for rethinking student engagement with the museum. A working party was established, including student representation, to map collection content against staff expertise.
This has enabled the development of an enhanced digital presence for the museum where multiple cross disciplinary narratives are being developed around collection objects. The rationale, process and preliminary outcomes are described in this paper. It represents a useful model of student engagement for a museum with restricted space and financial resources in any academic discipline. The processes generated by this change reinforce the primacy of an object-based pedagogy in tertiary education and more closely align collection content with the institutional mission.
Reflections on Modern ‘Museology’ and The University Museum
Mustafa Shabbir Hussain
National University of Singapore Museum (NUS Museum), Singapore
This paper discusses the evolving role of the University Museum with specific reference to the National University of Singapore Museum (NUS Museum) and the historical and museological shifts that have shaped its collection and the museum’s current curatorial strategies. This paper positions the University Museum as an interlocutor of disciplines and knowledge, referential to the strategic interests of the University and of external developments within the cultural industry, and cognizant of diverse modes of production, reception and meaning-making.
Using selected exhibitions as examples, this paper looks at how the museum, bound by its commitment to its collection and perceived universal role, responds to these situations. On the one hand it is encouraged by the prospects, but on the other it is observant of the expectations of its immediate host, the University. In charting newer roles and directions, this paper examines how the museum reconciles or re-evaluates its fundamental missions with the other broader aims of the University and the fraternity of museums, whether complementary or contrasting, and how the museum may meaningfully participate as partner in the ongoing changes, rather than simply being a derivative of change?
New Prospects of the European, Near and Far Eastern Antiquities at Mariemont (Belgium)
Claire Derriks
Royal Museum of Mariemont, Belgium
Nestled in a magical park, a short trip from Belgium’s bustling capital, the Royal Museum of Mariemont was built at the end of the sixties by Roger Bastin (1913-1983). He was influenced by Le Corbusier and the Nordic architects Aalto and Asplund and built a rigorous, simple and poetic work, is strongly integrated into the landscape. The relationship between the interior and the exterior set is very sensitive, as the use of raw materials and glass.
More recently, the renewing of the European, Near and Far Eastern Antiquities departments raised a new approach to this exceptional and often misunderstood architecture. Elie Levy, interior decorator, proposed a new scenography, based on different ways of respecting the original idea of Bastin to give the visitor the liberty to start where he wants and discover the collections in walking as in a perpetuum mobile.