Museums at the crossroad: Contributing to dialogue, curiosity and wonder in natural history museums

The first natural history collections opened to the public were inspired by a sense of curiosity and wonder about the products of nature. They were ‘cabinets of curiosities’ that offered a first-hand interaction between owner and visitors. Nowadays, these two facets of the museum experience—dialogue and wonder—have been lost, in part, due to the information overload coming via the media and the impersonal nature of the museum visit. This paper offers some reflections on the evolution of the museum visit, suggests some ways to rediscover this ‘sense of wonder’ and provides ideas on how to promote two-way communication with museum visitors. Two examples of exhibitions are offered as illustrations of the points discussed.     

Methods for studying family visitors in art museums: A cross-disciplinary review of current research

This paper examines current trends in family studies research, details the methodological and topical perspectives that are emerging, and reflects on how these findings could be integrated to provide a more coherent approach to researching the leisure, learning and recreational aspects of family visitors to art museums. Research findings from disciplines such as sociology, ethnography, education, design and marketing are of interest to the field of visitor studies, and this paper contributes to the wider research agenda by providing an overview of family research methods from a range of other disciplines, as well as those used within visitor studies.Over the last decade, there has been a growth of research in family learning in science museums, leading to an emerging disciplinary matrix, whilst many aspects of family visits to art museums remain relatively unexplored. The paper discusses the problems of gathering meaningful data from adults and children in family groups, and concludes by suggesting that a challenge for art museums is to learn from what is happening in other areas of cultural research into families, and to develop a framework for research which builds on the methodological strengths and practical experience of robust studies.     

现象类展品为主体的展览:背景、特点与方法——以科学中心与非物质文化遗产博物馆为例

随着人类收藏意识的成熟和对教育普及的重视,人们不仅收藏以记忆与知识为核心价值的物,而且超越物的束缚,将没有物质形体的纯现象也作为博物馆展览的对象和材料,由此诞生了科学中心和非物质文化遗产博物馆。这些博物馆不再以特定的“物”,而是以某种“现象”作为展品主体。这些现象必须通过专门创意和设计的展品才能再现,从而使现象得以被观察、感知和理解。为阐释和传播而制作展品对策展和设计的理念和技术提出挑战:它必须要解决现象的可视化,现象过程的动态表达,以及现象中呈现的因果关系。这些并不局限于科学中心和非物质文化遗产博物馆。当代不同类型的博物馆都力图将物的内部意义及外部环境以可视化的方式揭示,这就迫使它们将展厅由物的世界转化为物与现象共舞的舞台,上述的问题同样适用于它们。     

An examination of the interactions between museum educators and students on a school visit to science museum

Today, science is a major part of western culture. Discussions about the need for members of the public to access and understand scientific information are therefore well established, citing the importance of such information to responsible citizenship, democracy, socially accountable scientific research and public funding (National Research Council [2009] Learning science in informal environments: People, places, and pursuits. National Academies Press). In recent years there has been an increased interest in investigating not just what visitors to informal environments have learnt after a visit, but also how visitors interact and engage with exhibits during the visit (Davidsson & Jakobsson [2012] Understanding interactions at science centers and museums: Approaching sociocultural perspectives. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers). Within the field of school visits to science museums, however, interactions between students and museum educators (MEs) remain relatively unexplored. In our study of such school visits, we are mainly interested in the interactions that take place between three agents—the students, the museum educator and the physical setting of the exhibit. Using moment-to-moment fine grain analysis of multiple interactions allowed us to identify recurring patterns between students and the museum educators around exhibits, and to examine the MEs’ mediational role during the interactions, and the practices they employ to engage students with exhibits. Our study revealed that most interactions between MEs and students consist of technical explanations of how to operate the exhibits. The interactions that do move past this stage often include two main practices, which the MEs use to promote students’ engagement with the exhibits: physical instruction and engaging the students emotionally. Understanding what is actually happening in the learning process that occurs during students’ interactions with exhibits can help museum educators and exhibit designers improve the experiences of students on school visits.     

