The museum life of archaeological artefacts - A biography of the Valsgärde-collection is a two years master ́s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies at Uppsala University in Sweden. It is an object biography of an archaeological collection housed in the university museum Museum Gustavianum in Uppsala. The collection is the result of excavations conducted by Uppsala University in the early 20th century in Valsgärde in Gamla Uppsala parish, Uppland. The aim of the study is to highlight the museum life of archaeological artefacts and relate this to the curation crisis within archaeology, as described in Anglo-American research. Archival material from the museum was examined, using a method inspired by ethnographic content analysis (ECA), in order to write a biography of the curatorial management and use of the collection. The resulting object biography revealed clear signs that the collection had been suffering from problems associated with the curation crisis during its museum life. The perspective offered by the biographical narrative also revealed some long-term issues that resulted in these problems. Both general problems described in research on the curation crisis and issues specific to the Valsgärde-collection is illustrated by this object biography. The study shows that a continuation of the biographies of archaeological artefacts beyond the mere excavation phase offers insights into issues within, as well as possible solutions to, the archaeological curation crisis. / Artefakternas museala liv - En biografi över Valsgärdesamlingen är en objektbiografisk studie över den arkeologiska samlingen från utgrävningarna i Valsgärde, Gamla Uppsala socken, Uppland. Studiens underlag har utgjorts av arkivhandlingar från föremålsarkivet Museum Gustavianum Samlingar (MGS) i Uppsala, där även samlingen förvaltas. Studiens syfte var att förlänga artefakters biografier för att inkludera deras museala liv kan se ut och förhålla det till forskning om samlingsförvaltningskrisen. Dess centrala problematik är att insamlingstakten av arkeologiskt material är för intensiv för att samlings- förvaltning ska hinna med. Resultatet blir att samlingar inte kan förvaltas på ett ansvarsfullt sätt i fråga om bevarande och användande. Studiens metod är inspirerad av etnografisk innehållsanalys (ECA), där datainsamlingen börjat med två huvudkategorier; förvaltning och användande. Inom dessa kategorier har arkivens sammansättning fått styra vilka teman som fått framträda under datainsamlingen. Objektbiografin faller inom forskningstraditionen Material culture studies, vars bärande princip är att materialitet är nödvändig för förståelse av sociala och kulturella skeenden. Objektbiografin erbjuder ett perspektiv som tillåter att kunskap om hur samlingen skapats, behandlats och använts, samt hur dess museala kontext sett ut och hur aktörer förhållit sig till den, kan användas för att förstå ett större fenomen, samlingsförvaltningskrisen. Studiens specifika frågeställningar gällde vad för bild arkiven på MGS kunde erbjuda av användande och förvaltning av samlingen samt hur detta förhåller sig till samlingsförvaltningskrisen. Samlingen har varit föremål för kontinuerligt intresse och användande, trots att den inte blivit fullständigt publicerad eller inventerad. Användandet har bestått av utställning såväl som forskning. Dock har brist på en tidig holistisk finansieringsplan gjort att den utsatts för undermåliga bevarandeförhållanden under sitt museala liv. Ansvariga har i regel varit måna om att ta hand om samlingen och upprepade försök gjordes att färdigställa samlingens bearbetning, men även här förelåg ekonomiska hinder. Arkivens bild av förvaltningen och användandet har tydligt visat att Valsgärde-artefakternas liv inte tog slut då de införlivades i en museisamling. Den övergripande slutsatsen som dragits från studien är att det fyller en funktion att förlänga arkeologiska artefakters biografier för att inkludera deras museala liv, speciellt om man vill komma till rätta med samlingsförvaltningskrisen.

The Japanese government has a vested interest in either avoiding discussion of its war-torn past or arguing for a revisionist take. The need to play up Japanese victimization over Japanese aggression during World War II has led to many museums having their exhibits censored or revised to fit this narrative goal. During the 1990’s, Japan’s national discourse was more open to discussions of war crimes and the damage caused by their aggression. This in turn led to the creation of many “peace museums” that are intended to discuss and confront this history as frankly as possible. At the beginning of the 21st century, public discourse turned against these museums and only private museums have avoided censorship. Some museums, like the Osaka International Peace Center, have been devastated by the censorship. This museum and other museums with similar narrative issues raise questions about appropriate narrative on display. What is appropriate to censor for the sake of respect for the dead? What must be included for the sake of historical accuracy and honesty about the past? These questions are investigated at four different peace museums throughout Japan.

This essay studies how women are represented in three museum exhibitions. The exhibitions are the Museum Gustavianum exhibition of the history of the University from the 1800s to the present day, the viking exhibition Valsgärde and the Uppsala University Coin Cabinet. The methods used in the study are Thick Description and Wera Grahn’s analyticcal tool, Five Questions to an Exhibition. As the theoretical foundations of my study I have used Hirdman's gender system and Butler’s concepts of performance and the heterosexual matrix.   The results of the study show that women and men are displayed in different places in the exhibitions. The language and the way of speaking about women in the exhibitions often differed from how the men were presented. It also became clear that there were few items related to women in the exhibitions. Based on how women are represented in the exhibitions, one can conclude that museums are part of the gender system as maintainers and co-creators.

