Midterm

Question 1

Shifting definitions of museums

Answer 1

Debates over the definition of museum
Criticisms over the earlier modifeid ICOM definition: was a mission statement of “fashionable values” rather than a defintion
A final definition has been settled on by ICOM

Question 2

Museums and Language

Answer 2

The way we speak about the museum influences how we think about the museum’s purpose
Objects do not have inherihant meaning - different visitors provide different contexts
Relationship between museum and visitor - authoritarian, partner, catalyst
Museum as a temple: a repisotry for sacred objects, museum workers serve a priestly funtion
Museum as a forum: a place for conversation and debate, tells the story of the victor

Question 3

The New Museology

Answer 3

The New Museology: reclaimed the museum as a public space and introduces questions about the status, place, and role of museums
The old museology was a vocation about learning how to work in a museum
The role of a museum can be categorized in three ways
Museum as a temple
Museum as a forum
Museum as a looking glass (museum director Michael Ames)

Question 4

Wunderkammer/Cabinet of Curiosities

Answer 4

Common during the 16th century Renaissance when there was an expansion of knowledge and curiosity
Displayed an array of exotic objects collected during expansionism and exploration
Not museums but museological
Private home spaces of the elite

Question 5

World’s Fair

Answer 5

Display and performance of objects and goods invented by nations around the globe
Symbolized the nation’s power and wealth, promoted the culture
Part of the exhibitionary complex: expansion of the museum connected to the emergence of mega-cities, department stores, and other spaces of display
Connected to the rise of spectacle and commodity culture within modern capitalism
Great Exhibition, London 1851 (Crystal Palace)

Question 6

History of Museums

Answer 6

Wunderkammers primary museological form until the late 18th/early 19th century
Creation of the universal survey museum
After the French Revolution during the Englightenment, private collections were turned into public museums
Led to the Louvre in 1793 (debate over if the Louvre or the British Museum was first)
Primarily served an ideological function
Especially during Napoleon, triumphs, displays that showed the power and greatness of French civilization, displays connected French civilization to antiquity
Second half of the 19th century brings the expansion of types of museums (e.g. specialized museums)
Notion of the exhibitionary complex

Question 7

The Carters at the Louvre

Answer 7

Louvre attendance jumped dramatically after the music video was released
Important for represenitng POC communities in the museum space, reclaiming a historically white space
Can be argued that “Apesh*t” criticizes the euro-centricism of the universal survey museum and equates hip hop with high art
Others critique the video by claiming it reproduces elitism within the museum, as shown through the large budget for the video and ability to rent out the Louvre

Question 8

Museums and Architecture

Answer 8

Early museums had ceremonial architecture, connects to museum as a ritual
Modern museums characterized by extravagant and modern architecture (Starchitect, McGuggenheim)

Question 9

Museum Thresholds

Answer 9

The design of a museum threshold can be manipulated to have a powerful effect on the visitor
Contemporary museums have more than one threshold
E.g. digital advertising, publications, traveling museums
The threshold sets up the museum experience, can set up the intentions of the museum and help guide the visitor
Successful thresholds can incorporate things that appeal to the senses
Not a passive experience
Example: stairs leading up to the Winged Samothrace at the Louvre
Ai Wei Wei’s disruption of the museum threshold: When Home Won’t Let You Stay at the Minneapolis Museum of Art

Question 10

The White Cube

Answer 10

The preferred space for displaying modern art, stems for Alfred Barr and liberating art from history
The removal of stimuli to enable the viewer to truly focus on the work, aimed to be neutral
Arguments against the neutrality say that the white cube strips the works of its context and perpetuates specific cultural hegemony

Question 11

The Universal Survey Museum

Answer 11

share a relationship with ceremonial monuments, engages in a ritual, global works compare to triumphal processions and testify to Western dominition, the viewer takes part in the ritual
show a range of art from different culture and time periods
originally, works were displayed to represent Englightenment ideals of education and democracy

