Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of New York, 2005. / (UMI)AAI3287109. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-10, Section: A, page: 4108. Adviser: George A. Corbin.

Many options are available to designers when creating museum exhibitions. One particular option that can be chosen is the inclusion of exhibits that can be touched and manipulated, a style of exhibit often referred to as hands-on or interactive (Adams and Moussouri, 2002). Within this subset of exhibits, designers also have a multitude of choices to make that can affect the experiences visitors will have. The goal of this study is to help the transfer of research findings about learning and hands-on interactive exhibits to designers so that more-informed choices may be made. With this goal in mind, the exhibits within three exhibitions at the Montreal Science Centre are examined from a pedagogical perspective. Falk and Dierking's Contextual Model of Learning (2000) is employed as a conceptual framework, and one of its contexts is specifically addressed. Since exhibition designers act upon the objects that form exhibits, and only have direct influence on their physical nature, the physical context of Falk and Dierking's model is chosen as a lens through which to investigate the exhibits. Emergent concepts from the physical context of those exhibits are collected and then categorized. To relate the emergent concepts to a pedagogical perspective, the categories are then associated to the pedagogical triangle (Houssaye, 1988; Moore, 1989), which allows them to be organised following the roles and interactions present in that model. This study, therefore, presents a structure and common language through which the physical context of hands-on interactive museum exhibits can be understood from a pedagogical perspective.

A l'ère de l'économie de la connaissance, les musées se tournent vers la numérisation et les technologies de l'information et de la communication afin de rendre accessible leur collection en ligne. Cette nouvelle pratique que nous nommons cybermuséologie permetelle de protéger et de diffuser de façon novatrice le patrimoine immatériel, c'est-à-dire l'héritage culturel? Comparable à la connaissance tacite, la transmission des savoirs culturels fait face aux problèmes de reproduction et de codification. Une démarche exploratoire nous a permis d'approfondir ce nouveau phénomène du point de vue de la diffusion. Ainsi, la triangulation des résultats de l'observation des sites Internet de deux musées canadiens d'envergure internationale, d'entrevues avec leur responsable respectif et d'une entrevue avec le directeur d'une entreprise de conception privée oeuvrant dans le domaine s'est révélée des plus pertinentes. La cybermuséologie permet en effet le transfert de certains savoirs et de savoir-faire, mais d'une façon limitée. Toutefois, plusieurs limites pourraient éclater grâce à l'intégration prochaine de nouvelles technologies favorisant la participation des usagers. Ce portrait de deux institutions canadiennes, nous permet de mieux comprendre ce qu'est la cybermuséologie et d'anticiper son développement.

The aim of this study is to explore the process that shaped the identity of peripheral art museums in Israel during decade the 1990s. This process is examined though the eyes of the curators who artistically guided and directed two of these museums, the Janco Dada Museum in Ein Hod and the Ein Harod Museum of Art at Kibbutz Ein Harod. Both museums are non-profit organizations and this study is the first to seek to understand the identity of these two small but significant art museums located in villages in the north of Israel. The research examines the meaning of the identity of the museums by drawing upon theories of museology, centre and periphery, personal and group identity and organization identity. This research is based on knowledge that is personal, unique and subjective. It is conducted using an inductive approach towards gathering, analysing and interpreting data. The research utilizes a case study approach in order to provide an explanation for the cultural organization of the museum and for the attitude of the curators. This is documentary research that is based on only one source, the museum's archives which are examined according to multi- method procedures for gathering data. The evidence showed that in both cases the process of constructing the identity of the art museums links the personal views as well as the professional aims of the curators and their activities. These activities link the identity of the art museum to the natural setting. In addition, these activities, in both cases, link the identity of the museum to the relationship of the centre and periphery. In addition, both curators wished to differentiate their museum from the centre. In the research process new links were created between diverse scientific disciplines such as museology and social science and theories derived from different fields such as art history, sociology, and centre and periphery studies. These links, contribute new insights into our understanding of museology.

<p> In the complexity and idiosyncrasies of everyday human activity, social scientists seek patterns--first to describe, then to explain the organization of thought and action. In a natural history museum, a setting of complex activity, video-based research addresses fundamental questions: How do children use museum exhibits? How do they make sense of experience when confronted with a rich array of resources, including natural objects, environments, models, digital and mechanical interactives, static and moving images, text and sound? How does design constrain and afford different forms of engagement and meaning-making? Theories of cognition--as embodied, situated, and distributed--informed methods of analysis focused on multimodal interaction. A detailed behavioral coding scheme, applied to video of six multilingual fourth-grade children, highlights when they look, touch, talk, and gesture with exhibits. Quantitative analyses focus on behavioral frequencies and sequences. Qualitative analyses describe the forms and cognitive functions of the children's multimodal engagements. In this cognitive ecosystem, the diversity, abundance, and distribution of modes of interaction permit inferences about the role of the environment, consequences of design and the potential for learning. Children's self-directed explorations of the museum clustered around themes: objects, action, and representation. The children's activity embodied inquiry. They asked, explicitly and implicitly, What is it? What can I do? What does it mean? Children used multiple sensorimotor and expressive modalities for different functions, and they distributed and integrated cognitive labor across modalities and individuals. When children manipulated objects in the museum--opportunities for interaction that they actively sought--they achieved feats of cognitive complexity. They tested cause-and-effect relations in the physical world, created layers of narrative interpretation, and filled conceptual gaps in exhibits with their own expressions of meaning. Guided by children's behavioral and cognitive inclinations, museums and schools can, and should, create environments for meaningful exploration, imagination and expression.</p>

Museums are educational institutions that, historically, have often reflected dominant-culture biases in their treatment of religious artifacts and human remains from Native societies (Bal, 1996; Bieder, 1986, 1996; Bilosi & Zimmerman, 1997; Bray, 1995; Cornell, 1988; Edwards & Sullivan, 2004). In 1989, the National Museum of the American Indian Act became law after years of sustained activism to protect basic human, cultural and civil rights for Native peoples, including the rights to religious freedom and equal protections for the sanctity of Native graves and Native dead. The Act established the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), recognized Native rights to specific categories of sensitive materials, and required Native participation and agency in the new organization, whose mission includes supporting the health and vitality of contemporary Native cultures. This dissertation is a case study of the grassroots social action of Native Americans that uses Charles Vert Willie’s theory of grassroots social action to illuminate how and why the grassroots social action of Native Americans was successful in fulfilling the goal to reform museum practice through the enactment of federal law (Willie, Ridini, & Willard, 2008). My overarching research interest is how public educational institutions can transform themselves in response to the legislative demands and court orders for social justice initiated by grassroots population groups. This historic case, examined through the lens of a well-formulated theory and involving the agency of grassroots social action and the transformation of museum policy, is of value and interest to many types of grassroots movements, both in education and in other social systems. In particular, knowledge of what obstacles activists faced and may continue to face, what strategies have successfully been employed to meet these obstacles, and what lessons have been learned by those involved in this unique case, can be of value to others who similarly seek to transform institutions in order to promote civil and human rights. / Learning and Teaching

Como toda Dissertação de Mestrado este trabalho não visou chegar a nenhuma comprovação e sim a uma verificação dos requisitos básicos para a criação de um programa adequado dentro das necessidades básicas da nossa cidade na área de museus assim como da Arte Brasileira e suas manifestações artísticas, acarretando um aprofundamento no conhecimento da arquitetura de museus e da arquitetura como um todo, através de uma atualização das correntes arquitetônicas, das novas tecnologias, dos novos materiais e de um novo sistema museológico, evidenciando um novo papel do museu e da arquitetura de museu no mundo atual. Espero ter demonstrado, através dos trabalhos programados realizados entre 1994 e 1995 e da proposta de um museu para a exposição de arte contemporânea no segmento das instalações e propostas interativas realizado entre 1996 e 1997, o conhecimento adquirido e modestamente poder ter contribuído com o aprendizado nesta área. Assim a Dissertação intitulada \"Arquitetura de Museus\" foi dividida em duas partes: Pesquisa e Projeto. A Pesquisa denominada \"Arquitetura de Museus - A Produção Mundial Arquitetônica em Exposição\" foi dividida em quatro partes; 1. \'O Mundo dos Museus\' com uma abordagem evolutiva da história dos museus no mundo. 2. \'O Museu e seus Visitantes\' trata das relações do museu com seu usuário, as partes integrantes do museu e sua estruturação dentro de um programa proposto. 3. \'1970-1995\' apresenta um painel da produção mundial da arquitetura de museus e finalizando com a relação de 15 projetos divididos em 5 áreas, a saber; Reestruturação, Anexos e Ampliações, Projetos Completos, Galerias e projetos. 4. \'Conclusão\' visa salientar os pontos positivos subsequêntes desta corrida arquitetônica e evolução museológica observada nos últimos 25 anos, bem como suas causas. O Projeto derivou da constatação da necessidade de um museu para a cidade de São Paulo dentro dos padrões museológicos atuais e mundial, visando preencher uma lacuna existente no segmento das instalações e artes interativas como modo de expressão artística, além de um espaço urbano destinado à arte como um centro de atividades múltiplas, comerciais educacionais e de lazer. É muito importante destacar que o intuito, tanto da pesquisa como do projeto não foi, em momento nenhum, fixar um paradigma de museu. O que ocorreu, isto sim, foi a verificação da possibilidade de idealidade de um museu para com o seu programa, seu tema e seu caráter previamente propostos. / This paper, as every Dissertation of Master\'s Degree, has not a purpose to confirm, but only to verify the necessary basic qualifications to the creation of a suitable programm for the basic necessities of our town concerning Museums having as subject Brasilian Art and its artistical manifestations, leading to an improvement of the knowledge of museum architecture and of architecture as a whole, by the means of modernization of architectural currents, of new technologies, of new materials and of new systems for museums, showing clearly a new role of the museums and a new role of the museum architecture in the contemporary world. I hope to have been able to prove through the Established Works done between 1994-1995 and through the proposal of a museum built to exhibit contemporary art in the section about installation and interactive proposals done between 1996-1997, the acquired knowledge and humbly hope to have been able to contribute to apprenticeship in the area. In this way the Dissertation under the title \"Museum Architecture\" was divided in two parts: Research and Project. The research named \"Museum Architecture - The World Architectural Production Explaned\" was divided into 4 parts: 1. \'The World of Museums\' with an evolution approach of the history of museums all over the world. 2. \'Museums and its Visitors\' deals with the relations between the museum and its visitors, the components parts of the museum and its structures within a suggested programm. 3. \'1970 - 1995\' - presents a picture of the architectural world production of museuns ending with a list of 15 projects divided in 5 areas as: Restructure, Annex and Enlargement, Complete Projects, Galleries and Projects. 4. \'Conclusion\' it intends to print out the positive aspects of this architectural run and museological evolution observed in the last 25 years, as well its causes. The Project derived from the verification of the necessity of a museum for the city of São Paulo, within the actual and worldly accepted museological standards, trying to fill up a gap existing between the segment of interative art and installation as a mean of artistic expression, beyond that a city space devoted to art as a center of multiples activities, shoppings and leisure. Its very important to accentuate that the purpose of the research as well of the project, was not, at any moment, to establish a model of museum, but indeed, a verification of the possibility of idealizing a museum with its own programm, own theme and own character, previously proposed.