5 Abstract: The aim of this thesis is firstly to deal with the emergence and development of museums on the Korean peninsula and since 1948 only in the Republic of Korea. Secondly it aims to concentrate on their educational activities. The very first modern museum in Korea called the Imperial Museum was established at the beginning of the 20th century. A year after the museum opened its door to the public, Korea was annexed by Japan. That had a great impact on the development of the first museums in Korea. After the liberation from Japanese rule in 1945 the museums were handed over to Koreans. Museum activity had only just begun when the Korean War broke out. The focus of the following part is the National Museum of Korea (NMK), the most important museum in South Korea. For most of its history the museum moved from one place to another. In 2005 it finally found its place in a newly built modern building in Soul's district called Jongsan. By taking NMK as an example the thesis explores the museum educational activities. It offers a closer look at programs for foreigners and the growing number of immigrants and senior citizens, popular lecture series, wide range of guided tours etc. Finally, some exhibition projects are introduced. Keywords: Korean museums, National Museum of Korea, museum education,...

Tourism visits to sites associated to varying degrees with death and dying have for some time inspired academic debate and research into what has come to be popularly described as ‘dark tourism’. Research to date has been based on the mobilisation of various social scientific methodologies to understand issues such as the motivations of visitors to consume dark tourism experiences and visitor interpretations of the various narratives that are part of the consumption experience. This thesis offers an alternative conceptual perspective for carrying out research into museums that represent genocide and occupation by presenting a discourse analysis of five Lithuanian museums which share this overchig theme using Foucault’s concept of ‘discursive formation’ from ‘Archaeology of Knowledge’. A constructivist methodology is therefore applied to locate the rhetorical representations of Lithuanian and Jewish subject positions and to identify the objects of discourse that are produced in five museums that interpret an historical era defined by occupation, the persecution of people and genocide. The discourses and consequent cultural function of these museums is examined and the key finding of the research proposes that they authorise a particular Lithuanian individualism which marginalises the Jewish subject position and its related objects of discourse into abstraction. The thesis suggests that these museums create the possibility to undermine the ontological stability of Holocaust and the Jewish-Lithuanian subject which is produced as an anomalous, ‘non-Lithuanian’ cultural reference point. As with any Foucauldian archaeological research, it cannot be offered as something that is ‘complete’ since it captures only a partial field, or snapshot of knowledge, bound to a specific temporal and spatial context. The discourses that have been identified are perhaps part of a more elusive ‘positivity’ which is salient across a number of cultural and political surfaces which are ripe for a similar analytical approach in future. It is hoped that the study will motivate others to follow a discourse-analytical approach to research in order to further understand the critical role of museums in public culture when it comes to shaping knowledge about ‘inconvenient’ pasts.

This thesis discusses the recent construction and anthropological collaboration of the Paris museum: Musée du quai Branly (MQB), an art museum dedicated to showcasing art collections specific to aboriginal and indigenous cultures in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania. The opening of MQB in June 2006 raised a plethora of controversial questions concerning the museum’s methods of curatorial display of the art it has made its primary focus. One of the major issues discussed examines the Quai Branly’s authentic, or inauthentic, representation of certain artworks displayed throughout the museum. Thus, the essay raises the questions: does a non-Western object remain authentic once it is exhibited in a Western society’s art museum? To answer this question, the essay explores the various explanations of art and authenticity in order to reach an understandable conclusion of what constitutes an authentic display of non-Western objects in a Western art museum.

Os sistemas de auxílio à visitação de museus apresentam um grau de reúso de software baixo, dado que o volume de trabalhos publicados contendo a proposta de um novo sistema e/ou modelagem é consideravelmente elevado, e com grau de referenciação entre tais trabalhos próximo de zero. Além disso, diversos estudos neste domínio de aplicações utilizam técnicas de ciência de contexto e fazem uso de dispositivos de Internet das Coisas (IoT), o que agrava o grau de reúso devido à variedade de sensores e dispositivos existentes. Este trabalho apresenta a Museum Touring and Tutoring Product Line (MTTPL), linha de produtos orientada a serviços para o domínio dos sistemas de auxílio à visitação de museus. Os requisitos desta linha de produtos foram coletados principalmente dos resultados de um mapeamento sistemático feito sobre sistemas E-learning e dispositivos IoT. Como forma de avaliação preliminar da linha de produtos proposta, foi realizada uma prova de conceito em que a MTTPL foi instanciada, dando origem ao SmartICMC, um museu virtual para apoiar a visitação ao Museu da Fauna e Flora do ICMC-USP. A prova de conceito fornece indícios de que a linha de produtos proposta é válida e aplicável para sistemas de auxílio à visitação de museus. Como principal contribuição, espera-se que a MTTPL possa ser utilizada para instanciar outros sistemas deste domínio, aumentando o reúso dos assets providos pela linha de produtos. / Museum visitation assisting systems present a low software reuse degree, given that the amount of published papers containing a proposal for a new system and/or modeling is considerably elevated, and with a referring degree among those works near to zero. Besides, many studies on this application domain use context awareness techniques and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, aggravating software reuse degree due to the variety of existing IoT devices. This work presents the Museum Touring and Tutoring Product Line (MTTPL), a service-oriented product line for the museum visitation assisting systems domain. Requirements for this product line were collected mainly from the results of a systematic mapping about E-learning systems and IoT devices. As a preliminary evaluation of the proposed product line, a proof of concept was held in which MTTPL was instantiated, giving rise to SmartICMC, a virtual museum to support the visit to the ICMC-USP Museum of Fauna and Flora. The proof of concept provided evidence that the proposed product line is valid and applicable to museum visitation support systems. As a major contribution, it is expected that MTTPL can be used to instantiate other systems in this domain, increasing the reuse of the assets provided by the product line.

Suiting the Modern Woman documented the evolution of women's power dressing in the 20th century by featuring four major components: thirteen period suit silhouettes, the power suits of twenty-eight influential and successful high profile Texas women, a look at the career and creations of Dallas designer, Richard Brooks, who created the professional wardrobe for former Texas Governor Ann Richards, and a media room which showcased images of working women in television and movie clips, advertisements, cartoons, and fashion guidebooks. The exhibition served as an application for contemporary museum education theory. Acting as both the exhibition coordinator and educator provided an opportunity to develop interpretative strategies and create a meaningful visitor experience.

New technologies are continuously being developed that can aid us in archaeological research. The purpose of this project is to revisit an area containing Late Iron Age (LIA) Stone Walled Structures (SWS) that have received sporadic archaeological research over time, and employ new techniques and technologies to test/re-evaluate previous findings. This involves developing new mapping techniques, which involve the use of Geographical Positioning Systems (GPS), which allowed for a wide survey/mapping exercise in a time effective and budget conscious manner. From these data, a new typology was created in order to reflect new types as well as further segregate exiting types. The resulting data was analysed in a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) environment, allowing us to tackle issues such as spatial distribution and landscape patterns in a digital environment. This analysis allowed us to re-evaluate the original spatial distribution, looking at possible reasons for the inaccuracies in the original study. We then explore the implications of these new data. We tested the results of these analyses based on proposed scenarios for the location of these sites, in order to try better understand the positioning, as we as identify possible diagnostic sites that can undergo further examination.

La dégradation ou la destruction volontaire de biens symboliques est un phénomène omniprésent dans l'histoire humaine. Souvent, les œuvres ont été endommagées parce qu’elles incarnaient des divinités, des représentants du pouvoir, un imaginaire spirituel ou social. Avec l’avènement des musées et la transformation du statut des œuvres qu’ils conservent, ce phénomène adopte de nouvelles formes.Les atteintes portées intentionnellement à l’intégrité d’œuvres d’art, lorsqu’elles se produisent dans des musées, sont porteuses d’enjeux spécifiques, que cette thèse a pour objet d’analyser. Aujourd’hui, elles sont généralement désignées par le terme de vandalisme, qui véhicule des représentations qu’il s’agit d’interroger. Cette recherche, prenant appui sur l’analyse d’un corpus de cas de vandalisme perpétrés entre 1970 et 2014 sur des œuvres exposées dans des musées d’art, en Europe et en Amérique du Nord, s’attache, dans une perspective sociologique, à examiner les ressorts de ces actes, mais aussi les diverses réactions qu’ils suscitent. Celles-ci peuvent être saisies dans leur variabilité ; la confrontation de discours et de points de vue recueillis au cours d’entretiens avec divers acteurs concernés par le phénomène contribue à porter au jour des dispositions contrastées à l’égard des œuvres d’art. L’analyse de la réception sociale de ces actions constitue une voie d’accès privilégiée pour appréhender certains mécanismes de disqualification, y compris au sein du champ artistique. Certains de ces gestes sont en effet réalisés dans une optique de création ou de dialogue artistique : ils font ici l’objet d’une attention particulière en raison de ce qu’ils peuvent mettre en lumière du fonctionnement du milieu de l’art. / Willful degradation or destruction of symbolic goods is omnipresent in Human history. Most of the times, works were damaged because they embodied deities, symbols of power, spiritual or social constructs. With the advent of museums and the transformation of the status of the works they preserve, this phenomenon shaped into new forms.Deliberate attacks on the integrity of works of art, when they occur in museums, carry specific issues that this thesis aims to analyze. Today, they are generally referred to as vandalism, which conveys representations that are to be questioned. This research, based on the analysis of a body of cases of vandalism perpetrated between 1970 and 2014 on works exhibited in art museums in Europe and North America, focuses, from a sociological perspective, on examining the causes of these acts as well as the various reactions they generate. The confrontation of discourses and points of view gathered during interviews with various actors concerned by this topic reveals diverse dispositions towards works of art. The analysis of the social reception of these actions constitutes a privileged approach to specific processes of disqualification, including some within the artistic field. Parts of these gestures are meant to initiate an artistic dialogue or even to create; therefore, they will be looked upon with particular attention as they can highlight some of the mechanisms of the artistic scene.