Question 12

The Museum Effect

Answer 12

Alpers
The museum effect is a way of seeing - the way in which museums turn all objects into works of art by stimulating attentive looking
Creates an exotic status that promts us to look deeper even if it would be an ordinary object in everyday life, anything can be turned into a spectacle
De-job: dislocation, disruption, and removal from the object’s original context
Re-job: relocation, recontextualization, reconstruction that occurs when an artifact is placed in a museum
In a way, to relocate an object is to erase its origins
By being displayed, visual interest is indicated
Exercising the eyes
Focuses on the viewer

Question 13

Museums as Contact Zones

Answer 13

Clifford
Contact zones as the space of colonial encounters
Asymmentrical relationships are inherent in contact zones
Unequal reciprocity between the artist and the curator
Relationships subject to ongoing contact and negotiation
Minority groups can both exploit and be exploited
Museums as a place of exchange and interaction between different cultures

Question 14

The Exhibition as a Field of Play

Answer 14

Baxandall
The exhibition acts as a field in which three groups operate
The maker/craftperson of the object, has the best understanding of the object because they are embedded in its culture
The exhibitor/curator, different motivations, interested in making a good exhibit that is educational and
entertaining
The viewer, has cultural biases, shares more with the exhibitor than the maker, brings their own personal tastes
These three groups are always operating in an exhibition
The label plays an important piece, facilitates a dynamic and active experience, a back-and-forth between the viewer and the label

Question 15

Virtual Museums/Immersive Exhibitions

Answer 15

Growing public desire to experience art
Reflects a shift towards museums as a site of entertainment that is shred through the social media
Represents the commodification of art
Not a passive experience, the viewer becomes part of the art
May attract those who feel excluded by traditional museums

Question 16

Primitivism and Non-Western Art in Museums

Answer 16

Primitivism: a projection of desire into non-western or tribal cultures by thinkers and artists in Europe and America, involving the belief that so-called “primitive” cultures are superior to those of contemporary civilization
Roots in the Enlightenment concept of the “noble savage” (Kimmelman)
Euro-American dissatisfied with industrialization occurring the the late 19th/early 20th centuries

Question 17

Debates over repatriation and the ICOM statement on Universal Museums

Answer 17

States that objects acquired in an earlier era have become part of the museums that have cared for them and part of the heritage of the nations which house them
ICOM statement signed by directors of European and American museums, believes Western nations should keep the work because they were acquired in a different time
Repatriation debates have evolved through three historical events
Art seized by Nazi Germany during WWII (e.g. Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I)
Material culture and human remains of indigenous communities in America
Objects “acquired” under conditions of colonialism
Commonly debated artworks of repatriation include the Kohinoor Diamond, Benin Bronzes, and the Parthenon Marbles

Question 18

Provenance and Collections History

Answer 18

According to Carlee Forbes, when looking at provenance we should examine:
Cultural, economic, and political contexts
Actors
Collecting patterns
Perception of Value

Question 19

Institutional Critique

Answer 19

Museums have become the subject of art through institutional critique
Institutional critique and the ambivalent relationship between the museum and the artist dates back to
the readymade urinal by Marcel Duchamp
Became “institutional chic”, the critiques became institutionalized and marketable, no longer radical

1960s first wave figures:
Daniel Buren
The studio as the first frame and the museum as the second frame
Known for using stripes in artwork that dissects from the traditional white cube
Something is lost in the art when it is transferred to second frame., the museum classifies and fixes the meaning of the object
Hans Hacke
Conceptual art that exposes the Guggenheim’s corrupt relationship with elite real estate company
Merle Laderman Ukeles
Feminist performance artist
Hartford Wash (1973), cleaning the Hartford museum as a commentary on the overshadowing of the invisible laborers that help run museum (aslo seen in Touch
Sanitation Show)

