15th september 2010 city walls and museum windows: making a methodology to study museum work...

15th September 2010

City Walls and Museum Windows: Making a Methodology to Study Museum WorkEmiles@museumoflondon.org

Outline

✤ My research methods in context

✤ Overview of research methods

✤ Case study – Installation and Participant Observation

Argument

✤ External influences

✤ Need to be flexible but tactical

✤ Revising the methodology a way to do this carefully

The Galleries of Modern London

All mages from matt_from_london on flikr,

with creative commons license

My research

✤ “Quite often decisions were made in the tea-room, or passing in the corridor...

That was how it had to happen and how it had to evolve, and that’s where the

project comes alive. If you’re just reading project reports its seems quite

statistical, quite regimented and it was never like that at meetings. There would

always be tense moments, conflict, laughs a lot of the time, so many people just

having fun really. But all of that you would never get from reading minutes, or the

statistics of how many objects are in the galleries” (Project Assistant, interview, 2/6/10)

Average Day at the Museum: The Year's Work: Annual Report to the Board of Trustees and Corporation Members of the Museum of Modern Art for the Year June 30, 1939–July 1, 1940. Annual reports 1931–40. MoMA Archives

With apologies to MOMA

Installation

April 2010March 2010Jan 2010

Argument

✤ Negotiation of external influences

✤ Organization-offered opportunities and need to be flexible

✤ Revising the methodology a way to do this carefully

Difficulties of methods (1)

✤ Access and re-negotiation, perspective

✤ Time

✤ Ethics

Difficulties of methods (2)

✤ Object knowledge

✤ Analysis

Conclusion

✤ Negotiation of external influences

✤ Organization-offered opportunities and need to be flexible

✤ Revising the methodology a way to do this carefully

Thanks for listening