<p> Early European travel literature was a prominent source from which information about the New World was presented to a general audience. Geographic regions situated within what is now referred to as Latin America were particularly visible in these accounts. Information regarding the religious customs and styles of dress associated with the indigenous peoples who inhabited these lands were especially curious points of interest to the European readers who were attempting to understand the lifestyles of these so-called &ldquo;savages.&rdquo; These reports, no matter their sources, always claimed to be true and accurate descriptions of what they were documenting. Despite these claims, it is clear that the dominant Western/Christian perspective from which these sources were derived established an extremely visible veil of bias. As a result, the texts and images documenting these accounts display highly flawed and misinformed representations of indigenous Latin American culture. Although it is now understood that these sources were often greatly exaggerated, the texts and images within them are still widely circulated in present-day museum exhibitions. When positioned in this framework, they are meant to be educational references for the audiences that view them. However, museums often condense the amount of information they provide, causing significant details of historical context to be excluded. </p><p> With such considerable omission being common in museum exhibitions, it causes one to question if this practice might be perpetuating the distribution of misleading information. Drawing on this question, I seek, with this research, to investigate how early European representations of Latin American culture in travel literature may be linked to current issues of misrepresentation. Particularly, my research is concerned with finding connections that may be present with these texts and images and the negative aspects of cultural appropriation. Looking specifically at representations of Aztec culture, I consult three texts and their accompanying illustrations from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries to analyze their misrepresentational qualities, and how they differed between time periods and regions. Finally, I use this information to analyze museum exhibition practices and how they could be improved when displaying complex historical frameworks like those of indigenous Latin American cultures.</p><p>

Magister Artium - MA / My research considers the vessels of select women ceramists in and from rural KwaZulu-Natal and reflects on the changing contexts in which their work is utilized, consumed and displayed. The emphasis of my research is on the significance of ceramics in cultural practices and how this has changed or been maintained due to altered social and political circumstances and the changing dynamics of research. Additionally, when ceramic vessels are purchased by tourists, collectors and patrons they are subjected to a range of dialogues between maker and buyer. Finally, vessels may be selected to be displayed in exhibitions or held in collections of museums and galleries; once again, then they will be spoken about and they will speak to us on different terms. Each one of these movements in the life of a pot is reflected in the artist’s consideration of form, pattern, balance, shape, colour and symmetry of the vessels. Similarly, each one of these steps in the process engages with a different type of audience in a dynamic and significant way. I investigate how the authors of these vessels become involved in and negotiate a dialogue between themselves, their work and an exterior context that always projects its own voice about the artists and their work.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the function of the museum library. The methodused consisted partly of literary studies, and partly of field investigations, conducted mainlyin the form of interviews.Two different sets of field studies have been conducted. The first one is an investigation ofthe museum libraries in Goteborg. After a preliminary study, three of these have been selectedfor further investigation. These are the libraries of Göteborgs Konstmuseum, GöteborgsStadsmuseum and Röhsska museet. Five employees from each museum have been interviewed,and asked to give their opinions of the library and its function, and also to describehow they used it. To broaden the perspective of the essay, an additional field study wasmade. In this, the libraries of Byggnadsvård Nääs, Stockholms Stadsmuseum and SkaraLänsmuseum were investigated. All these libraries exhibit a slightly different function thanthe others, mostly in giving greater attention to the public part of their work. The thesis concludesthat museum libraries can have served different functions, but the fundamental onemust always be to provide information services for the museum itself. The library is a tool forthe museum personnel, and their access to the information must be the topmost priority ofevery museum library. Once this is seen to, however, the library can have several other functions.Museum libraries are a source of information for researchers. It can become a way forthe museum to open up its collections to the museum visitor. Pictures and archival materialcan be computerized and made accessible through the museum library. The library can alsobe a way for the museum to market itself, by attracting visitors to the museum. In addition tothis, the library can be an arena for other activities to take place in, a gateway between themuseum and the visitor.

The present study used an experimental design to investigate the efficacy of using short (12 words or less), prominently placed supplemental labels to increase the effectiveness of select extant labels in museum exhibits. The experimenter-developed supplemental labels were designed to leverage exogenous/bottom-up and endogenous/top-down sources of influence on selective attention. Measures of patron behavior, knowledge retention, and attitude found no significant differences between group means under control and treatment conditions. These outcomes were surprising and inconsistent with findings from similar research conducted by Hirschi and Screven. The supplemental labels in the present study might have failed to capture attention because they were not sufficiently visually stimulating, they did not sufficiently tap internal motivations, or perhaps patrons experienced innattentional blindness in regards to them.