1980s second wave figures
Fred Wilson
Mining the Museum, uses the museum itself as a palette, intervenes in its collections, displays archived objects in ways that relate different meaning
Shows how the museum can reshape the meaning of artwork by its mode of display
Critiquing the institution for its inability to recognize the racism that is within its own building
Michael Asher
Conceptual artist
Created a maze of unfinished walls as a commentary on how the Santa Monica Museum of Art constantly reinvented its galleries
Andrea Fisher
Performance art that mimics the public face of the museum
“Official Welcome” speech mocks acceptance speeches in the art world

Question 20

Into the Heart of Africa, Royal Ontario Museum

Answer 20

Theme: Museums and non-Western art
-goal was to be critical and self-reflective of colonialism and Canada’s complicity in the British Empire of Africa
-offensive language became confused by the use of quoting, insulted African and African-Canadian Communties
-the museum was trying to deconstruct African stereotypes but ended up feeding into them

Question 21

MoMa, New York

Answer 21

Theme: Primitivism/Tribal Art
-claimed affinities between modern and tribal art, note that they did not say modern art was directly influenced by tribal art, juxtaposes them by displaying them next to each other
-attempt to tell an origin of modernism
-the primitive art is left anonymous, not labels
This creates a very Eurocentric view, appropriation of tribal art that implied modernists discovered tribal art for the first time

Question 22

Musee de Qaui Branly

Answer 22

Theme: Primitvism/Tribal Art
-goal was to see justice rendered to non-European cultures but failed to succeed
-exterior is covered in plants and resembles a jungle, interior looks like an earthy village - feeds into stereotypes and produces the idea of the “other”, was a spectacle for novelty and theatrics
-condenses artworks of different ethnic groups into one category
-like MoMa, no information accompanies the artifacts (it is ahistorical), also fails to mention French imperialism

Question 23

Museum of Jurassic Technology

Answer 23

-displays objects that make you question the authority of museums, unclear whether or not the information is accurate or not, combines fact and fiction
-a performative response to the challenge of the universal survey museums and its claims to authority over objects and visitors
Can connect to Alpers and the “museum effect”

Question 24

LACMA, Los Angeles

Answer 24

Theme: Museums and Architecture
-offers an “egalitarian experience”: the one story layout is an intentional design to avoid placing one culture on a pedestal
-one story makes it more accessible and inclusive for the disabled and those with infants
-architecture (concrete and curvilinear shapes) mimics the LA landscape of interstates, museums can be reflective of the environment in which they are placed (like Sadiyyat Island)

Question 25

Museums in Abu Dhabi

Answer 25

-Saadiyat Island seeking to become a cultural center through the construction of museums, stadiums, and performing art centers
-Most notable, the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi
Louvre Abu Dhabi borrowing the title from the Paris Louvre for 1.15 billion dollars, enables the sharing of artwork, attempts to construct new narratives of intercultrual art history

Question 26

The Louvre, Paris

Answer 26

-Founded in 1793 during the French Revolution, first objects were taken from the royal property
-Considered a universal survey museum
Primtive art was marginalized which enabled France to decide what was considered art
layout of the museum as part of a ritual that attested to french accomplishments

Question 27

British Museum, London

Answer 27

-universal survey museum founded in 1750
-debates of restitution, benin Bronzes and George the Poet
-core collection composed of artifacts acquired in West Indian colonies

Question 27

New Acropolis Museum

Answer 27

-archeological museum in Athens, Greece
-British museum has Elgin Marbles, New Acropolis wants them back, site of restitution debates
-pays homage to the Parthenon through minimalism

Question 28

Museums and Globalization

Answer 28

The corporatization of museums
The era of global expansion of museums
Ex: Thomas Krens’ goal to create a global Guggemheim and the Louvre Abu Dhabi
profit maximization is becoming increasingly important (as shown by sponsorships and gift shops)
Museums bring tourists and urban development (the Bilbao effect)
Growing disparity between mega museums and their workers
The Gulf Labor Coalition: fighting poor labor conditions for those building the
Saddiyat Island museums
Billionares creating museums - just another way to make money?