Trying to get Museum majors together a post at a time

Just a Museology student who wants more Museology friends

[politedemon]

i love you charity shops i love you estate sales i love you vintage stores i love you boot sales i love you scrap centres i love you jumbles

[inariedwards]

The International Council of Museums (ICOM) has finally approved the new definition of a museum:

“A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing.”

[jagiellonczyk]

History aesthetic 1/?

[cowboyemojis]

archive moodboard for @skogenflicka

[no-chill-at-all]

[crimstudies]

24 / 100 days of productivity

january 13, 2018

first time visiting and studying at the state library today! really trying to get into studying regularly before it’s time to go back to school.

[emmastudies]

this is a dream!

[owlapin]

MICROSOFT WORD HAS A FUCKING “INSERT CITATION” BUTTON WHY THE FUCK DID NO ONE EVER TELL ME THIS IS SIGNIFICANT INFORMATION FUCK THE SCHOOL SYSTEM THIS IS MICROSOFT WORD 2007 I SHOULD HAVE BEEN MADE AWARE OF THIS IN HIGHSCHOOL WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK I HATE EVERYTHING

[owlapin]

you can fucking log your sources into your document and then at the end press a fucking button and it makes a bibliography page for you im

[owlapin]

im not even lying im so mad

[historianista-blog]

Posting to save a grad student’s life.

[belby-barely-slumbers]

UGH

[cowboyemojis]

archive mb for @pattroklos

[girl-museum-deactivated20190914]

IDG 2016: Girls in Museums

Join our Junior Girls to explore how girls are represented in museums across Europe and the United States, in celebration of International Day of the Girl 2016. Museums reviewed include the Confluence Museum, Hands on History in Hull, The British Museum, ...

Join our Junior Girls to explore how girls are represented in museums across Europe and the United States, in celebration of International Day of the Girl 2016.  Museums reviewed include the Confluence Museum, Hands on History in Hull, The British Museum, Georgian House in Edinburgh, Museo Picasso, the Museum of Brands, Packaging, and Advertising, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame.

[thebrainscoop]

But if all this front-end surveying tries to assess what the public wants to see exhibited, then even large-scale evolution exhibits such as “Life over Time” might start to vanish, and curators and developers may become too afraid to communicate controversial truths. Political prejudices in the public sphere, for example, might be reflected in the polls and surveys that increasingly dictate the most important topics and trends for museology. Educators should challenge us to move beyond ourselves, not just reflect our own ideas back at us. We, as the public, need to have faith in our educators (in this case, museologists), and they need to have faith in themselves to set educational agendas without constantly checking with us to see if we approve.

Stephen Asma, Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums. 1999.

I mentioned this book more than a year ago in our Recommended Reading episode, although it had been a year at that point since I’d read it last. I was surprised by a few of the passages I had taken for granted before, and in skimming the final chapter again today I was reminded of Asma’s nervousness concerning the potential censorship or tailoring by museums as a result of corporate sponsorship and public demand. 

I’m happy to say that YouTube and a general democratization of social media hopes to dispel some of those concerns. 15 years after this book was published I feel largely positive about the future of museums and their positions as educational destinations, but that’s mostly due to a seemingly renewed public investment and appreciation. 

So, thanks for helping to calm everyone’s nerves, and I’ll keep doing my best to not shy away from the controversial. 

(via thebrainscoop)

[giffirt]

If you walk into the giftshop in the Great Court of the British Museum, you can buy your child - or yourself perhaps - a toy Egyptian mummy. You can buy several, in fact. But the Porsche of toy mummies is called enthusiastically ‘Lift the Lid on Mummies’. It’s quite the kit. It advertises 'amulets to bring good fortune’, 'gauze to wrap your mummy’s organs’! It’s a bit of fun, and we mustn’t take it too seriously. But what are we saying to our children when we present them with such things? Are we offering them insight into past? A sense that other cultures do things differently? Or are we - quite literally - toying with their perceptions, showing them that while we may honour our own dead, the dead of other nations are faintly absurd and a bit of a joke, that we can do what we like with them?“

Jack Lohman: Parading the Dead, Policing the Living (From the book: Human Remains and Museum Practice)

[momo-de-avis]

How to react to the dreadful comment: “I Could Do That”

An art curator brilliantly explains how you should react to the vicious comment on modern and contemporary art - “I Could Do That” - combining a chance for education, class and maybe discovering new skills about yourself and with a positive perspective I could never maintain myself

[thelittlevienna]

[attendants-view]

Why don’t they come? Visitors on low income and the myths around admission price

Making it easier for people on low income to visit a cultural organisation.

Paying for something means you perceive it as a quality item.

This blog post has great observations and thought on low-income visitors and free entry vs. paid entry.

[victoriousvocabulary]

MUSEOLOGY

[noun]

the study of museums, museum curation, art exhibitions and how museums developed into their institutional role in education through social and political forces.

Etymology: from Latin mūsēum, “place sacred to the Muses”, building devoted to learning or the arts (referring especially to the scholarly institute founded in Alexandria about 280 b.c.) < Greek Mouseîon, equivalent to Moûs(a), “Muse” + -eion + Latin -logia, from Greek, from logos, “word”.

[Rovina Cai - Museum Magic]

[honorthegods]

Visitors to new museum will uncover mystery cult of Mithras the bull slayer in multi-sensory experience 8 November 2017

London Mithraeum is housed in Bloomberg’s European headquarters, designed by Norman Foster. Photograph: James Newton

Reconstructed Roman Temple of Mithras opens to public in London

London’s Roman-era Temple of Mithras, once displayed on a car park roof with a crazy paving floor, is to reopen to the public – this time on its original site.

Visitors to the temple will now descend through steep, black stone-lined stairs, in Bloomberg’s new European headquarters, to seven metres below the city streets where in Roman times the smelly river Walbrook once flowed sluggishly through marshy ground. In approximately 240AD, the Romans built a temple next to the river to one of their most mysterious cult figures, Mithras the bull-slayer.

The virile young god from the east was beloved of soldiers who worshipped him by the light of flaring torches in underground temples, where the blood of sacrificial animals soaked into the mud floor. The reconstruction of his rites includes the soundtrack of shuffling sandalled feet and voices chanting in Latin the names of the levels of initiates taken from graffiti on a temple in Rome: the god still guards many of his secrets.

“It was a mystery cult and its rites remain very well guarded mysteries. There is nothing written about what went on in the temples, no book of Mithras,” said Sophie Jackson, the lead archaeologist from the Museum of London Archaeology who has spent years working on the excavation and reconstruction.

London Mithraeum, at Bloomberg SPACE, will open every day except Monday from 14 November. Entrance is free but advance booking is advised.

[museum-education]

What does the ideal museum educational experience look like?

Do you work in a museum or gallery that pushes the boundaries of pedagogical practice? I’ve been thinking recently about the article on lectures and their role in education. Museum education in particular I think could become the testing ground for new educational paradigms. I think many unfortunately (due to many other considerations of which I am far too aware of) have to replicate the classroom model.

Is there another way to run educational programs within the museum that will meet many of the required outcomes while also progressing past lecture models? Do you have a prime example of this in practice?