This study is a contribution to the programme of memorializing District Six through the site-specific stories that are shared in research, education, and the co-curated spaces of the District Six Museum. When buildings, streets, street names and place names are erased from a landscape; when cultural, economic, religious, and educational spaces are shut down; then people’s connections to place are disrupted, diverted, reimagined, often lost to future linked generations. These connections, however, continue to live on in people’s memories - individual and collective, sometimes lying dormant waiting to be triggered into wakefulness and visibility. In the case of District Six, these memories have lived on as nostalgia about a recent past with the trauma, often, edited out. Consequently, District Six has frequently been rendered as a stereotype - a friendly, unproblematic, tolerant, kanala place, where grand narrative re-enactments provide a sense of closure for some or evokes a sense of renewed anger about the stories not told and the unfulfilled restitution process. The stories of women factory workers are a case in point, where the closing down of factories and the subsequent loss of livelihoods are remembered in two ways. Firstly, through a lens of nostalgia premised on the idea that the past was a better place when we had jobs and could feed our families. Secondly, this recent past is also remembered with a sense of unresolved anger that people are less important than profit margins and real estate - a mentality that resulted in the export of cheap labour factories overseas and gentrification. This study explores the stories of two women clothing workers from District Six. I mapped out the important clothing factories contained in the stories of the two women I interviewed like, for example, the Ensign Factory that was in a section of District Six now rezoned as part of Woodstock. The site and its surroundings have taken on a new corporate brand but still lives with the spectral traces of the old District Six. I make these and other District Six fragments more visible through the stories of Ruth Rosa Phala-Jeftha and Farahnaaz Gilfelleon, using the District Six Museum’s oral history methodology – one steeped in a critical pedagogy where the storytellers have agency and are invited into a co-curated sense-making and interpretive process. / Dissertation (MSocSci)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Historical and Heritage Studies / MSocSci / Unrestricted

The study investigates traces and historical origins, socio-economic, political and cultural lives of 'black servants' who worked and lived at the Zwartkoppies Farm and other establishments owned by Sammy Marks through photographs, oral histories and Archives. Furthermore, I interrogate the notion of representation by exploring the house as a colonial object and the site as exclusive and perpetuating divisions in a democratic South Africa. The decision to employ oral histories is so as to give these servants the freedom to represent themselves in a space where their voices have been muted in their presence. The history of labour in Southern Africa serves as my point of departure so as to better frame my research. This study reflects on the effects of colonisation and apartheid characterised by injustices and marginalisation which is to this day still are reflected in the silenced narratives of South Africa's dark history. / Dissertation (MSoSci)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / University of Pretoria Bursary and DITSONG Museums of South Africa Bursary / Historical and Heritage Studies / MSoSci (Heritage and Museum Studies) / Unrestricted

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

<p> This dissertation provides an analysis of current multilingual practices among art museums in New York City. This study is located within the current theoretical analysis of 1) museums as sites of cultural production and 2) the politics of language, interpretative material, and technology. This study demonstrates how new roles for museums embracing multilingual exhibitions and technology may signal new ways of learning and inclusion.</p><p> The first part is a theoretical-based approach. The second part consists of a mixed-method research design using qualitative and quantitative methods to create three different surveys: of museum staff, of the general public, and finally my observations of museum facilities and human subjects.</p><p> Multilingual exhibitions are complex and require changes at all levels in a museum's organizational structure. Access to museum resources can provide more specific data about language usage. The survey responses from 175 adults provides statistics on multilingual settings and its complexity. The survey responses from 5 museums reveals the difficulty, and benefits, of dealing with this topic. Visual observations at 36 museums indicate that visitors pay attention to interpretative material, while production cost, space, and qualified linguistic staff are concerns for museums. Technology is a breakthrough in multilingual offerings, for it can help democratize a museum's culture to build stronger cultural community connections.</p>

<p> Museums, and museum professionals, engage in a significant role within society. This dissertation is a qualitative exploratory study of the ways in which museum professionals promote or hinder the social inclusivity of museums through curatorial voice. Through a series of exhibit evaluations and intensive interviews, the researcher investigates the mechanisms used to craft curatorial voice within museums that handle contested subject material. This research seeks to broaden the understanding of curatorial voice, as viewed through the theoretical lenses of gatekeeper theory and co-creation of identity, with the explicit purpose of aiding in the development of professional guidance to help make museums more socially inclusive.</p>

<p> As a community-based art educator, I advocate for an arts-based educational environment that embraces postmodern tenets and encourages individuals to reflect on self and society in relation to the places in which they dwell and learn. This thesis is a dialogue on emplaced community-based art education. Issues of urban education, social justice, and critical pedagogy are considered in relation to participants&rsquo; enactments of place within two distinct community-based educational settings. In order to investigate the connections between a culture of place, place-based education, and the community-based programs of each site, the role of art and artifacts was carefully considered in building a sense of place and placemaking within the comparison of each case study. Data was collected over the course of a year and later analyzed through the lens of narrative analysis-a focus on how people spoke to personal values and social beliefs associated with their enactment of place-based education. </p>

My thesis is an interpretive case study of the exhibition Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis (Tate Modern, 1 February – 29 April 2001). It examines a variety of issues pertaining to the making of institutional modern and contemporary art exhibitions in a Western urban context today. It is concerned with exhibition studies’ methodology, the reciprocity between the art institution and the city, and the relationship between the art institution and the independent curator. With regards to methodology, I propose various readings of an exhibition that fall under two types of knowledge, namely visible and invisible knowledge. The former refers to all aspects of the exhibition that are seen in the public domain, while the latter considers not immediately accessible information about the exhibition, such as archival material and oral history. I also examine the mutual relationship between the city and the institution through the instrumentalization of the exhibition by city politics, and the correlative micro and macro effects. I thus link the exhibition to a passage from an industrial to a post-industrial economy, New Labour politics and the competition of cities in a worldwide urban network. Within that framework I analyse associated issues, such as London’s urban regeneration and cultural tourism, city branding, changing city demographics, the link between the institution, the city and governmental agendas, and the ‘world city’ race. Finally, I question the changing relationship between the art institution and the independent curator. I reflect on the advantages and limitations of curatorial practice in the context of that relationship by considering the exhibition as a platform for the concurrent expression of both personal and collective curatorial interests, and the exploration of canonical versus contemporary approaches. I conclude that an in-depth study of a contemporary exhibition on these grounds allows for important insights to be gained that contribute to the fields of curatorial and exhibition studies, as well as to urban theory.