Archive of Past Events
Centre for Museology - Autumn Seminars 2011
[Download the seminar's poster]
All seminars at 5-6.30pm in Mansfield Cooper 4.10 (see directions here). All Welcome!
Monday 4th April, 5-6.30pm, Mansfield Cooper 4.10
Dr Claire Wintle, University of Brighton
What the visitor thought: Situating the historical visitor at Brighton Museum, 1900-1945
Critiques of 'official' interpretations developed by public institutions and curators tell us much about the histories of academic thought and the intended approaches of such organisations. This paper, however, will focus on how these official agendas were actually received in practice, emphasising the extent to which discrepancies between intended meaning and popular understanding of museum displays occurred. It will use a discussion of visitor engagement with non-European material cultures in the provincial museum to critique the assumption of the pervasive nature of curatorial control of audience reception; I explore instead how museum publics form individual responses to cultural heritage, sometimes rejecting official interpretation and drawing upon wider cultural references and experiences.
Dr Claire Wintle is a Lecturer in the History of Art and Design at the University of Brighton. She has an MA in Art Gallery & Museum Studies at the University of Manchester (2003-4) and has taught at the University of Sussex since 2006. She has worked in collections and public programmes at the Walker Art Gallery, World Museum Liverpool and the Museum of Science and Industry. She has recently published in Victorian Studies and the History Workshop Journal.
Everyone Welcome!
For more info, email Christopher.Plumb-2@manchester.ac.uk
The ICP in Singapore
This February, the Institute for Cultural Practices travels to Singapore. Helen Rees Leahy and Simon Parry will be leading a workshop for cultural agencies and practitioners entitled " 'From Audience to Stakeholders: Rethinking Cultural Participation in the 21st Century'.
Helen will also be leading master classes on the current issues and opportunities for children's museums and university museums respectively. For further information about working with the ICP in this country or overseas, please email us at: museology@manchester.ac.uk
MA and PhD Funding Opportunities
For entry in September 2011 the Centre for Museology is offering funding opportunities for MA and PhD/Professional Doctorate study.
MA Funding: Infomation and application procedure
PhD/Professional Doctorate Funding: Information and application procedure
Deadline for all awards has now passed ( 1 March 2011).
Monday 21st March 2011, 5-6.30pm, Mansfield Cooper 4.10
Dr Colin Trodd, University of Manchester
William Blake has entered the building; or, stories of Blakean masterliness in British art galleries, 1876-1959
The story of how cultural institutions deal with the afterlife or reconstruction of artistic identity has for a long time been overshadowed by the symbolic value of canon formation: a tale of how styles, periods or forms of innovation or experimentation cohere into stable patterns or structures of meaning. In fact, most studies of the processes by which artistic value is institutionalised reveal a different picture: of complex critical fields coloured by a number of factors including interaction of cultural forces, social relations and modes of subjectivity. This semi-hidden world of engagement and judgement is the main focus of a paper that examines the reformative apparatus that enabled curators, critics and collectors to imagine Blake as a masterly artist. In essence, this paper sets out to answer one of the central questions in Blake studies: how can we explain his transformation from an unrepeatable or toxic subject into a complete angelus of modern culture?
Colin Trodd is a Lecturer in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Manchester. He is the co-editer of Victorian Culture and the Idea of the Grotesque (Ashgate, 1999); Art and the Academy in the Nineteenth Century (MUP, 2000); Governing Cultures: Art Institutions in Victorian London (Ashgate, 2000); Representations of G.F. Watts: Art Making in Victorian Culture (Ashgate, 2004) and author of Visions of Blake: William Blake in the Art World, 1830-1930 (LUP, 2011).
Museums and Restitution is a two-day international conference examining the issue of restitution in relation to the changing role and authority of the museum, focussing on new ways in which these institutions are addressing the subject. Register now!
Centre for Museology Autumn Seminars 2010
Monday 4th October, 5-6.30pm, Mansfield Cooper 4.10
Victoria Dickenson, Chief Knowledge Officer, Canadian Museum for Human Rights
Re-forming the museum, or can you put new wine into old bottles?
Monday 11th October, 5-6.30pm, Mansfield Cooper 4.10
Suzanne MacLeod, Deputy Head of School & Senior Lecturer, School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester
Ration Cards, Coupon Hordes and Art: Occupation by Friendly Forces and the Battle for Liberation at the Walker Art Gallery, 1939 - 1951.
