Digital Heritage and the rise of theory in museum computing

Despite a history deeply implicated in an imperial, bourgeois and phallocentric social order, the museum is a cultural institution that can be redeemed from this legacy of racism, classism and sexism. Or so it would seem from reading the now burgeoning critical scholarship on museums. Here, almost all of the museum’s analysts argue that, in some way or another, the institution can be reformed so that it can overcome the exclusions of the past and realize its true democratic vocation. Seduced by the institution’s own rhetoric of its democratic potential, these cultural analysts produce redemptive narratives that ultimately mimic the reformism of the museum’s own political logic. Defending this contention, this article proceeds, first, by demonstrating the persistence of this redemptive narrative as an enduring trope in critical museum scholarship; second, it focuses on two sophisticated variations on this narrative - those articulated respectively by James Clifford and Tony Bennett. Third, drawing on Fouca...

The museum's redemption : contact zones, government and the limits of reform

From their beginnings, archaeology museums have reflected a complex and dynamic balance between the demands of developing, documenting, and preserving objects on the one hand and sharing knowledge, access, and control on the other. This balance has informed and inflected the ways that museums present the past, including both practical aspects of pedagogy and exhibition design as well as more critical and contested issues of authority, authenticity, and reflexivity in interpretation. Meeting the complex requirements of curation, deliberate collections growth, management, and conservation, as well as the need to respond to continuing challenges to the museum's right and title to hold various forms of cultural property, archaeological museums play an active role in both preserving and shaping the public's view of the past and reflect the prospects and perils of being at once a temple to the muses and a forum for sometimes contentious public discourse.

Exhibiting Archaeology: Archaeology and Museums

A feminist critique of the natural history galleries at the Manchester Museum revealed androcentric biases in the displays. Male specimens dominated female specimens with respect to number, the postures and positions in which they were displayed, and in the quantity and style of language used in interpretative text. The explanations for these biases were various, reflecting both historical and current views of gender within the museum and society beyond. In response to these findings, and the reactions they elicited in museum colleagues, the museum staged an ‘intervention’ on the natural history galleries, exposing the biases found within.

Gender representation in the natural history galleries at the Manchester Museum

Over his long life Sigmund Freud collected at least 2500 antiquities, most of which are now on view to the public in the London Freud Museum. What has not previously been properly considered is to what degree Freud was archaeologically informed, and why he became involved in the ‘excavation’ of Duna-Pentele in modern Hungary. Much has been written (not least by psychoanalysts) on the possible symbolic significance both of his collecting and of what he collected. It is at least arguable that his purchasing of antiquities was more to do with his mood at any particular time, and what was available on the market. Over time, items in Freud’s collection have been ascribed different significances by Freud himself, and by others. The changing nature of assessments of the significance of material culture should be kept in mind when confronted by some of today’s politically correct stances.

Unprovenanced Material Culture and Freud's Collection of Antiquities

Applying poststructuralist and feminist theory to museums, this chapter traces the gendered relations of representation in museums. The author takes the relation of text, author and reader from pos...

Gaby Porter

Papers

Seeing through Solidity: A Feminist Perspective on Museums: