Showing papers on "Exhibition published in 1995"

The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics

Abstract: In a series of richly detailed case studies from Britian, Australia and North America, Tony Bennett investigates how nineteenth- and twentieth-century museums, fairs and exhibitions have organized their collections, and their visitors. Discussing the historical development of museums alongside that of the fair and the international exhibition, Bennett sheds new light upon the relationship between modern forms of official and popular culture. Using Foucaltian perspectives The Birth of the Museum explores how the public museum should be understood not just as a place of instruction, but as a reformatory of manners in which a wide range of regulated social routines and performances take place. This invigorating study enriches and challenges the understanding of the museum, and places it at the centre of modern relations between culture and government. For students of museum, cultural and sociology studies, this will be an asset to their reading list.

Progress and Poverty: An Economic and Social History of Britain 1700-1850

Abstract: This is a major college text. It will become prescribed reading for anyone studying British history in the 18th and 19th centuries. The book examines the massive structural change, the creation of national markets, and the economic growth which characterized the movement from agriculture to industry. In 1700 Britain was a rural country. By 1850, the year before the Great Exhibition, it was 'the workshop of the world'. The debate on the relationship between poverty and progress is at the core of this clear and wide-ranging analysis of the world's first industrialized nation.

Urban Hierarchies and Territorial Competition in Europe: Exploring the Role of Fairs and Exhibitions:

Abstract: Cities of Europe tend to be thought of in hierarchical terms. Although interesting results have been achieved, it seems clear that there is no single hierarchy. The process of European integration is generating numerous changes in different fields. One of these changes is the need for European capitals and cities of a certain size to upscale their position from national to continental. A system of European cities competing with one another to attract activities and facilities and to gain international influence is in formation. Fairs and exhibitions are an example. The paper provides a first approach to the role and the economic weight of exhibitions in the EU, trying to sketch out a hierarchy of fair-hosting cities. The most significative variables are analysed, exploring their explanatory power. An interpretative hypothesis linking exhibition size and internationality to inter-urban competition is finally provided.

Into the Heart of Irony: Ethnographic Exhibitions and the Politics of Difference

Abstract: The paper discusses the ‘western’ museum practices of representing culture within a dominant visual metaphor as an inherently political act which separates those who view the exhibit from those who are on display. The act of viewing is related to the acts of ordering, defining and representing according to the categories of the ‘viewing’ culture, and serves to deny shared space and time occupied by the representing and represented cultures, a process related to the anthropological construction of ethnographic distance in ethnographic texts. Two recent Canadian exhibitions which attempt to use irony to subvert traditional exhibit practices are analysed: Into the Heart of Africa and Fluffs and Feathers. Into the Heart of Africa attempted to mount a postmodern critique of colonial collecting practices, but its one-sided use of irony reproduced, for many visitors, the colonial relations of power that made it possible for one group to dominate another. The narrative structure of the exhibit was predicated on a relation of difference. Fluffs and Feathers, on the other hand, directly challenged the white visitor's power to view and define native peoples, by dialogically inviting visitors to try on alternate subject positions that help to fracture essentialist notions of self and culture. Thus irony, a risky trope, can lead to very different results in museum exhibitions depending on who it is aimed at and who does the aiming.

Medical lecturing in Georgian London.

Abstract: Viewed in the light of the discussions of scientific lecturing in eighteenth-century London contained in this issue, the case of medicine may be said to be both more of the same but also something different. It is more of the same, in that the themes that dominate the other papers, respecting natural philosophers and experimental impresarios, apply also to London's medical lecturers. Theirs too was the world of entrepreneurial experimentalism in the budding consumer society, the Habermasian public sphere; they too were performers, demonstrating Life, Power, Order, Divine Design, the Wonders of Mechanism. They were showmen of the body. Strolling up in the 1780s from Fleet Street to Piccadilly, you would have seen scores of freak shows and exhibitions - Mrs Salmon's waxworks in Fleet Street; the 'wonderful tall Essex woman' at the Rummer in Three King's Court, Fleet Street, who was ' seven feet high'; the dwarf Robert Powell's puppet shows in the Little Piazza, Covent Garden; as well as 'Young Colossuses', 'Tall Saxon Women', the 'Ethiopian Savage' and the Orang-Outang ('This astonishing Animal is of a different species from any ever seen in Europe, and seems to be a link between the Rational and Brute Creation, as he is a striking resemblance of the Human Species, and is allowed to be the greatest Curiosity ever exhibited in England ... Also the Orang Outang, or real Wild Man of the Woods ... a Calf with eight legs, two tails, two heads, and only one body' on display 'opposite the New Inn, Surrey side of Westminster Bridge at ls. each person').1 In Panton Street, James Graham put on his celebrated displays of mud bathing, aided by a bevy of belles,2 there was Robert Barker's panorama in Leicester Place, and nearby, in Lisle Street, James Loutherbourg opened his Eidophusikon two years later.3 And in the midst of this great archipelago of ' Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE. 1 For the classic account, see R. D. Altick, The Shows of London: A Panoramic History of Exhibitions, 1600-1862, Cambridge, Mass., 1978; see also William Biggs Boulton, The Amusements of Old London: Being a Survey of the Sports and Pastimes, Tea Gardens and Parks, Playhouses and Other Diversions of the People of London from the 17th to the Beginning of the 19th Century, London, 1901. A helpful evaluation of scientific lecturing as spectacle is offered in Simon Schaffer, 'The consuming flame: electrical showmen and Tory mystics in the world of goods', in Consumption and the World of Goods (ed. John Brewer and Roy Porter), London and New York, 1993, 489-526. 2 Roy Porter, 'The sexual politics of James Graham', British Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies (1982), 5, 201-6; idem., 'Sex and the singular man: the seminal ideas of James Graham', Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (1984), 228, 3-24; and more generally on contemporary quacks, Roy Porter, Health for Sale: Quackery in England 1650-1850, Manchester, 1989. 3 Ralph Hyde, Panoramania! The Art and Entertainment of the 'All-Embracing' View, London, 1988.

A Cross-Cultural Approach

Abstract: in which artists played a wider role in society in the Renaissance and Baroque era than what we expect of an artist today; (2) The artist's intended meaning in certain artworks only becomes evident when you reconstruct the common beliefs of the original audience. Give specific examples of how this interrelationship of historical context and iconography works; (3) The "ideal" of what art should do changed drastically during the nineteenth century. Trace this by comparing the work of Ingres, Goya, Friedrich, Courbet, and Munch; (4) What was a woman's place in eighteenthand nineteenthcentury European society? How did male artists view women? (5) How did the urbanization of Paris, photography, and Japanese prints all play a part in the distinctively "modern" look of Impressionist painting? (6) Pretend you are Picasso visiting the University of Kentucky Art Museum's special exhibition of African art. What would your reactions to it be? (7) Discuss the interrelationship of politics, art exhibition, and art censorship in modern art; (8) "Women's art": Is there a specifically female aesthetic? Is it different in essential ways from the male vision?

Aesthetic Evangelists: Conversion and Empowerment in Contemporary Community Art

Abstract: During the last few years a new set of assumptions about the role of the artist has emerged in the United States as part of what is being called the "new public art."(1) This "new genre" of public art, according to critic Suzi Gablik, "takes the form of interactive, community-based projects inspired by social issues."(2) In fact, the new public art might be more accurately termed the new community art to the extent that questions raised by the interaction of the artist and particular, often urban, communities have played a central role in its evolution. Further, this work tends to be less concerned with producing objects per se than with a process of collaboration that is understood to produce certain pedagogical effects in and on the community. In this way the new, community-based public art represents a transition from an earlier model of public art that involved the location of sculptural works in sites administered by public agencies - either federal, state, or local governments or other administrative bodies (airports, parks, etc.) - or alternately, private locations (for example, some of the works in the "New Urban Landscape" exhibition at the World Financial Center in Battery Park City in 1988). The growing influence of this new public art is evident in the proliferation of articles, conferences, books, exhibitions, and commissions. It can also be observed in the changing funding mandates of major private foundations, for whom "community" has become the buzzword of the moment. There are a range of positions among private sector funders, from the Lannan Foundation in Los Angeles, which is shifting almost entirely from arts funding to funding for "social issues," to the MacArthur Foundation - the largest private funder of media arts in the country - which has re-written its program guidelines to explicitly reject media "art" in favor of "community-based organizations that are working to promote social justice and democracy through media," to the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Foundation, which has developed new programs to fund artists who work with "communities" - however that might be defined. The terms "public" and "community" imply two very different relationships between the artist and the administrative apparatus of the city. The public artist most commonly interacts with urban planners, architects, and city agencies concerned with the administration of public buildings and spaces, while the community-based public artist more commonly interacts with social service agencies and social workers (women's shelters, homeless advocates, neighborhood groups, etc.). In each case the interaction between the artist and the community is mediated through a discursive network of professional institutions and ideologies that the artist collaborates with and, in some cases, seeks to radicalize or challenge. The shift toward a "new" community-based public art is evident in Chicago curator Mary Jane Jacobs's two most recent projects. The works she included in her exhibition for the 1991 Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina ("Places with a Past"), although involving a degree of interaction between the artist and a given site, by and large remained within the sculpture/installation mode. On the other hand, the works in her most recent and highly publicized project, ("Culture in Action: New Public Art in Chicago" held in the summer of 1993), were developed, in Jacobs's words, "with the co-participation of an artist, but also with a lot of decision-making happening on the part of constituent-collaborators who are not artists - like students, and in the case of some of the other projects: factory workers, mothers in a public housing development, AIDS volunteers, gang youth, and so forth."(3) The new public art draws, both consciously and unconsciously, from the history of progressive urban reform. This is clear in its concern with ameliorating problems typically associated with the city (homelessness, gang culture, "at-risk" youth, etc. …