Monday 8th November, 5-6.30pm, Mansfield Cooper 4.10
Paul Domela, Programme Director, Liverpool Biennial
Biennial Studies
Monday 29th November, 5-6.30pm, Mansfield Cooper 4.10
Sharon Macdonald, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester
Carried away - or not? Towards an anthropology of museums and shopping.
Everyone Welcome!
For further information please contact: Louise.tythacott@manchester.ac.uk
Centre for Museology Autumn Seminars 2010
Monday 4th October 2010, 5-6.30pm, Mansfield Cooper 4.10
Victoria Dickenson, Chief Knowledge Officer of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights
Re-forming the museum, or can you put new wine into old bottles?
Almost since its inception, the museum form has been criticized both for what it does and does not do. What is the museum form and how amenable is it to change? Can it serve a useful role in contemporary globalized societies, with their deep diversities and intersectional complexities? This seminar will explore something of the history of the museum form, examine how it has been used for varying purposes, and suggest recent approaches undertaken at a number of Canadian museums, including the new Canadian Museum for Human Rights, that might indeed maintain the form but radically alter its contents.
Dr. Victoria Dickenson is one of Canada's best known and most respected museum professionals. She obtained her Masters in Museum Studies from the University of Toronto in 1972 and her PhD in history from Carleton University (Ottawa) in 1995. She is currently Chief Knowledge Officer of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Canada's newest national museum, in Winnipeg. She was formerly Executive Director, McCord Museum of Canadian History in Montreal from 1998-2009.
Everyone Welcome!
For more info, email Louise.tythacott@manchester.ac.uk
Centre for Museology Autumn Seminars 2010
Monday 11th October 2010, 5-6.30pm, Mansfield Cooper 4.10
Suzanne MacLeod, Deputy Head of School & Senior Lecturer, University of Leicester
Ration Cards, Coupon Hordes and Art: Occupation by Friendly Forces and the Battle for Liberation at the Walker Art Gallery 1939 - 1951
This paper explores the period from 1939 to 1951 in the architectural history of the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. As the threat of war loomed, Liverpool councillors and the various services such as Fire and Police made arrangements for what would happen in an emergency and, in late 1938, it was agreed that should war break out, the Walker Art Gallery building would be handed over to the Ministry of Food for administration purposes. When Chamberlain announced that Britain was at war on September 3rd 1939, the clearing and handover of the Walker to the war effort was finalised without delay. The shipping of the collections to country houses and other safe havens was completed and on the 4th September 1939, only one day after the official outbreak of war, the Ministry of Food took occupation of the Gallery. A short six years after the Gallery's renovation and extension, the building was given over to a new role and a whole new range of uses. Through this use and for a full decade, the building would be transformed into a very different place and the activity of the small Gallery staff would be sidelined to a few offices in the building. What emerges from the evidence is a picture of a Gallery Director freed from the constraints of managing a building, who grasped his opportunity to develop innovative and creative projects and build, over the next twelve years, a career as the leading provincial gallery director. More than this, the war saw Lambert and his old and new colleagues on the Gallery and Ministry of Food staffs emerge as brave and dedicated defenders of the buildings along William Brown Street, heroic figures in many senses.
Suzanne MacLeod is Deputy Head of School and Senior Lecturer in the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester. She is Managing Editor of Museum and Society and is currently writing an architectural history of the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool: Occupying the Architecture of the Gallery: spatial, social and professional change at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 1877-2002.
Everyone Welcome!
For more info,email Louise.tythacott@manchester.ac.uk
Centre for Museology Autumn Seminars 2010
Monday 8th November, 5-6.30pm, Mansfield Cooper 4.10
Paul Domela, Programme Director, Liverpool Biennial
Biennial Studies
Biennials collapse past and future in order to capture the present. Histories that have not yet passed mesh with futures that have already begun. The practice and history of Biennials is largely immaterial, having more in common with the Kunsthalle than collecting institutions. Biennials take their identity from cities, not nation states, not ethnicity, not race, not gender. This has allowed Biennials to be extraordinarily successful in embracing art practices from every part of the world, spreading to every part of the world, bringing and representing internationalism to every city in which they take place. Cities like internationalism. With the advent of Biennials the cultural background of the artist no longer needs to fit a national canon, they are inscribed in global art production. What curators look for is the ability of the artist to engage a place or theme. This engagement often happens in unusual places, forcing visitors to explore parts of the urban fabric that museums and galleries can only represent. What are some of the possibilities created by Biennials and how might we trace their relation to museums and collections?
Paul Domela is currently Programme Director of Liverpool Biennial and was Deputy Chief Executive from 2001 to 2007. He co-curated the International exhibition in 2004 and 2006. For 2010 he organised City States, a six international exhibitions about the cultural dynamics between cities and states as part of a programme of international exchanges and residencies. He is co-founder of the European Biennial Network, and member of the boards of Liverpool School of Art and Design, the Biennial Foundation and International Foundation Manifesta. He was a co-curator for Shrinking Cities in Berlin (2004-08), Die Lucky Bush, a project of Imogen Stidworthy for MuHKA, Antwerp (2007) and In the First Circle, Tapies Foundation (2011).
Everyone Welcome!
For more info, email Louise.tythacott@manchester.ac.uk
Centre for Museology Autumn Seminars 2010
Monday 29th November 2010, 5-6.30pm, Mansfield Cooper 4.10
Sharon Macdonald, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester.
Carried away - or not? Towards an anthropology of museums and shopping
Museum studies has been predominantly concerned with the production, display and viewing of objects in the galleries of museums. That is, it has focused primarily on things that cannot - at least, literally, legally and usually - be taken away from museums. Drawing variously on anthropological theories of gifts, commodities, value, temporality and the affective qualities of things, this presentation will argue that a focus on museum shops - and shopping practices - can help us to better understand the particular object-value relations that the museum attempts to establish; and what people might want or get from museums. It will include attention to the history of museum shops; the interrelationship between museum and commercial display; and empirical data on museum gift shop marketing strategies and sales. Those attending the seminar are warmly invited to bring along an item of their own that they acquired in a museum shop (either directly through purchase or theft or as gifted to them).
Sharon Macdonald is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. She is author of Behind the Scenes at the Science Museum (2002) and Difficult Heritage (2009), and editor of A Companion to Museum Studies (2006), Exhibition Experiments (with P.Basu, 2007) and Theorizing Museums (with G. Fyfe, 1996).
Everyone Welcome!
For more info, email Louise.tythacott@manchester.ac.uk
*SAVE THE DATE*
Centre for Museology Postgraduate Research ForumTuesday 8th June 2010
Launch of the Institute for Cultural Practices
The Centre for Museology is now part of the new Institute for Cultural Practices (ICP) in the School of Arts Histories and Cultures.
The Institute provides a platform for innovative research, postgraduate teaching and professional development which engages with cultural producers and organizations in Greater Manchester and beyond. The Institute brings together researchers, practitioners and students across a range of disciplines, including: Applied Theatre, Arts Management and Cultural Policy, Museology, Music Composition, New Writing and Screen Studies. Whether you are a prospective student, a professional practitioner, a policy-maker or a researcher, we hope that the programmes and activities offered by the Institute will be of value and interest to you.
For more information about the ICP, visit our website.
Centre for Museology Spring Series 2010
Everyone is welcome to come along to our Research Seminar programme in which scholars and practitioners present new work on the theory, history and practice of museums.
Monday 8th February
Frances Larson
Honorary Research Fellow in Anthropology, Durham University
The 'bric-a-bracquers': An exploration into the demographics of collecting in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century
Larson's lecture will draw on her groundbreaking research into the history of both the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Wellcome Collection to explore the demographics of collecting.
Monday 22nd February
Bernadette Lynch
Honorary Research Fellow, University of Manchester
Museums and civil society: Resistance, activism and social change
This paper will examine how, by embracing the dynamic of the political the museum may become an important partner in agitating for social awareness and change.
Monday 1st March
Julie Sheldon
Reader in Art History, Liverpool John Moores University
'Enthusiasm and Unwearied Diligence': Lady Eastlake at the National Gallery
Sheldon, editor of the letters of Lady Eastlake, will consider Eastlake's place among the partisan circle of amateurs and professionals that collaborated in order to secure paintings for the nation in the nineteenth century.
All seminars 5pm, Mansfield Cooper 4.10
Everyone Welcome!
'Manchester on display' Student Exhibitions- 2009
MA Art Gallery and Museum Studies New Student Exhibitions
MA students on the course 'Museums, Museology & Museographies' will be unveiling their exhibitions in the new Museology showcase in the foyer of the Mansfield Cooper Building this Autumn. Four groups have curated exhibitions on the theme of Manchester. Each exhibition will be up for a week from November to December 2009
20-27 November 2009: The Lost Stage
Livia Argentesi, Anna Bates,
Dot Baldwin, Sarah Bridges,
Emily Smeaton, & Alice Roberts
27 Nov- 4 Dec 2009: The Multi-Story City
Dan Feeney, Erika Kvam, Claire Dooley
Catherine Jackman, Charlotte Skelton,
Eleanor Ridley, & Hannah Manson
4-11 December 2009: Unveiling Voices 20 Perspectives of Manchester
Jennifer Dean, Shane Smith,
Michele Toolson, Lizzie Walley
& Hannah White
11-18 December 2009: Your Manchester
Hannah Lawson, Kayleigh Carr,
Catherine Downey, Demetra Louvrou,
Cordelia Mackay, & Alex Patterson
Do come and enjoy the shows!
Join the discussion on the AGMS Flickr page and Blog
Mash-Up Museum Archaeology
Dr Kostas Arvanitis (Project Leader, Centre for Museology) and Dr Siân Jones (Archaeology) have been awarded a Teaching Development Grant by the Higher Education Academy (Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology) for a project titled 'Mash-up Archaeology: Aggregating Web Content on Museum Archaeology and Archaeological Heritage'. The project involves the development of a website that aggregates automatically web content relevant to postgraduate and undergraduate study of archaeology and museum studies. The project' s website will provide an active environment for teaching and learning, which will not merely be about providing content, but will also facilitate the development of students' skills in evaluation and critical thinking of online material on museum archaeology and archaeological heritage. This resource will be part of the curriculum development of the Museums and Archaeology course (commencing in January 2009).
Etching with engraving of a diorama by Frederick Ruysch, Amsterdam 1744
Centre for Museology Research Forum
Monday 18th May, 11am - 3.30pm
Manchester Museum Conference Room
Speakers:
Dr Sam Alberti, A Parliament of Monsters: Bodies in the Medical Museum
Julian Hartley, The Interaction of Museum Experience with Online Networks
Eleanor Thompson, Displaying Dress at Platt Hall Gallery of Costume
Erik Bramall, Museums in a Ritual Landscape: The Great War and British Identity 1914-2009
Halona Norton-Westbrook, Early Curatorial Vision and the Development of Art Historical Methodology in the Wallace Collection
The Research Forum is a showcase for current staff and PhD research in the Centre for Museology. Short papers are followed by plenty of time for discussion. Lunch is provided.
Centre for Museology Spring Seminars 09
Wednesday 25th February, 4-5.30pm
Imogen Stidworthy
Die Lucky Bush and other projects
Mansfield Cooper Room 4.05
Wednesday 18th March 4-5.30pm
Dr Elizabeth Hallam, University of Aberdeen
Material anatomies: model l ing the human body
Mansfield Cooper Room 4.05
Wednesday 25th March, 4-5.30pm
Dr Rhiannon Mason, University of Newcastle
What role can digital heritage play in the re-imagining of
national identities: England and its icons
Mansfield Cooper Room 4.05
Egyptology Gallery, The Manchester Museum
New course in the MA Art Gallery and Museum Studies: Museums and Archaeology
Next year (2008/09) the Centre for Museology will offer a new course as part of the Masters programme in Art Gallery and Museum Studies, titled Museums and Archaeology.
This course will explore issues of collecting, interpreting and exhibiting archaeological material in museum environments. By examining the theory and practice of interpretation and display in archaeological museums the course will provide students with a knowledge and understanding of critical issues in contemporary curating. The main context of the course will be archaeological museums, but also links will be made to other museum environments, such as archaeological sites and open-air museums. The course will reflect current trends and challenges in the areas of museology, museum archaeology and public archaeology.
The course will enrich the Art Gallery and Museum Studies MA programme by adding to but not overlapping the range of option courses offered in the second semester. It will be of particular interest to students, who wish to gain a broad and in-depth understanding of museological theory and curatorial practice around archaeological collections and displays in museums. The course will offer knowledge and skills relevant to work in museums, historic houses, sites, and organisations, such as the English Heritage and National Trust.
For information about the AGMS programme in 2008/09, contact: museology@manchester.ac.uk
Integrating ICT
Integrating ICT in Exhibitions
On 6th October 2008, a round table was held at the Conference Room of the Manchester Museum in Oxford Road under the title 'Integrating ICT in museums' The event brought together academics, museum professionals and ICT specialists with the aim of debating current and emerging ways to integrate interactive technology in museums and galleries.
The event was part of a postdoctoral research project funded by the British Academy and developed at the Centre for Museology that explores the specific usefulness of ICT for museums and galleries. The project includes a qualitative investigation of the incorporation of ICT in the exhibition design, with particular reference to museums and galleries in Manchester.
Read more...
Wellcome Trust Funding for medical museums project
The Wellcome Trust has awarded Dr Sam Alberti , Lecturer at the Centre for Museology and Research Fellow at the Manchester Museum, a research leave award to study nineteenth-century pathological collections. From February 2008 until January 2009 he will be writing about morbid objects in Manchester, London, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dublin.
The Centre4Museology delicious pages
The Centre for Museology is delicious
It is a fact: the Centre for Museology is delicious! Delicious is a social bookmarking website. Its primary use is to store bookmarks online, which allows one to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere too. We have set up the Centre4Museology delicious page, which will include bookmarks relevant to Museology and more specifically to issues, topics and courses of the Art Gallery and Museum Studies MA programme.
Students will have access to the page and will be able to add and thus share bookmarks relevant to their study and courses. In this way, we hope that throughout the year (and of course the following years), a repository of museologically relevant and more importantly course and subject-specific web resources will be developed, which will be useful primarily to our students and members of staff and possibly others as well. You can read more about the Centre4Museology on the relevant post of the Digital Heritage blog.
Bec Garland, Dover Street
Centre for Museology - Autumn Seminar Series 2008
Wednesday 8th October, 4pm-6pm
Anthony Shelton, University of British Columbia
From Museum to Multiversity: Rearticulating the Museum
Mansfield Cooper Room 2.04
Wednesday 29th October, 4pm-6pm
Laia Pujol Tost, Centre for Museology
Integrating ICT in Museums
Mansfield Cooper Room 4.05
Wednesday 12th November, 4pm-6pm
Cathy Pearson, University College London
Places to Contemplate Beauty and Peace: Museums in Wartime Britain
Mansfield Cooper Room 4.05
Wednesday 26th November, 4pm-6pm
Robert Knifton, Manchester Metropolitan University
Memory, History and Forgetting in the Museum
Mansfield Cooper Room 4.05
Everyone Welcome!
For further information please contact:
helen.rees@manchester.ac.uk
*Download the poster of the seminar series*
Laia Pujol Post
British Academy Visiting Research Fellow
Dr Laia Pujol Post has joined the Centre for Museology as a British Academy Visiting Research fellow. Laia's research in Manchester involves an in-depth analysis of the in-gallery use of ICT using three museums/galleries as case studies in Manchester. Towards this goal, Laia is investigating how different ICT applications are conceived and integrated within the exhibition design process. The research includes gallery observation, interviews with curators and a round-table seminar with staff of the museums/galleries under investigation and other academics and professionals. The seminar will discuss ways for future integration of in-gallery ICT. The conclusions of this event will be available at the Centre for Museology's website.
Dr Laia Pujol Tost was born in Barcelona in 1976. She studied at the University of Bordeaux-I (Maîtrise in Prehistory) and at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), where she obtained an M.Phil. in Prehistoric Archaeology. In UAB Laia started her doctoral research project titled 'Archaeology, museums and computers: semiotic approach to the use of VR for the dissemination of Archaeology in museums', thanks to a pre-doctoral fellowship from the Catalan Government. In 2005, she obtained a Marie-Curie Early Stage Research Training Fellowship and moved to the University of the Aegean in Greece, where she completed her Ph.D thesis. In November 2006 she was awarded an European Ph.D. at the UAB.
Her main research field is the use of Information and Communication Technologies and more specifically Virtual Reality for the dissemination of Archaeology, in relation to which she has participated in funded projects and has organized international conferences and workshops in Spain and Greece. She has also presented several papers in international journals and conferences, one of which was awarded by VSMM Society with the Young Researcher Award (TAE).
She worked as a researcher on Computing Archaeology at the Local Architectural Heritage Service of Barcelona and as an ocasional lecturer at the UAB and the University of the Aegean (Museology Lab, Department of Cultural Technology and Communication), where she worked on three projects aimed at the evaluation of VR applications in museums. Her former position was at the Centre for the Study of Prehistoric and Archaeological Heritage of the UAB, where she developed national and international Cultural Heritage projects involving ICT.
