Communicating Culture

The museum experience

Information: what did you find out about the museum experience? Definitions

1. a. Ancient Hist. (Usu. in form Museum.) In the ancient Hellenic world: a building connected with or dedicated to the Muses or the arts inspired by them; a university building, esp. that established at Alexandria by Ptolemy Soter c280 B.C.

    b. gen. A building, or part of a building, dedicated to the pursuit of learning or the arts; a scholar's study. Also in extended use. Obs.

2. a. A building or institution in which objects of historical, scientific, artistic, or cultural interest are preserved and exhibited. Also: the collection of objects held by such an institution.

    b. In extended use (usu. derogatory): any large or motley collection of things, esp. outmoded or useless ones; the repository of such a collection.

Examples of Museums

Arboretums. Art galleries/museums. General museums. Encyclopaedic museums. Historic building or sites. Preservation projects. Herbariums. Zoological garden. Aquariums. Planetariums Children's museums Nature centre/ visitor’s centres.

Museums and their Function

One role of museums: assembling objects and maintaining them within a specific

intellectual environment (world view).

This statement is pertinent in tracing the history of museums because world views change over time.

A world view is an implicit (rational) manner by which a society perceives its surroundings and functions within its surroundings.

Museum development can be divided into six phases corresponding to shifts in world view.

Historical Periods

Six periods of natural history museum development according to Whitehead (1990).

Greco-Roman Period (to 400 A.D.). Pre-Renaissance Period (400-1400). Renaissance Period (1400-1600). Pre-Linnaean Period (1600-1750). Linnaean Period (1750-1850). Modern Period (1850-present).

World View Periods According to Hooper-Greenhill (1992) there were three

distinct periods of museum development:

Renaissance Episteme 1400-1600. Classical Episteme 1600-1750 = Pre-Linnaean Period. Modern Episteme 1750-present = Linnaean + Modern

periods.

[An episteme is a world view.]

The Renaissance Period

Kunstkammer of FransFranken the Younger(early 17th century).Paintings, figurines,shells, dried fishes, andother natural and humanProductions were broughttogether to represent theworld. (From Hooper-Greenhill, 1992).

The Renaissance Period

Museum of Francesco Calzolari (Verona, 1622).

The Renaissance Period

(Museum of Olaus Worm, Leiden, 1655). From Whitaker 1996.

What does the ‘Tradescant musaeum’ represent?

The natural and artificial world These were collections with encyclopaedic

ambition, intended as a miniature version of the universe, containing specimens of every category of things and helping render visible the totality of the universe, which otherwise would remain hidden from human eyes.

(Pomian, 1990. Cited in Hall, 1997: 158)

What is the nature of museums?

Lidchi (1997: 159) highlights the following important points about the nature of museums:

Representation Classification Motivation Interpretation

‘a museum does not solely deal with objects but, more importantly, with what we could call, … ideas – notions of what the world is or should be.’ (ibid: 160)