The Röhsska museum in Gothenburg has recently launched a new work method, Backstage, that is studied and paralleled to the museums permanent exhibition on Japanese design. In Backstage the museums routine work is executed in full view of the museums visitors in an exhibition area. The study has focused on the museums intentions and the visitors’ interpretations in Backstage and Japanese design, as well as the staff’s experience of the work method’s public aspects. The study’s empirical material has been collected through interviews with the museum staff as well as observations and interviews with visitors in both Backstage and Japanese design. The study’s objective has been to attain information that is useful to the museum and the future development of the project. The results indicate that the conservator acts as a medium in Backstage and was given precedence over both artifacts and text as the preferred way of gaining information. The public aspects of the work method did not have a pronounced influence on the museum staff, although some apprehensiveness was noticeable. A similar hesitation has been noticed in the visitors and was observed as a threshold to entering the exhibition area.

Repatriering av samiska föremål, mänskliga kvarlevor samt immateriellt kulturarv är en fråga som inte har något enkelt svar.Samtidigt är det en fråga som gång på gång uppkommer inom museisammanhang. Västerbottens museum är ett länsmuseumsom har utarbetat en repatrieringspolicy av samiskt kulturarv för att kunna bemöta denna fråga.Syftet med detta examensarbete är att undersöka hur diskursen ser ut kring repatrieringspolicyn inom museet, problem ochmöjligheter. Undersökningen baseras på en djupintervju med anställda på Västerbottens museum och en representant ur museetssamiska referensgrupp.Under intervjun kommer ett antal teman fram som handlar om kontext samt identitet. Både från museets sida och från densamiska representanten anses det positivt med en repatrieringspolicy. Det handlar om en önskan om samverkan och attinvolvera samer vars kulturarv har samlats in och tolkats utifrån ett västerländskt sätt att se på kulturarv. / Repatriation of sami objects, human remains and intangible heritage is an issue which doesn't seem to have an easy answer.Although this is an issue that time and time again arise in the context of museums. The county museumVästerbottens museumhave created a policy regarding repatriation of sami heritage, to converge this issue.The aim of this examination paper is to study the discourse within the museum regarding the repatriation policy, problems andpossibilities. The study is based on an in-depth interview with the staff of Västerbottens museum and a representative of themuseums sami reference group.During the interview, a couple of themes where pinpointed that dealt with context and identity. It was acknowledged by boththe museum and the sami representantative that a repatriation policy is a good thing. It recognises a wish to co-operate andinvolve the sami people, whose culture have been collected and interpreted by a western point of view.

Disposal and deaccessioning are difficult subjects in the museum and archaeological field. Archaeological materialin museums grows only with time and increased number of excavations. Therefore problems are rising in themuseum field. In this thesis disposal and deaccessioning of archaeological material in the Nordic countries isstudied. The main question is: How is the disposal of archaeological material in the Nordic countries handled?Legislations of the countries and museum policies were studied with disposal or deaccessioning in mind. Questionswere sent to a museum in each country to get first hand information about the subject. Disposal of archaeologicalmaterial is not handled in the same way in the five countries. Two of them, Denmark and Norway havesimilar systems. But the other three have another process in these matters. The word disposal seems not to havethe exact same meaning in all of the countries. In this thesis it is argued that there is no theory that has a clearsolution about what disposal of archaeological material is. I have come to the conclusion that this is an issue thathas to be handled in the museums and the first step is to have a clear policy on disposal and deaccessioning inthe archeological field / Gallring är en svår fråga i museer och på det arkeologiska fältet. Det arkeologiska materialet i museer växer ioch med de arkeologiska utgrävningarna. Detta skapar ett stigande problem inom museum. Denna uppsats behandlargallring av arkeologiskt material i de nordiska länderna. Huvudfrågan är: Hur hanteras gallring av arkeologisktmaterial i de nordiska länderna? Ländernas lagstiftning och museer policy har studerats med gallring iåtanke. Frågor har skickats till ett museum i varje land för att få information om hur de hanterar gallring. De ärinte desamma i de fem länderna. Danmark och Norge använder liknande system medan de tre andra länderna haren annat system. Ordet gallring verkar inte ha exakt samma innebörd i alla länder. I uppsatsen diskuteras det attdet inte finns någon teori som har en klar lösning över gallring av arkeologiskt material. Jag har kommit till slutsatsenatt detta är en fråga som måste hanteras i museer och det första steget är att ha en tydlig policy om dessafrågor i museerna.

Fornföreningen Fibula on the Aland Islands contacts the author because its members want to create a museum.The purpose of this two years master’s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies is to shed light on what a museum really is. The research question I have answered is “what is a museum and is this what Fibula really wants in their reconstructed Viking village?”. Based on interview material, ethnographic field studies, relevant research in the subject and documents from Fibula, I have answered the research question. My theory is grounded and the methods are qualitative.The result of the analysis is that a museum is a non-profit, permanent institution mediating knowledge. It is a heritage value protector and a museum is obligated to take care of and conserve its museum objects and to safeguard the heritage professionally. A museum has to respect and understand the heritage it manages. Research anddocumentation of the museum collections is the key to maintain professionalism. A museum is always active and it can be a participating museum where visitors are included in the museums democratic processes. Fibula is a heritage entrepreneur and the association will find it difficult to manage a museum professionally due to that reason. Fibulas members have an existing sense of place for the Viking village in Kvarnbo and its surroundings. To bring attention to this fact in the future a museum, a visitor center, a walking trail or a development of the Viking village into a living history museum or an (archaeological) open air museum could be relevant. At the moment it seems doubtful however that Fibula and its members got the time, the commitment, the resources and the knowledge it takes to run a museum. Perhaps a museum can be created in the future if respect and understanding of heritage value will come to pass. Entrepreneurship and the sense of place alone don’t lead all the way to a museum.