History and the Culture Wars: The Case of the Smithsonian Institution's Enola Gay Exhibition.

Abstract: The cancellation of the National Air and Space Museum's (NASM) original Enola Gay exhibition in January 1995 may constitute the worst tragedy to befall the public presentation of history in the United States in this generation. In displaying the Enola Gay without analysis of the event that gave the B-29 airplane its significance, the Smithsonian Institution forfeited an opportunity to educate a worldwide audience in the millions about one of this century's defining experiences. An exhibition that explored the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan -an event historians view as significant in itself and symbolic of the end of World War II, the beginning of the Cold War, and the dawn of the nuclear age -might have been the most important museum presentation of the decade and perhaps of the era. The secretary and the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian abandoned this major exhibition for political reasons: Veterans' groups, political commentators, social critics, and politicians had charged that the exhibition script dishonored the Americans who fought the war by questioning the motives for using the bombs, by portraying the bomb as unnecessary to end the war, and by sympathizing too much with the Japanese killed by the bombs and, by implication, with the Japanese cause. Thus one of the premiere cultural institutions of the United States, its foremost museum system, surrendered its scholarly independence and a significant amount of its authority in American intellectual life to accommodate to a political perspective. The full implications of the cancellation are still far from clear, but an interpretation deeply disturbing to historians and museum professionals has begun to emerge. Smithsonian secretary I. Michael Heyman has suggested that the institution should

An Analysis of Differences between Visitors at Natural History Museums and Science Centers.

Abstract: As museum staff search for ways to broaden their audience, creative collaborations are emerging among various institutions with the hope that visitors who typically visit science centers, for example, will venture over to their local natural history museum. Typically, front-end evaluation is used for understanding details about visitors in the context of a proposed exhibition. Front-end evaluation can also help collaborating museums understand the nuances among their visitors regarding demographics, attitudes, and preferences for interpretive strategies. Carefully articulating the characteristics of the actual audience, potential audience, and target audience will help exhibit developers fine-tune their exhibitions to meet the needs and expectations of a more diverse public. This article presents partial findings from a front-end evaluation that analyzed the differences between visitors to natural history museums and science centers.

The Pink Glass Swan: Selected Essays on Feminist Art

Abstract: In the 1970s, Lucy R. Lippard, author of the highly original and popular Mixed Blessings, merged her art-world concerns with those of the then-fledgling women's movement. In a career that spans sixteen books and scores of articles, catalogs, and essays on art, political activism, feminism, and multiculturalism, her engaging and provocative writings have heralded a new way of thinking about art and its role in the feminist movement. This new collection of previously published essays covers more than two decades of Lippard's thinking on the ever-evolving definitions of feminist art, the convergence of high and low art, political and activist art, and the contributions of feminist theory to the politics of identity that infuses the production and exhibition of much of today's fine and popular art. With a new introduction from the author, The Pink Glass Swan brings together selections from two of Lippard's leading works, From the Center: Feminist Essays on Art and Get the Message?: A Decade of Art for Social Change, and numerous other articles written for newspapers, magazines, and art catalogs across the country.

History after the Enola Gay Controversy: An Introduction

Abstract: OnJanuary 30, 1995, Secretary I. Michael Heyman of the Smithsonian Institution announced that the world's most popular museum, the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) in Washington, had decided to replace an exhibition it had been planning since 1988, "The Last Act: The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II," with a smaller display that eschewed controversy and "interpretation." He explained: "We made a basic error in attempting to couple an historical treatment of the use of atomic weapons with the 50th anniversary commemoration of the end of the war.... Veterans and their families were expecting ... that the nation would honor and commemorate their valor and sacrifice.... They were not looking for analysis, and . . . we did not give enough thought to the intense feelings . . . analysis would evoke."1 The debate that led up to and followed Heyman's decision was much more than a controversy between veterans and scholars or another battle in "the culture wars." The story is familiar: NASM curators completed an exhibition script in January 1994. The Air Force Association (AFA) launched a campaign against that script in March. The United States Senate unanimously proclaimed the script "revisionist and offensive to many World War II veterans" in September. Curators negotiated content with veterans' groups. Historians, led by the Organization of American Historians (OAH) in October, formally condemned "revisions of interpretations of history for reasons outside . . . professional procedures and criteria." The American Legion broke off negotiations and called for cancellation of the exhibit in January 1995. Two weeks later Heyman acted.2

Textualterity: Art, Theory, and Textual Criticism

Abstract: How might it be that works of art and literature are not just made, but unmade, remade, and made over? Joseph Grigely argues that it is the very nature of art to incorporate change by editors and conservators, and as it is resituated in different publications and exhibition sites. Asserting that the common editorial practice of creating eclectic texts is essentially a eugenic practice based on Romanticism's desire for racial and textual purity, Grigely reconceives the notion of textual difference, or textualterity. Grigely draws not only on a wide range of cultural transformations in nineteenth--and twentieth-century literature-- including Thomas Bowdler's 1818 edition of Shakespeare and the Reader's Digest condensed edition of Tom Sawyer--but on a detailed exploration of recent controversies in the arts to argue for the need to understand these textual transformations as fundamental cultural phenomena. In a concluding chapter devoted to Jackson Pollock's Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), Grigely shows how the title and the media of Pollock's painting have been changed (by friends, curators, and an inch-long cicada) in ways that ultimately affect our conceptualization of the work of art as a timeless object. By moving between the scholarly territory of textual research and the critical territory of contemporary conceptual art, Grigely creates a transdisciplinary discourse that engages current discussions on framing, authorial intentions, collaborative authorship, and moral rights. Textualterity will be essential reading for textual critics, art historians and theorists, and students of cultural theory and history. Joseph Grigely is Associate Professor of Art, Universityof Michigan.

Charles And Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century

Abstract: Early lives and works a lifelong collaboration architecture functioning decoration furniture exhibitions film, multi-media, and multi-screen presentations.

The Independent Group: Modernism and Mass Culture in Britain, 1945-1959

Abstract: This study looks at the artists, designers and writers who formed the Independent Group in the early 1950s including such influential figures as Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi, Nigel Henderson, William Turnball, Rayner Banham and Alison and Peter Smithson. As a group they aimed to raise the status of popular objects and icons within modern visual culture. The development of the Independent Group is mapped out against the changing nature of modernism during the Cold War era, as well as the impact of mass consumption on post-war British society. In this book, Massey examines the cultural context of the formation of the Group, covering the founding of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the meanings of modernism, and the creation of a national identity. Key exhibitions such as "Parallel of Life and Art" and "This Is Tomorrow" are also examined. (from publisher's website)

Philanthropy and public enterprise: International exhibitions and the modern town planning movement, 1889–1913

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to explore how modern town planning became an international movement before 1914. In this formative period, there was a professionalization of skills in town planning which might have fragmented the movement. Yet this did not happen. Experts were held together by the search for a better urban environment for the future. This search took place at meetings held at world expositions in cities across Europe and North America and it was funded largely by private philanthropy. This unique context shaped international collaboration.

Picturing an Exhibition: The Family of Man and 1950s America

Abstract: The Family of Man, a photography exhibition curated by Edward Steichen, opened at the Museum of Modern Art in 1955. More people saw that exhibit than any other show of photographs, and the book of the same title remains in print to this day. Despite the enormous success of this assemblage of photographs, surprisingly little critical attention has been paid to The Family of Man as a phenomenon. Eric Sandeen presents here the first in-depth study of the exhibit and its influence worldwide. He examines how the exhibit came to be assembled, the beliefs and background Edward Steichen brought to the project, and what he wanted to show about the human condition from his selection of images. He then looks at the politics and culture of the 1950s to determine why the show was so popular at the time. When the United States Information Agency toured the photographs throughout the world in five different versions for seven years, The Family of Man became a symbol for and projection of American values and the culture of abundance. The richness and historical complexity of this exhibit have been overlooked, especially in the post-Vietnam decades, as critics have been quick to dismiss it as sentimental. Sandeen shows the exhibit to be a great deal more than a compendium of beautiful but unchallenging photographs. He also unfolds its multilayered relationship with and reflection of the values of postwar America.

Art and power : Europe under the dictators, 1930-45

Abstract: This survey provides an in-depth study of the relationship of art and power in what has been called the "Europe of the Dictators", between 1930 and 1945 - published as the catalogue for a major exhibition at the Hayward Gallery which opened in late 1995. In Hitler's Germany, Stalin's USSR and Mussolini's Italy, art was used to reinforce the strength of the political rulers, to shape and influence, to celebrate and demonstrate the seductive nature of power. But despite the ambitious architectural projects and public monuments, the grand portraits and gigantic sculptures, artistic freedom was restricted under these regimes. Art movements that had flourished pre-1930 were suppressed, and efforts were channelled into new, populist forms that expressed the ideals of the state. With over 450 illustrated examples, ranging from painting and sculpture to large-scale architecture, from cinema and photography to literature, this volume examines in essays, by some of today's leading art historians, the often uneasy relationship between art and power. Including biographies of all the artists and architects, an illustrated chronology, and extracts from contemporary reviews and journals, this text should be a valuable resource for students and art historians, and an important study for anyone interested in the history of the period. An afterword is included by Neal ascherson.

Art in museums.

Abstract: Part 1 The Chantrey episode: art classification, museums and the state circa 1870-1920 the origins of the early picture gallery catalogue in Europe, and its application in Victorian Britain the devaluation of "cultural capital" - postmodern democracy and the art blockbuster the collection despite Barnes - from private preserve to blockbuster the public interest in the art museums' public audiences - a curatorial dilemma extending the frame - forging a new partnership with the public revolutionary "vandalism" and the birth of the museum Rome, the archetypal museum, and the Louvre, the negation of division the historicality of art - Royal Academy (1780-1836) and Courtauld Institute Galleries (1990 - ) at Somerset House Part 2 Reviews edited by Eilean Hooper-Greenhill: "He shoots! he scores!" - Toronto's new Hockney Hall of Fame is a winner St Mungo's Museum of Religious Art and Life from Petrarch to Huizinga - the visual arts as an historical source report on the conference "To the genealogy of the museum", Nationalmuseet Copenhagen, 23-25 September 1993

The 1994 AAAI Robot Competition and Exhibition

Abstract: The third annual AAAI Robot Competition and Exhibition was held in 1994 during the Twelfth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Seattle, Washington. The competition was designed to showcase and compare the state of the art in autonomous indoor mobile robots. The competition featured Office Delivery and Office Cleanup events, which demanded competence in navigation, object recognition, and manipulation. The competition was organized into four parts: (1) a preliminary set of trials, (2) the competition finals, (3) a public robot exhibition, and (4) a forum to discuss technical issues in AI and robotics. Over 15 robots participated in the competition and exhibition. This article describes the rationale behind the events and the rules for the competition. It also presents the results of the competition and related events and provides suggestions for the direction of future exhibitions.

Reconsidering the object of art : 1965-1975

Abstract: Introduction, Ann Goldstein and Anne Rorimer escape attempts, Lucy R. Lippard artists in the exhibition, Ann Goldstein and Anne Rorimer aspects, Stephen Melville "marks of indifference" - aspects of photography in, or as, conceptual art, Jeff Wall information, communication, documentation - an introduction to the chronology of group exhibitions and bibliographies, Susan L. Jenkins.

“A Tonic to the Nation”: The Festival of Britain, 1951

Abstract: No event of the post-Second World War decade in Britain is recalled as affectionately or enveloped in such an aura of nostalgia as the Festival of Britain, a five-month series of cultural events and exhibits, with its centerpiece at the South Bank in London. But the Festival dear to the recollections of those growing up during and after the war diverged sharply from the original conception of its progenitors.In 1943 the Royal Society of the Arts, partly responsible for the Great Exhibition of 1851, suggested to the government that an international exhibition along similar lines be staged in 1951 to commemorate the earlier event. To propose a celebratory occasion in 1943 was an act of faith that the war would not only end successfully, but that Britain would have recovered sufficiently by 1951 to warrant such a demonstration. In September 1945, with the war over and Labour in power, Gerald Barry, the editor of the News Chronicle, addressed an open letter to Stafford Cripps, then President of the Board of Trade, advocating a trade and cultural exhibition in London as a way of commemorating the centenary of the Crystal Palace. Such an exhibition would advertise British products and display British prowess in design and craftsmanship. He favored a site in the center of London, such as Hyde Park or Battersea, either of which would provide ample space for such an exhibition. What prompted these suggestions was the need to provide practical help to British commerce at a time when it was clearly under pressure shifting from wartime controls to peacetime competition.

Art and Technology: An Old Tension

Abstract: This is not the first time the title ‘Art and Technology’ has been used, but to distinguish what I have to say from Walter Gropius's Bauhaus exhibition of 1923, I am subtitling my paper ‘an old tension’, where the architect spoke of ‘a new unity’. In a way, Gropius has been proved right; the structures of the future avoiding all romantic embellishment and whimsy, the cathedrals of socialism, the corporate planning of comprehensive Utopian designs have all gone up and some come down. We have a mass media culture also largely made possible by technology. Corporatist architecture, whether statist ‘social housing’ or freemarket inspired, films, videos, modern recording and musical techniques are all due to technological advances made mostly this century. Only in a very puritanical sense could what has happened be thought of as inevitably bringing with it enslavement. All kinds of possibilities are now open to artists and architects, which would have been imaginable a few decades ago. No one is forced to use these possibilities in any specific way.

Museums and Controversy: Some Introductory Reflections

Abstract: In opening this panel on museums and controversial exhibitions, my plan is to begin addressing the problem by describing some episodes in its pre-1970 history. Then I will turn to more recent experiences and attempt to account for them. I will end by raising questions about museums as institutions and their capacity to host shows driven by problems, rather than objects. I should announce my prejudices about controversial exhibitions at the start. It seems to me that while controversies are fueled by strong disagreements, they can neither be produced on demand nor invariably be predicted. In our day some exhibitions, planned for peaceful and consensual reception, ended up mired in angry debate. Others, planned in anticipation of contention, have reaped indifference instead. Because controversy often lies outside an institution's control, it is not necessarily a policy choice; it is frequently produced by reactions rather than intentions. Is it possible, in our society, for museums deliberately to avoid all controversy in their choice of exhibitions? If they could, would it be wise for them to do so? My answer to both questions is no. Any institution concerned with historical interpretation that deliberately and conspicuously avoids provocation will itself become a subject for criticism. Controversy should be neither a criterion for producing a specific exhibition nor a bar to it. There are other, better reasons for deciding to mount-or not to mount-a show. Why have we recently become so consumed by the problem? Are we simply waking up to an old but ignored predicament? Is the history of controversial exhibitions marked by a record of actions from which we can take counsel? The answers are ambiguous. When I began to think about this problem, I thought I would emphasize its novelty. I know of few studies of exhibition controversy as such. And, after reading the dozen essays by distinguished historians in the 1989 publication History Museums in the United States, I was confirmed in the view that we faced a novel dilemma. I was struck by the book's failure to treat the character and impact of controversy. Analyzing the spectacular growth of history museums in the United States, acknowledging the expanding role of revisionist

London at war, 1939-1945

Abstract: Published to coincide with a major exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, this book tells the story of London's experiences of war from 1939 to 1945. It describes the Phoney War, the blackouts, the first evacuations and the horrors of the Blitz, followed in the last days of the war by the terror of the doodlebugs, and recalls the spirit of defiance that united all sections of society against Hitler's Luftwaffe.

The Grosvenor Gallery Exhibitions: Change and Continuity in the Victorian Art World

Abstract: 1. The Grosvenor gallery: an historical account 2. The Grosvenor exhibitors, indexed alphabetically 3. The Grosvenor exhibitors, indexed according to year.

Meanings and messages : language guidelines for museum exhibitions

Abstract: An introductionExhibition texts and languageExhibitions are one of the major links between museums and the public. As communication devices, exhibitions make use of a wide variety of interpretive media - one of which is language in the form of exhibition texts. The text of an exhibition is only one of the elements that contributes to the overall messages of the exhibition, but the importance of its role is often overlooked. In most exhibitions the language of exhibition texts is the primary tool for creating meaning and communicating the museum's messages in an accessible way to a variety of audiences. For this reason it is important that museum staff understand the ways in which text and language function, and therefore how messages are constructed through the language of exhibition texts. n n