This thesis aims to go beyond the concept of so called ‘virtual museums’. In this work I will attempt to trace a new definition of the term ‘virtual museum’ providing the concept with renewed dignity, comparable to ICOM’S definitions of museums and other existing definitions of the concept. To do so the main part of this thesis is about creating a meta-model of taxonomy capable of including all the experimentations that have taken place in the field of ‘virtual museums’ in the last 20 years. In this direction I have investigated the concept of the museum as a medium as described by McLuhan and other thinkers, both within and outside the field of museology. The discovery of an unabridged work by McLuhan on technology in museums endorses, and opens a discussion on how technology is intended to be used for the communication of heritage. Another aim of this thesis is to investigate how museum professionals can deal with the new role of Information Technology in communicating heritage. In this thesis I intend to respond to the need of museum professionals both inside and outside ICOM for definitions and clearer understanding concerning the following questions ‘What is a virtual museum? Can it be comparable with a ‘real’ museum? What different kinds of virtual museums can be discerned in past experimentations? Can they be included in a taxonomy? How does this change the day to day work of museum professionals in accordance with the new technological potential for the communication of heritage?

This qualitative study defined the hermeneutic approach as a strategy for developing museum education programs, and examined its implementation in two museum settings. A hermeneutic research methodology was used to design, interpret, and explain the hermeneutic approach to museum education program development and its implementation by two museum educator research participants, a codeveloper and an implementer. Four sequential stages comprised the study that addressed the following questions: What is the hermeneutic approach to museum education program development? How does the hermeneutic approach to museum education program development work? What does the hermeneutic approach to museum education program development offer to museum educators? In Stage One, elements of hermeneutics, curriculum theory, pedagogy, and museology were drawn from a review of the literature to define the hermeneutic approach. The hermeneutic approach was aligned to an interpretive curriculum theory paradigm. After establishing its theoretical foundation, the hermeneutic approach was diagrammed as a template for guiding the development of museum education programs that included the following components: curriculum topic, museum's mandate, storyline, themes, artifacts, and program: pre-understanding, meaning in-context, connectedness, process, experience, and communication. Stage Two continued with the introduction of the co-developer, a seasoned museum educator who assisted in refining the hermeneutic approach template by piloting its implementation in the development of a museum education program. Insights gained from this stage were used to modify the hermeneutic approach for Stages Three and Four of the study. The hermeneutic principles of pre-understanding, meaning-in-context, connectedness, process, experience, and communication were used as a format for conducting a workshop to teach the hermeneutic approach to seasoned and novice museum educators in Stage Three. According to the study's design, the Stage Four museum educator implementer autonomously developed a museum education program using the hermeneutic approach. A back and forth interplay between the experiences of the co-developer in Stage One and the implementer in Stage Four was mediated by the researcher to examine the template and its components. Results of the study indicate that the hermeneutic approach forces museum educators to move away from an objectives-based program planning strategy, thus redefining the role of artifact interpretation.

<p> This study documents an experience in which a small group of cognitively and developmentally disabled adults expressed their personal goals and views related to art museum visits. A review of literature related to disability studies, museum access and inclusive programs, art therapy, and person-centered thinking provide background and context. Case study and qualitative interviews are used as methodologies to support an investigation of the use of person-centered thinking in the implementation of art museum programming for the study participants. Person-centered thinking is considered and assessed as an approach to structuring meaningful collaborations between visitors with disabilities and art museums. Data collected in the forms of visual and written response, observation, and documentation of interviews inform the findings, discussion, and analysis of the study&rsquo;s research goals. The resulting case study may be used by museums to structure visits with similar groups. This study contributes to a growing body of knowledge pertaining to how museums can best collaborate with disabled populations to create inclusive programs.</p>