The aim of this two years master’s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum Studies is to analyse how Swedish cultural history museums work to include LGBTQ-heritage (LGBT is the acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer) in their collections. This work is articulated around three research questions. These interrogate museum practice about collecting and collection management, what it looks like in the already gathered collections as well as the implications such work implies on a broader level. The theoretical framework throughout the paper is gender and LGBT studies as well as queer theory. The analytical tools that have been used are bias-theory (Carruthers 1987), stereotyping (Pickering 2003) and classification theory (Bowker & Leigh Star 2000). Seven interviews form the main empirical material that is analysed in order to grasp museums collecting practice and collection management. Today’s museums practice is influenced by the new trends in democratic representation and seeks therefore to include new narratives that include the LGBTQ community. Museums are either collecting new material with connection to the LGBTQ community or look inwards in order to reinterpret older collections and maybe find a link to it. Both strategies rouse questions that are discussed in this paper. How to classify and document that material as well as selection processes and the traditional museums relation to the alternative collecting practice as the grassroots organizations stand for are discussed in the thesis.

Diss. Linköping : Linköpings universitet, 2006.

This essay examines how three public, Swedish museums use Instagram as a tool for encouraging social interaction and for the building of relationship with the audience. The three examined museums are Livrustkammaren, Världskulturmuseet and Moderna Museet Malmö. By using the method netnography the study has collected posts and comments from the three museums during a limited period of time (2 months). The results present both differences and similarities between the three museums’ use of Instagram. All of the museums have some degree of interaction with users on Instagram, but Livrustkammaren stands out as a museum with more interaction than the others. With the help of Erving Goffman’s theories about social interaction, Anders Persson’s interpretation of these and theories about online relationship strategies presented by Kelleher/Millerand Smith, the essay provides insight into how museums can use Instagram as a communicative tool if the museums want to increase the social interaction and improve and maintain the relationship with the audience. According to the results of this study, some of the more successful strategies are: using humour as a way of connecting with the audience and using a ”conversational human voice”, i.e. a more personal voice. The essay opens up for further studies of how museums can work with Instagram as a tool for communicating with the audience.

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Uppsatsen undersöker hur coronapandemin påverkat museers digitalisering, och ser främst på det digitala utbudet: programverksamhet och utställningar. Ur ett teoretiskt ramverk som innefattar ett kritiskt kulturarvsperspektiv samt deltagande och mediekonvergens genom kritisk diskursanalys och semistrukturerade intervjuer besvarar uppsatsen frågeställningar om hur digitaliseringsprocesser såg ut vid tiden före coronapandemin, hur processen beskrivits i media och av museianställda, samt vad en digitaliseringsprocess kan innebära för konsumtionen av kulturarv. Undersökningen inleds med en redogörelse för museidefinitioner och bakomliggande politiska direktiv och strategier för digitaliseringen, för att sedan granska tre museers digitaliseringsplaner från år 2016. Vidare undersöks hur pandemin och digitalisering lyfts i media. Slutligen presenteras intervjuer med tre museianställda som delar sin upplevelse av att ha arbetat med av digitaliseringsprocesser under 2020-2021. Undersökningen påvisar att det finns en politisk diskurs som skapar de förutsättningar inom vilka svenska museer kan digitalisera sina verksamheter. Vidare har coronapademin generellt påskyndat diigitaliseringsprocesser och skapat tillfälle att utforska digitaliseringens möjligheter samtidigt som det lyfter en diskussion om materialitetens roll i det digitala formatet. Därtill visar uppsatsen att en ökad digitalisering kan skapa sektorspecifika kompetenshierarkier samt att det finns dominerande röster inom fältet som talar för digitalisering i stort, snarare än mot.

In the past few decades, the ways in which we look at heritage, and what the idea of heritage entails, has evolved and changed dramatically. We are constantly working on coming to grips with its complex nature and its multi-facetted ramifications. The aim of this thesis is to explore future strategies for museums in their continued work with collecting, preserving, and managing our cultural heritage in order to become more sustainable institutions. Furthermore, the thesis investigates historically what has led to the current crisis of accumulation and a profusion of heritage, with the intention of substantiating and providing background to the alternatives presented for the future of museum collections. In addition to a literature review of past research on the subject, an analysis of collection management plans and conducted interviews from four museum institutions in Sweden was carried out. The participating institutions were the National Historical Museums, Stockholm City Museum and Medieval Museum, the National Museums of World Culture and Museum Gustavianum. The results find that a rapid expansion of the concept of heritage to incorporate a large range of new forms of material and immaterial memory, alongside an exponential growth in the number of objects and places that are identified, collected and exhibited as cultural heritage, has contributed to a crisis of accumulation. Globalization as well as a large production growth of material things have also been assisting factors. The five strategies put forward to help museums become more sustainable institutions are: identify what your museum needs to focus on, now and in the future; if your museum does not have a collections management plan it is vital to write one; implement deaccessioning as an active collections management tool; with culture in the forefront, strive for sustainable development regarding both collections management and other museum activities; and collaborate and cooperate more with various interested parties to benefit collections development. This is a two years master’s thesis in Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies.