Author: Amiria Henare
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521835916
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Book Description
Amiria Henare explores the role of material cultural research in anthropology and related disciplines from the late eighteenth century to the present.
Museums, Anthropology and Imperial Exchange
Author: Amiria Henare
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521835916
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Book Description
Amiria Henare explores the role of material cultural research in anthropology and related disciplines from the late eighteenth century to the present.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521835916
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Book Description
Amiria Henare explores the role of material cultural research in anthropology and related disciplines from the late eighteenth century to the present.
Museums, Anthropology and Imperial Exchange
Objects of Culture
Author: H. Glenn Penny
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807862193
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
In the late nineteenth century, Germans spearheaded a worldwide effort to preserve the material traces of humanity, designing major ethnographic museums and building extensive networks of communication and exchange across the globe. In this groundbreaking study, Glenn Penny explores the appeal of ethnology in Imperial Germany and analyzes the motivations of the scientists who created the ethnographic museums. Penny shows that German ethnologists were not driven by imperialist desires or an interest in legitimating putative biological or racial hierarchies. Overwhelmingly antiracist, they aspired to generate theories about the essential nature of human beings through their museums' collections. They gained support in their efforts from boosters who were enticed by participating in this international science and who used it to promote the cosmopolitan character of their cities and themselves. But these cosmopolitan ideals were eventually overshadowed by the scientists' more modern, professional, and materialist concerns, which dramatically altered the science and its goals. By clarifying German ethnologists' aspirations and focusing on the market and conflicting interest groups, Penny makes important contributions to German history, the history of science, and museum studies.
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807862193
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
In the late nineteenth century, Germans spearheaded a worldwide effort to preserve the material traces of humanity, designing major ethnographic museums and building extensive networks of communication and exchange across the globe. In this groundbreaking study, Glenn Penny explores the appeal of ethnology in Imperial Germany and analyzes the motivations of the scientists who created the ethnographic museums. Penny shows that German ethnologists were not driven by imperialist desires or an interest in legitimating putative biological or racial hierarchies. Overwhelmingly antiracist, they aspired to generate theories about the essential nature of human beings through their museums' collections. They gained support in their efforts from boosters who were enticed by participating in this international science and who used it to promote the cosmopolitan character of their cities and themselves. But these cosmopolitan ideals were eventually overshadowed by the scientists' more modern, professional, and materialist concerns, which dramatically altered the science and its goals. By clarifying German ethnologists' aspirations and focusing on the market and conflicting interest groups, Penny makes important contributions to German history, the history of science, and museum studies.
Artefacts, Archives, and Documentation in the Relational Museum
Author: Mike Jones
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100040532X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 111
Book Description
Artefacts, Archives, and Documentation in the Relational Museum provides the first interdisciplinary study of the digital documentation of artefacts and archives in contemporary museums, while also exploring the implications of polyphonic, relational thinking on collections documentation. Drawing on case studies from Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the book provides a critical examination of the history of collections management and documentation since the introduction of computers to museums in the 1960s, demonstrating how technology has contributed to the disconnection of distributed collections knowledge. Jones also highlights how separate documentation systems have developed, managed by distinct, increasingly professionalised staff, impacting our ability to understand and use what we find in museums and their ever-expanding online collections. Exploring this legacy allows us to rethink current practice, focusing less on individual objects and more on the rich stories and interconnected resources that lie at the heart of the contemporary, plural, participatory ‘relational museum.’ Artefacts, Archives, and Documentation in the Relational Museum is essential reading for those who wish to better understand the institutional silos found in museums, and the changes required to make museum knowledge more accessible. The book is a particularly important addition to the fields of museum studies, archival science, information management, and the history of cultural heritage technologies.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100040532X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 111
Book Description
Artefacts, Archives, and Documentation in the Relational Museum provides the first interdisciplinary study of the digital documentation of artefacts and archives in contemporary museums, while also exploring the implications of polyphonic, relational thinking on collections documentation. Drawing on case studies from Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the book provides a critical examination of the history of collections management and documentation since the introduction of computers to museums in the 1960s, demonstrating how technology has contributed to the disconnection of distributed collections knowledge. Jones also highlights how separate documentation systems have developed, managed by distinct, increasingly professionalised staff, impacting our ability to understand and use what we find in museums and their ever-expanding online collections. Exploring this legacy allows us to rethink current practice, focusing less on individual objects and more on the rich stories and interconnected resources that lie at the heart of the contemporary, plural, participatory ‘relational museum.’ Artefacts, Archives, and Documentation in the Relational Museum is essential reading for those who wish to better understand the institutional silos found in museums, and the changes required to make museum knowledge more accessible. The book is a particularly important addition to the fields of museum studies, archival science, information management, and the history of cultural heritage technologies.
Cracks in the Dome: Fractured Histories of Empire in the Zanzibar Museum, 1897-1964
Author: Sarah Longair
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317158776
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 339
Book Description
As one of the most monumental and recognisable landmarks from Zanzibar’s years as a British Protectorate, the distinctive domed building of the Zanzibar Museum (also known as the Beit al-Amani or Peace Memorial Museum) is widely known and familiar to Zanzibaris and visitors alike. Yet the complicated and compelling history behind its construction and collection has been overlooked by historians until now. Drawing on a rich and wide range of hitherto unexplored archival, photographic, architectural and material evidence, this book is the first serious investigation of this remarkable institution. Although the museum was not opened until 1925, this book traces the longer history of colonial display which culminated in the establishment of the Zanzibar Museum. It reveals the complexity of colonial knowledge production in the changing political context of the twentieth century British Empire and explores the broad spectrum of people from diverse communities who shaped its existence as staff, informants, collectors and teachers. Through vivid narratives involving people, objects and exhibits, this book exposes the fractures, contradictions and tensions in creating and maintaining a colonial museum, and casts light on the conflicted character of the ’colonial mission’ in eastern Africa.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317158776
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 339
Book Description
As one of the most monumental and recognisable landmarks from Zanzibar’s years as a British Protectorate, the distinctive domed building of the Zanzibar Museum (also known as the Beit al-Amani or Peace Memorial Museum) is widely known and familiar to Zanzibaris and visitors alike. Yet the complicated and compelling history behind its construction and collection has been overlooked by historians until now. Drawing on a rich and wide range of hitherto unexplored archival, photographic, architectural and material evidence, this book is the first serious investigation of this remarkable institution. Although the museum was not opened until 1925, this book traces the longer history of colonial display which culminated in the establishment of the Zanzibar Museum. It reveals the complexity of colonial knowledge production in the changing political context of the twentieth century British Empire and explores the broad spectrum of people from diverse communities who shaped its existence as staff, informants, collectors and teachers. Through vivid narratives involving people, objects and exhibits, this book exposes the fractures, contradictions and tensions in creating and maintaining a colonial museum, and casts light on the conflicted character of the ’colonial mission’ in eastern Africa.
Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Science
Author: David N. Livingstone
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226487261
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 538
Book Description
Here, David Livingstone and Charles Withers gather essays that deftly navigate the spaces of science in this significant period and reveal how each is embedded in wider systems of meaning authority, and identity.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226487261
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 538
Book Description
Here, David Livingstone and Charles Withers gather essays that deftly navigate the spaces of science in this significant period and reveal how each is embedded in wider systems of meaning authority, and identity.
Museum Object Lessons for the Digital Age
Author: Haidy Geismar
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 178735282X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 166
Book Description
Museum Object Lessons for the Digital Age explores the nature of digital objects in museums, asking us to question our assumptions about the material, social and political foundations of digital practices. Through four wide-ranging chapters, each focused on a single object – a box, pen, effigy and cloak – this short, accessible book explores the legacies of earlier museum practices of collection, older forms of media (from dioramas to photography), and theories of how knowledge is produced in museums on a wide range of digital projects. Swooping from Ethnographic to Decorative Arts Collections, from the Google Art Project to bespoke digital experiments, Haidy Geismar explores the object lessons contained in digital form and asks what they can tell us about both the past and the future. Drawing on the author’s extensive experience working with collections across the world, Geismar argues for an understanding of digital media as material, rather than immaterial, and advocates for a more nuanced, ethnographic and historicised view of museum digitisation projects than those usually adopted in the celebratory accounts of new media in museums. By locating the digital as part of a longer history of material engagements, transformations and processes of translation, this book broadens our understanding of the reality effects that digital technologies create, and of how digital media can be mobilised in different parts of the world to very different effects.
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 178735282X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 166
Book Description
Museum Object Lessons for the Digital Age explores the nature of digital objects in museums, asking us to question our assumptions about the material, social and political foundations of digital practices. Through four wide-ranging chapters, each focused on a single object – a box, pen, effigy and cloak – this short, accessible book explores the legacies of earlier museum practices of collection, older forms of media (from dioramas to photography), and theories of how knowledge is produced in museums on a wide range of digital projects. Swooping from Ethnographic to Decorative Arts Collections, from the Google Art Project to bespoke digital experiments, Haidy Geismar explores the object lessons contained in digital form and asks what they can tell us about both the past and the future. Drawing on the author’s extensive experience working with collections across the world, Geismar argues for an understanding of digital media as material, rather than immaterial, and advocates for a more nuanced, ethnographic and historicised view of museum digitisation projects than those usually adopted in the celebratory accounts of new media in museums. By locating the digital as part of a longer history of material engagements, transformations and processes of translation, this book broadens our understanding of the reality effects that digital technologies create, and of how digital media can be mobilised in different parts of the world to very different effects.