Museums,schools and geographies of cultural value

This article explores a paradox and a possibility that have emerged from two pieces of policy-related research concerning educational use of museums within England. The paradox relates to the use of museums which, whilst widely perceived as rather elitist institutions, appear from a postcode analysis of school visits to museums to be visited by large numbers of schools located in areas of social deprivation. The present analysis further explores this paradox, drawing on revised postcode analysis and governmental indices of multiple deprivation and income deprivation affecting children. The analysis supports the contention that museums attracted visits from schools located in areas with some of the highest levels of deprivation, although it suggests that this result needs to be considered in relation to regional differences in areas of social deprivation, the location of museums and the differences between individual and area-based measures of deprivation. Attention is then drawn to the potential of considering museums through a geographical perspective, and specifically through Foucault's notions of primary, secondary and tertiary spatializations. It is argued that primary spatializations encompasses how museums are conceptualized and classified; secondary spatializations concern how various elements of museums are articulated together; and tertiary spatializations relate to the placement of museums in wider societal contexts and processes. It is suggested that the postcode analysis of school visits points both to the significance of considering tertiary spatializations relating to the social circumstances of museum visitors but also raised questions concerning primary spatializations of museums. Attention is drawn to changes in the classification and grouping of museums, and how these often encompass geographically based criteria related to the social reach of museums. The article ends by considering the degree to which museums might seek to further change their primary spatialization to reflect tertiary spatializations relating to cultural value.     

Mondrian as kitchen tiles? Artistic and cultural conceptions of art museum visitors in Belgium

This article investigates the ways in which art museums' visitors define their relationships to art and culture, and how this affects their perceptions of art museums. Existing approaches have traditionally attempted to define the meaning of art museums on the basis of the socio-economic composition of museum audiences. Using mixed methods analysis, with a particular stress on qualitative data about the audiences of the six main museums of modern and contemporary art in Belgium, I argue for the need for a more complex and comprehensive framework to understand visitors' perceptions. I show that people characterized by similar cultural tastes and practices use similar strategies to interpret their relationship to culture, art and museums (the same principles of classification, legitimation and justification). On this basis, I argue that those with a similar cultural profile belong to the same “interpretive community” (Fish, 1980; Hooper-Greenhill, 2000).     

大同市博物馆之城建设的现状调查和发展思路

近年来大同市博物馆之城建设得到快速发展,规模初具,但是在建设过程中也存在博物馆未定级、空间布局不合理以及社会影响力弱等问题。本文立足于大同市博物馆之城建设的现状调查,提出大同市基于其丰富的文化和工业遗产资源的建设思路,并在此基础上,提出大同市博物馆之城的建设路径:在发展过程中明确定位,突出民族融合的主题;加强文化遗产和非遗的联动,兼顾区域平衡;发挥产业特色,推动生态转型,最终实现大同博物馆之城建设的高质量发展。     

Content Analysis of Google Alerts for Cultural Heritage Institutions

This article outlines evidence-based methods for cultural heritage institutions to look for news and mentions about their collections and services online. Google Alerts were created for repository names, websites, and finding aid websites for 66 institutions randomly selected from the Archive Grid database. Results were analyzed to determine Google Alerts' accuracy, what types of institutions would benefit most from using Google Alerts, what the content of the sources found by the alerts was, what types of publications returned the most results, and if Google Alerts could also identify image reuse. While Google Alerts' accuracy for returning usable results for analysis was not very high, the structure of alert e-mails makes discarding irrelevant results simple and quick. Mid- to large-sized museums and institutions staging frequent exhibits and events, as well as those with active collections, return the largest number of alerts. News publications and social media publish the most content related to cultural heritage institutions. Though the sample set was small, Google Alerts also was able to identify image reuse.     

科技馆运营管理系统的探索——以广东科学中心运营管理为例

通过构建一套既能充分体现服务公众的公益性要求,实现良好的社会效益,又能增强自身的功能,拓展多方面的资金来源的运营管理系统,从而寻求一条促进科技馆可持续发展的路径。我们探讨广东科学中心的运营管理系统,就是为了探讨市场经济条件下大型公共设施运行管理的规律,为我国建立公共设施运营管理理论体系做出贡献。     

Neither Public Nor Private: The Hybridization of Museums

This paper takes a preliminary look at the hybridization of museums – the creation of a variety of mixed forms of governance incorporating both public and private governing authorities. Using data from three national surveys of American museums, the analysis documents the mix of types of governing authority and demonstrates how this mix varies across location, over time, and by museum type. The paper then estimates the extent of hybridization using several different indicators and speculates about its implications. The United States offers a particularly informative case because the general view is that American museums are (1) either public or private and (2) predominately private. While the second part of this view may still be a useful characterization of American museums, the first is no longer a particularly helpful way of understanding American museums, or, by extension, other cultural institutions, American or not. It is increasingly necessary to view cultural institutions through the lens of hybridization rather than privatization in order to improve our ability to document and predict their institutional behavior.