Archaeologists are increasingly asked to justify the meaning and importance of their work to the public through the development of outreach and education programs. As repositories of culture, museums provide a perfect medium to assist in the promotion of an archaeology that is both relevant and engaging. Many archaeology education programs advocate “doing” or “learning about” archaeology, placing strict emphasis upon stewardship messages and the dangers associated with looting and site destruction. While this approach to teaching makes excellent sense from a modern cultural resource management perspective, it fails to portray archaeology education in any other light. Archaeology exhibits particular relevance within public schools, whose population holds one of the discipline’s largest, most inclusive captive audiences. This paper explores the most effective strategies for teaching archaeology to third and fourth grade students in the museum. I assess student level of engagement with object- and scientific skills-based activities, and results of a pilot study conducted at the Utah State University Museum of Anthropology indicate a need for more object-based curricula within archaeology education programs. Detailed consideration of archaeology’s relevance to skills developed within the social, physical, and life sciences highlights areas of focus and improvement in current and future programs.

No description available.

In the way of museums, certain things have been collected and assembled for a display, a truth, in the form of a private room in which resides the dream world of the curator. Then, as the visual expression of this inner space deepens, they are carefully taken apart, always with respect for the original. Yet the work is not shaped by the hand of a conservator destined to abandon the imagination in favour of a trail of physical evidence. Nor does it reflect the conventional rationalist sensibilities of a museum worker who, by suppressing a poetic understanding of the world is confined by "cold language" (Frame 1992 p.45) and remains caught inextricably in the web of colonial thinking.Here the imagination is truth (Einzig 1996) and an understanding of the nature of this inner space the key to the locked door. The Anthropologist and the Archaeologist, indeed a whole host of disciplinary specialists may come knocking, but it is the artist that gains access to the curatorial spirit. Compelled as much by a love of the museum profession as a crisis of European consciousness (Spivak in Harasym 1990), objects are assembled for an inner journey to a place where shadow and sunlight chase each other across the landscape (McQueen 2000). This is the dialectic space of both curator and artist, of the rational and the irrational, of inside and outside, and of disciplinary devotion and betrayal.

The Intention to Notice: the collection, the tour and ordinary landscapes is concerned with how ordinary landscapes and places are enabled and conserved through making itineraries that are framed around the ephemera encountered by chance, and the practices that make possible the endurance of these material traces. Through observing and then examining the material and temporal aspects of a variety of sites/places, the museum and the expanded garden are identified as spaces where the expression of contemporary political, ecological and social attitudes to cultural landscapes can be realised through a curatorial approach to design, to effect minimal intervention. Three notions are proposed to encourage investigation into contemporary cultural landscapes: To traverse slowly to allow space for speculations framed by the topographies and artefacts encountered; to [re]make/[re]write cultural landscapes as discursive landscapes that provoke the intention to notice; and to reveal and conserve the fabric of everyday places. A series of walking, recording and making projects undertaken across a variety of cultural landscapes in remote South Australia, Melbourne, Sydney, London, Los Angeles, Chandigarh, Padova and Istanbul, investigate how communities of practice are facilitated through the invitation to notice and intervene in ordinary landscapes, informed by the theory and practice of postproduction and the reticent auteur. This community of practice approach draws upon chance encounters and it seeks to encourage creative investigation into places. The Intention to Notice is a practice of facilitating that also leads to recording traces and events; large and small, material and immaterial, that encourages both conjecture and archive. Most importantly, there is an open-ended invitation to commit and exchange through design interaction.

From November 30th, 1981 to May 28th, 1982 I was employed at the Conservation Laboratory of The Australian Museum. I also completed a contract for Australia Post, under Sue Walston's supervision, for two weeks in July 1982 and worked on two private projects at Conservation Art and Library Services, Leichhardt. During my time at The Australian Museum preparation for the opening of a major gallery, "The Abelam - a people of Papua New Guinea" was concluded. A large proportion of my work at the Museum was related to this event. The Australian Museum places a high priority on environmental monitoring of storage areas and one of my duties was to participate in this monitoring programme. Shortly before the opening of the new gallery, flooding was discovered in two showcases in the Aboriginal Gallery affecting some sixty artefacts. The entire conservation staff was involved in emergency procedures, removing the objects to a stabilising environment until further work could be carried out. As the work load occasioned by the Abelam Gallery eased, I was placed in charge of the followup work on the flood-damaged artefacts. The contract with Australia Post was to prepare moulded fibre-glass backings for a collection of Aboriginal bark paintings. This plus my work at Conservation Art and Library Services, a private conservation laboratory, have provided interesting perspectives on the differences between the public and private sectors. Overall, my experience over the last nine months has been quite diverse, encompassing preventive, remedial and cosmetic conservation, practical and administrative work.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 212-234).