Anatomy Museum
Author: Elizabeth Hallam
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780236042
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 523
Book Description
The wild success of the traveling Body Worlds exhibition is testimony to the powerful allure that human bodies can have when opened up for display in gallery spaces. But while anatomy museums have shown their visitors much about bodies, they themselves are something of an obscure phenomenon, with their incredible technological developments and complex uses of visual images and the flesh itself remaining largely under researched. This book investigates anatomy museums in Western settings, revealing how they have operated in the often passionate pursuit of knowledge that inspires both fascination and fear. Elizabeth Hallam explores these museums, past and present, showing how they display the human body—whether naked, stripped of skin, completely dissected, or rendered in the form of drawings, three-dimensional models, x-rays, or films. She identifies within anatomy museums a diverse array of related issues—from the representation of deceased bodies in art to the aesthetics of science, from body donation to techniques for preserving corpses and ritualized practices for disposing of the dead. Probing these matters through in-depth study, Anatomy Museum unearths a strange and compelling cultural history of the spaces human bodies are made to occupy when displayed after death.
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780236042
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 523
Book Description
The wild success of the traveling Body Worlds exhibition is testimony to the powerful allure that human bodies can have when opened up for display in gallery spaces. But while anatomy museums have shown their visitors much about bodies, they themselves are something of an obscure phenomenon, with their incredible technological developments and complex uses of visual images and the flesh itself remaining largely under researched. This book investigates anatomy museums in Western settings, revealing how they have operated in the often passionate pursuit of knowledge that inspires both fascination and fear. Elizabeth Hallam explores these museums, past and present, showing how they display the human body—whether naked, stripped of skin, completely dissected, or rendered in the form of drawings, three-dimensional models, x-rays, or films. She identifies within anatomy museums a diverse array of related issues—from the representation of deceased bodies in art to the aesthetics of science, from body donation to techniques for preserving corpses and ritualized practices for disposing of the dead. Probing these matters through in-depth study, Anatomy Museum unearths a strange and compelling cultural history of the spaces human bodies are made to occupy when displayed after death.
First Nations, Museums, Narrations
Author: Alison K. Brown
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774827289
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329
Book Description
When the Franklin Motor Expedition set out across the Canadian Prairies to collect First Nations artifacts, brutal assimilation policies threatened to decimate these cultures and extensive programs of ethnographic salvage were in place. Despite having only three members, the expedition amassed the largest single collection of Prairie heritage items currently held in a British museum. In this book, Alison K. Brown draws together the multiple narratives that make up this encounter, consulting descendants of the collectors and members of the affected First Nations and reviewing both expedition images and the artifacts themselves. In doing so, she explores the context within which the collection was made as well as the complex relationships between museums, anthropologists, and First Nations. Accessibly written and vigorously researched, First Nations, Museums, Narrations raises timely questions about the role of collections in the twenty-first century and considers the way forward for indigenous peoples and the museums that house their cultural treasures.
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774827289
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329
Book Description
When the Franklin Motor Expedition set out across the Canadian Prairies to collect First Nations artifacts, brutal assimilation policies threatened to decimate these cultures and extensive programs of ethnographic salvage were in place. Despite having only three members, the expedition amassed the largest single collection of Prairie heritage items currently held in a British museum. In this book, Alison K. Brown draws together the multiple narratives that make up this encounter, consulting descendants of the collectors and members of the affected First Nations and reviewing both expedition images and the artifacts themselves. In doing so, she explores the context within which the collection was made as well as the complex relationships between museums, anthropologists, and First Nations. Accessibly written and vigorously researched, First Nations, Museums, Narrations raises timely questions about the role of collections in the twenty-first century and considers the way forward for indigenous peoples and the museums that house their cultural treasures.
Colonial Collecting and Display
Author: Claire Wintle
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857459422
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
In the late-nineteenth century, British travelers to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands compiled wide-ranging collections of material culture for scientific instruction and personal satisfaction. Colonial Collecting and Display follows the compelling history of a particular set of such objects, tracing their physical and conceptual transformation from objects of indigenous use to accessioned objects in a museum collection in the south of England. This first study dedicated to the historical collecting and display of the Islands' material cultures develops a new analysis of colonial discourse, using a material culture-led approach to reconceptualize imperial relationships between Andamanese, Nicobarese, and British communities, both in the Bay of Bengal and on British soil. It critiques established conceptions of the act of collecting, arguing for recognition of how indigenous makers and consumers impacted upon "British" collection practices, and querying the notion of a homogenous British approach to material culture from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857459422
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
In the late-nineteenth century, British travelers to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands compiled wide-ranging collections of material culture for scientific instruction and personal satisfaction. Colonial Collecting and Display follows the compelling history of a particular set of such objects, tracing their physical and conceptual transformation from objects of indigenous use to accessioned objects in a museum collection in the south of England. This first study dedicated to the historical collecting and display of the Islands' material cultures develops a new analysis of colonial discourse, using a material culture-led approach to reconceptualize imperial relationships between Andamanese, Nicobarese, and British communities, both in the Bay of Bengal and on British soil. It critiques established conceptions of the act of collecting, arguing for recognition of how indigenous makers and consumers impacted upon "British" collection practices, and querying the notion of a homogenous British approach to material culture from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.