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This dissertation examines the initial contacts and cultural encounters between Europe and the Mexica and investigates the ways in which the Mexica treasures acquired by the conquistadores played a pivotal role in shaping social, cultural, political and religious perceptions and misperceptions about the Mexica, Hapsburgs and their empire, and Europe as a whole in the early sixteenth-century. The initial shipment of art, artifacts, weapons and other goods given to King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V Hapsburg by the Mexica ruler Moctezuma (via Hernán Cortés) arrived in Seville on November 5th, 1519, followed by additional deliveries soon thereafter. The objects included in these shipments would play a significant role in shaping and promoting the newly-expanded imperial identity, while simultaneously contributing to the European audience’s construction of an identity for the indigenous peoples of the New World, doing so through a European vision and recontextualization of pre-Columbian and earlypost-Conquest art and artifacts. This project explores these issues by focusing on three specific media: gold, mosaics (or small stonework) and featherwork, the three media most associated with the indigenous peoples and most coveted by European audiences. In doing so, I seek to understand what it was about these media specifically that inspired their new-found audiences to desire these materials so intensely, above all other forms of production to be found in the pre-Columbian Americas; how each art form fit into existing preconceptions and was used to shape new identities and beliefs about both cultures; and what we learn from answering these questions. / Art History

The aim of this project is to investigate a cultural history of mushroom collecting in Sweden from the 19th century to the present with a focus on connections between aesthetics and the environment.  Collecting is defined broadly as gathering, storing, and accumulating.  This definition encompasses mycologists, mushroom enthusiasts, botanists, and natural historians documenting and preserving as many species as possible.  But it also includes collecting in the sense of leisurely mushroom collectors taking a part of the environment home with them to eat, store, or learn from. A history of mushroom collecting in Sweden is framed that does not only focus on edible mushrooms or scientific value, but emphasizes their linkages to place, memory, conservation, sociality, and embodied knowledge. Mushroom aesthetics are a starting point for exploring wider human connections to the environment and human perceptions of nature.   Collecting is presented as a process which is argued to be a means for constant dialogue with the environment. The cyclical collecting process is broken into stages that are discussed in designated chapters: Hunting, Identification and Assessment, and Storage and Sharing. Aesthetic aspects of mushroom collecting in Sweden are examined within these stages applying visual and discourse analyses to archival images, questionnaires, historic cookbook recipes, and mushroom identification books. Importance is also assigned to fully immersed aesthetic experiences and specific sensory stimuli that facilitate interconnection with non-human actors. Immersed aesthetic experiences are argued to be significant in their ability to democratize aesthetic appreciation of nature, in contrast to historical associations of aesthetics with taste and high culture. Fluctuating historical judgments are mapped about mushrooms, highlighting the framing of nature as a productive asset. Mushroom exhibitions are shown to be a point of collective meaning making, where aspects of natural time according to mushrooms challenge anthropocentric notions of temporality. This thesis through its focus on aesthetics in mushroom collecting reveals spaces of uncertainty and dynamic fluctuation in human-nature relationships, as well as a sense of value for being physically present and part of environments.

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Norton Simon was a unique collector because he let passion guide his collecting interests, but he controlled his passion by making his purchases based on smart economic decisions bolstered by years of experience in successful business negotiations. The Norton Simon Museum, today in Pasadena, California, displays the eccentric collectors life work as he created one of the greatest and most recognized collections on the west coast. By examining the progression and establishment of Norton Simon Inc., alongside the creation of the Norton Simon Art Foundation, multiple parallels can be drawn between Simons’ unique approach to business and the application of his unorthodox techniques to his purchases in the art world – Norton Simon’s “two hats”.

第一章 導論 第一節 研究動機和目的 第二節 研究內容和範圍 第三節 購買者資訊收集行為之理論探討 第四節 相關文獻之探討 第二章 研究方法 第一節 研究架構和分析方法 第二節 因徑分析 第三節 因徑模式 第四節 資料蒐集 第五節 研究限制 第三章 國內汽車購買者資訊收集行為之研究結果與分析 第一節 資料分析 第二節 變數檢定 第三節 路徑檢定 第四節 修正模式 第五節 相關係數的分解與因果作用力的分析 第六節 結果分析 第四章 結論與建議 第一節 本文之結論 第二節 對未來研究者的建議 第三節 本研究結果對廠商的含意

This museum thesis project will provide an overview of kindergarten through 12th-grade (K-12) educational programs at six non-collecting art institutions within the United States, contextualized within a selected historiography of art museum education. This project is designed to aid the Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA). The ICA is a non-collecting institution that will be located on VCU’s Monroe Park campus. As the ICA staff sets out to articulate a vision and scope for its K-12 education programs, it will benefit from the information offered in this thesis project, especially given that there is no existing literature specifically about K-12 programs at non-collecting museums of contemporary art.

Cette thèse porte sur la culture de la collection en tant que fait social. Elle étudie d’abord les discours tenus par les collectionneurs et les regroupements de collectionneurs à propos de leur pratique. Cet examen révèle les motivations qui justifient socialement un geste essentiellement individualiste en le rattachant à des bénéfices collectifs : bonification de la connaissance historique, construction de l’identité nationale, éducation citoyenne. Les collectionneurs propagent une vision utilitaire de leur activité, rationalisant un passe-temps qui a mauvaise presse. L’analyse permet aussi de mettre au jour les caractéristiques qui fondent l’image du praticien idéal et les critères de valorisation de la collection particulière et des éléments qui la composent. La thèse envisage également le collectionnement comme pratique et démontre que collectionner consiste à poser une série de gestes qui peuvent être regroupés en trois catégories d’actions principales : l’acquisition, la gestion et la diffusion. Elle décrit comment et auprès de qui les collectionneurs acquièrent les objets et révèle l’importance des réseaux locaux et internationaux de transactions. Elle met ensuite en évidence les soins apportés aux objets dans le cadre de la gestion de la collection : préparation, nettoyage, accrochage, rangement, classement, inventaire et catalogage. Elle établit finalement que la monstration s’effectue à différentes occasions et sous diverses formes devant un public choisi. La thèse propose une histoire culturelle de la pratique de la collection, et non une étude des collections. Les objets accumulés et classés (monnaies, médailles, timbres, artefacts amérindiens, objets archéologiques, œuvres et objets d’art, autographes, livres, documents anciens, spécimens d’histoire naturelle) ne sont pas considérés en eux-mêmes mais comme production d’une démarche qui est la matière véritable de la recherche. Elle présente une lecture critique du collectionnement et appréhende les aspirations, les croyances, les valeurs, les représentations des collectionneurs. Car collectionner est une façon d’organiser l’univers et la collection traduit, par les choix opérés dans la sélection de pièces et leur ordonnancement, une manière de voir le monde et de le comprendre. La pratique ainsi considérée est une voie permettant d’étudier la sociabilité masculine, la signification de notions telle que la virilité ou la nation, et l’importance faite à l’histoire, à la science et à l’éducation publique. / This dissertation focuses on the culture of collecting as a social act. It begins by studying the discourse held by individual collectors and groups of collectors pertaining to their collecting practices. This examination reveals the motivations that justify the social importance of an essentially individualistic act, by connecting it to various collective benefits such as furthering historical knowledge, building national identity, and civic education. The collectors propagate a utilitarian vision of their activities, and rationalize a hobby that is often negatively perceived. This analysis exposes the characteristics that compose the image of an ideal practitioner, as well as the criteria established to determine the status of private collections and their components. The dissertation also considers collecting as a practice, and demonstrates that collecting consists of a series of acts that can be grouped into three main categories: acquiring, managing, and disseminating. It describes how, and from whom collectors acquired objects, and reveals the importance of local and international networks of transaction. It then highlights the care given to objects in the area of collection management: preparing, cleaning, hanging, storing, classifying, inventory, and cataloguing. Finally, it establishes the particular forms, occasions, and public to which collections are exhibited. The dissertation does not consist of a study of collections, but instead puts forward a cultural history of the practice of collecting. The objects amassed and classified (coins, medallions, stamps, aboriginal artefacts, archeological objects, works of art, autographs, books, rare documents, natural history specimens) are not considered in themselves, but rather as the product of a process that is the true subject of this research. It presents a critical reading of collecting and seeks to understand the aspirations, beliefs, values and representations of collectors, for collecting is a way to organize the world, and thus the collection reveals, through the choices made in the selection of pieces and the order in which they are placed, a way to see and understand this world. The practice of collecting is considered as a way in which to study male sociability, the significance of notions such as virility or the nation, and the importance given to history, sciences, and civic education.

Copepods comprise an ecologically important role in freshwater and marine ecosystems, which is why they are often considered an important ecotoxicological model organism. The International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO) 14669 protocol is the only guideline for the determination of acute toxicity in three European marine copepod species: Acartia tonsa. The goal of this project was to assess the feasibility of establishing and maintaining cultures of Acartia tonsa, as well as to refine current culturing and egg separation methods. Initial culture methodology proved difficult for consistent production of eggs and collection of nauplii. The development of an airlift system for the separation of eggs from nauplii and adults, based on size, successfully increased the availability of eggs, nauplii and adults. The sensitivity and relative conditions of the copepod species was assessed by running a series of 48h acute toxicity tests with the reference toxicants 3,5-dichlorophenol, 4,4’-methylenebis(2,6-di-tert-butylphenol. The acute 48 hour median lethal dose concentration (LC50), the no observed effect concentration (NOEC), and the lowest observed effect concentration (LOEC) was analyzed for the three reference compounds for of A. tonsa.