Dagga Smoker
'Revealing Histories: Myths about Race' Exhibition
Many Victorian institutions, including The Manchester Museum, contributed to the same racist thinking that had justified slavery. As part of the Revealing Histories: Remembering Slavery project, Manchester Museum explores the difficult and sensitive issues that this raises. In this framework, a new exhibition titled 'Myths about Race' opened on the 25th of August 2007. The exhibition features a selection of objects and images that were used in museums and other media to support racist ideas. It also looks at the ways in which individuals and organisations in Manchester have worked to dispel these myths. Our own Sam Alberti was the chair of the content team, which included activists, collectors, academics, curators and archivists, from inside and outside the Museum. Read more about the exhibition.
Displaying Dress: New Models for Historic Collections - AHRC funded Collaborative Doctoral Award
The Centre for Museology and Manchester City Galleries have received a Collaborative Doctoral Award from the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) for a PhD studentship to start in September 2008.
The research topic is 'Displaying Dress: New Models for Historic Collections' and the project is intended to develop new models and theorisations for the display of historic (and contemporary) dress collections, thereby making an impact both on the scholarly fields of dress and museum studies and also on institutional practice in the UK and beyond. Specifically, the PhD research will inform the future development of display and interpretation at the Gallery of Costume at Platt Hall (part of Manchester City Galleries) so as to develop visitor engagement and learning. It is expected that the research project will include study of comparative models of display in the UK and overseas, and will also involve the development and evaluation of experimental displays at Platt Hall itself.
The PhD student will be co-supervised by Helen Rees Leahy (Centre for Museology) and Dr Miles Lambert (Manchester City Galleries) and will be based at both the University of Manchester and the Gallery of Costume at Platt Hall. If you would like to register your interest in hearing more about this funded studentship, please email Dr Helen Rees Leahy helen.rees@manchester.ac.uk
PhD Advertisement (pdf)
Further Particulars (pdf)
Expressions of interest must be received by Friday 23rd May 2008.
Completed applications should then be submitted to University of Manchester on the standard PhD application form by Monday 2nd June 2008.
Interviews will be held in Manchester on Friday 27th June 2008.
2nd Manchester Museology Research Forum
The second meeting of the Manchester Museology Research Forum will take place on 3rd June 2008. The idea of the Forum is to provide research students and staff in the Centre for Museology and beyond with an opportunity to present their current research, and especially work in progress.
Research Seminar: Resolving the museum/computer disconnect
by Dr Ross Parry, University of Leicester
Wednesday 30th April, 4pm
The Manchester Museum (Discovery Centre Room)
The Centre of Museology invites you to Dr Ross Parry's research seminar titled Resolving the museum/computer disconnect. By drawing upon new media theory and attempting a historical perspective (two things not, until recently, associated with studies of museum computing), Dr Parry will explore the enduring tension between today's museum and today's digital technology. What emerges is a historical incompatibly between the concept of a museum and the concept of the computer. However, what also emerges, in contrast, is a series of new practices and formations that are over-riding this 'disconnect' and that are allowing us to find new ways to disseminate the provision and experiences of our museums.
The seminar is free and open to all
For further information please contact Kostas Arvanitis
kostas.arvanitis@manchester.ac.uk
Biography
Dr. Ross Parry has been Lecturer in Museums and New Media at the University of Leicester since 1998. In 2005 he was made a HIRF Innovations Fellow for his work on developing in-gallery digital media, and in 2007 was awarded a University Teaching Fellowship for his outstanding contribution to meeting the training needs of the cultural heritage sector. Between 2002 and 2007 he was Programme Director for Leicester's campus-based Masters degree course in Museum Studies. He is currently chair of the university's Digital Heritage Research Group (DHRG), and currently supervisor to a number of PhD students.
His research is interested in the relationship between new technology (including pre-digital technology) and the ways memory institutions such as museums manage information and display knowledge. He is compiling a new addition to the series of Leicester Readers in Museum Studies entitled 'Museums in the Digital Age' (forthcoming 2008). Dr Parry is also the author of Recoding the Museum: digital heritage and technologies of change (Routledge 2007), the first major history of museum computing.
Manchester Museology Research Forum
The first meeting of the Manchester Museology Research Forum took place at the Manchester Museum on 16th January 2008. The idea of the Forum is to provide research students and staff in the Centre for Museology and beyond with an opportunity to present their current research, and especially work in progress. Given that Museology research students are also quite a diverse group, the day also provided the opportunity for people to meet and discover common interests and explore new concepts in the world of museology.
Dr Kostas Arvanitis, Lecturer in Museology, started the day with a paper based on his own research on archaeology, the museum and mobile media. Papers were also delivered by the following research students: Julia Snape, Rachel Souhami, Chris Plumb, Hannah Chalk and Joel Chalfen. Their topics ranged from the deployment of light as a medium of interpretation in 18th and 19th century museums of medieval art to the cultures of collecting live animals in the 18th century, the application of space syntax theory to exhibitionary practices, the cultural meanings of geological collections, and visitor practices at historical sites of conscience.
The next Forum will be held in June 2008, and all PGRs with an interest in museums are very welcome to participate. For further details please contact either Rob McCombe Robert.Mccombe@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk) or Helen Rees Leahy (helen.rees@manchester.ac.uk).
Papers Presented
Keynote Paper
'Turn up the volume': Museums, mobile media and the 'voice of the everyday'
Kostas Arvanitis
'From Darkness into Light: The Display and Perception of Medieval Art in the 19th Century Museum'
Julia Snape
'History and Curiosity at Tate Modern: an analysis of how structure, space and display techniques are used to communicate Tate Modern's accounts of art history'
Rachel Souhami
'Romancing the stones: University earth science collections as material culture'
Hannah-Lee Chalk
'Parrots, Politeness, and the Parlour: women and the production of knowledge about exotic birds in eighteenth century Britain'
Chris Plumb
'Interrupting the Silence: Visitor Dialogues at Three Historic Site Museums of Conscience'
Joel Chalfen
Centre for Museology 2008 Research Forum
Speakers:
Louise Tythacott, Recovering object meanings: the lives of a set of Buddhist sculptures in China and Britain
Ann French, Archaeologists as Collectors: The Greek Embroidery Collecting of R.M. Dawkins and A. J. B. Wace
Rob McCombe, Hoorah! For the Faussett Collection...' The life and times of the Kingston Brooch 1771-1886
Halona Norton-Westbrook, Contemporary Curatorial Practice in the Art Museum: A Collection of Experiences and Reflections
Jennie Morgan, Change and Everyday Practice at the Museum: An Ethnographic Study
James Pardoe, Dilettantes & Tourists: Visiting Literary Houses in the Romantic Age
The Research Forum is a showcase for current staff and PhD research in the Centre for Museology. Short papers are followed by plenty of time for discussion. Lunch is provided. The forum will be particularly useful for anyone thinking to do a PhD in Museology.
'A Joy for Ever': The Manchester Art-Treasures Exhibition in Print
An exhibition organised by the Centre for Museology at the John Rylands University Library Deansgate. Until May 2008.
As part of the events to mark the 150th anniversary of the Manchester Art-Treasures Exhibition, the Centre for Museology has organised a display of print and archival material relating to the 1857 Exhibition at the Rylands Library Deansgate. This small exhibition focuses on the representation of the Art-Treasures Exhibition in words and images, and tells the story of a unique event in Manchester's cultural history from the perspectives of organisers, visitors and critics.
Download the exhibition leaflet.
Find out more about exhibitions at the Rylands Library Deansgate.
University of Manchester
Open Day, 14th November 2007: Come and learn more about learning and teaching at the Centre for Museology!
If you are considering post-graduate study in and around museums, why not pop in to our next postgraduate open day, Wednesday 14 November 2007?
The open day is very informal, and gives you a great opportunity to see the University and to find out what Manchester has to offer you.
Museology staff and students will be available during the afternoon to talk in more detail about the Art Gallery and Museum Studies MA, as well as MPhil and PhD opportunities.
We will be in the Mansfield Cooper Building (number 65 on the campus map), room G22 from 14.00 until 16.00. The session will begin with a presentation about the Centre for Museology, but feel free to drop by at any time.
Throughout the day you can learn about the University and its Faculties generally; to find out more, and to register, see http://www.manchester.ac.uk/postgraduate/opendays/.
See you there!
The Object of Encounter at the Whitworth Art Gallery
'The Object of Encounter' is the name of a series of three experimental exhibitions at the Whitworth Art Gallery from 2005 to 2008, organised jointly by the Whitworth and the Centre for Museology.
Each exhibition presents unconventional and provocative displays drawn from the Whitworth collections, and explores how the art gallery's processes of acquisition, classification, conservation and exhibition constitute systems of meaning and value. The starting point for each exhibition is a critical text in cultural theory, and the current exhibition 'The Uncertainty of Identity: The Biographies of Things' was inspired by the essay 'The cultural biographies of things: commoditization as process' by Igor Kopytoff, published in 1986. The diversity of the Whitworth's collections of fine and applied art, combined with the institution's commitment to academic research and reflexive practice, make it a singularly appropriate site for this collaborative study.
Each exhibition is researched and organised by a team of MA students in Art Gallery & Museum Studies (AGMS), in collaboration with Whitworth Art Gallery curators and Helen Rees Leahy. The current exhibition runs until March 2008
Gelede Mask
Workshop: 'Out of Africa Representing Africa: Exhibition, Collection, Interpretation'
Monday 26th November 2007
2pm-5.15pm
Kanaris Lecture Theatre, The Manchester Museum
Social Anthropology and the Centre for Museology present: 'Out of Africa: Representing Africa: Exhibition, Collection, Interpretation'. A workshop on museum practice and theory: everyone welcome.
Papers and Speakers
'The Racialization of Cultures and the Cultures of Racialization: Putting African Villages in the Zoo'
Nina Glick-Schiller, University of Manchester
'After art history: interpreting Benin'
Peter Gyorgy, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest and at the Media Research Centre, Budapest University of Technology
'Telling Tales: narratives from the West African collections at the Manchester Museum'
Emma Poulter, University of Manchester
For further information, please contact:
sharon.macdonald@manchester.ac.uk or helen.rees@manchester.ac.uk
AHRC-funded project on 'The Lives of Chinese Objects'
In 2006, the discovery of a watercolour depiction of five large Buddhist sculptures at the Great Exhibition of 1851 led to a new research project on the 'Lives of Chinese Objects'.
Louise is completing a book on the biographies of the five sculptures, which are presently displayed in the World Museum Liverpool. The images originate from China's most popular pilgrimage island, Putuo, the key devotional centre for the Goddess of Compassion, Guanyin. The largest figure in the group is an almost life-size image of this deity, with 22 outstretched arms, and it dates to the early fifteenth century - as such, it is probably the oldest surviving bronze from the island. Louise visited Putuo in 2007 to interview Buddhist monks and research the origins of these sculptures.
The five statues were taken by a British soldier during the First Opium War (1839-42). After being displayed in Great Exhibition (1851) and the Crystal Palace in Sydenham (1854), the sculpture of Guanyin was exhibited in the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857. All five were sold for a high price at Sotheby's two years later. By the 1860s they formed part of the Joseph Mayer collection, which was donated to Liverpool in 1867. Over the years they were placed in evolutionary displays and an 'Oriental' art gallery. Louise was responsible for reinterpreting the sculptures when she worked as head of ethnology at the Liverpool Museum, though by that time they had lost all historical documentation. Three of the images were placed on display in the World Cultures Gallery in 2005.
Using the Kopytoff's (1986) notion of the biography of objects as a framework, the research charts the changing meanings ascribed to the sculptures as they pass through multiple spheres of representation. Their museological careers illustrate the complex and uneasy ways in which Chinese objects have been classified in the West, and their appropriation by a soldier in the aftermath of a brutal war raises questions about restitution.
Centre for Museology Spring Seminars 2011
Monday 21st February 2011, 5-6.30pm, Mansfield Cooper 4.10
Piotr Bienkowski, Consultant, academic and chairman of the NWFED
Developing a radical vision for the North West's museums
If ever there was a time for museums to think radically, it is now. In late 2010 the North West Fed, which represents museum people across north-west England, launched an online strategic 'visioning document'. Set in the context of financial cuts to museums and the dissolution of existing strategic structures, its purpose is to urge and support museums to address the key priorities of national and local government, adopt new models of working, and to be innovative, creative and flexible in order to survive and thrive. To keep our heads down and hope it will all blow over is not an option: the scale of change is such that things will never be the same again.
As Chair of the North West Fed, Piotr Bienkowski led this process, negotiating a partnership with the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), Renaissance North West and National Museums Liverpool. In this lecture he describes the vision and the process of developing it, including the political difficulties and consultations, and challenges the HE sector to respond to the changing museum world.
Piotr Bienkowsk is a cultural, heritage and museums consultant, writer and researcher, Honorary Professor in the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures at the University of Manchester, and Chair of the North West Fed. Previously he has been Acting Director of The Manchester Museum and Head of Antiquities at National Museums Liverpool.