Bibliography: pages 184-192. / Within academia it is now accepted that personal experiences, as well social construction influence the way people perceive the world, and thus the research process and findings. Research, no matter how empirical, is not immune to personal quess work and conclusions. The same however, can be said for the establishment of museums and monuments which are meant to commemorate events, or epochs in the history of a nation. For in the establishment of the museum or monument the curators and researchers do choose those events which are deemed important enough as history to be preserved for prosperity. The following thesis is an investigation of the Afrikaans Taal museum, or Afrikaans Language Museum situated in Paarl, Cape Province. The museum aims to reproduce a history of the Afrikaans language, culminating in the eventual recognition of Afrikaans as an official language. In the thesis though, I argue that by choosing to represent certain events in the history of the language, and excluding others, the museum becomes a symbol of/for Afrikanerdom. If South Africa is to heal its wounds caused by Apartheid and the Armed Struggle, all monuments and museums established during the reign of the National Party will have to be investigated, and the feasibility of their existence called into question.

The following qualitative study sought to answer three questions: (1) What are the high priority design values used by expert exhibit developers to create meaningful exhibits at children's museums? (2) How do exhibit developers prioritize these design values? (3) What are the desirable outcomes that exhibit developers seek to achieve with the guests who interact with the exhibits? These questions were answered through interviews with children's museum exhibit developers, personal observations, and artifact analysis. The data collected was organized into four cases, each representing a different children's museum and corresponding exhibit developer. The cases were then compared against each other using multiple case study analysis as described by Stake (2006). The data revealed that most of the developers designed exhibits which promoted family learning by encouraging meaningful interactions between parents and children. Other high priority design values used by exhibit developers included physical engagement, multiple entry points, simplicity, durability, multisensory engagement, staff and volunteer facilitation, safety, and immersive environments. Successful museum exhibits empowered guests and were always created using multiple design values. This thesis may be downloaded for free at http://etd.byu.edu.

This study concerned the methods in which fourth and fifth grade teachers in one of the larger suburbs of Dallas, Texas, prepared themselves and their classes for a visit to the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. Twenty teachers who had visited the Dallas museum in the last two years were interviewed using a validated interview questionnaire. The majority of teachers were concerned with both visual and written resources. Although, additional materials were requested, many teachers were uniformed about preparation resources provided by the museum. The teachers' idea and attitudes were found to be supportive of the museum and its programs.

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This thesis considers the contemporary work of the museum in the post-industrial setting of Glasgow. It interprets and understands how the museum as a space gives voice to New Labour’s concepts of social inclusion and citizenship whilst being embroiled in the wider process of urban regeneration and city enhancement. This research has been conducted using a mixed methodology incorporating policy analysis, participant observation and interviews, engaging with policy documentation, museum professionals and museum users in its goal to understand how the museum has been and is positioned within society. In exploring how museums have sought to become more socially inclusive, the research examined four different programmes in detail. These included two outreach projects; one working with adult learners and the other with different religious groups in the city. The research has also followed the contribution of a group of volunteers and finally it has engaged with the on-going processes surrounding the building of the city’s latest museum. The research findings have highlighted a complex and entangled set of power relations in the attempts to articulate social inclusion policy through the museum. This suggests, building upon the work of Foucault, that the museum embraces a soft-disciplinary power in relation to citizens. Specific programmes of the museum service targeting social inclusion reveal the benefits the individual may enjoy through participating in cultural events from which they might otherwise feel excluded. Yet, the reach of such programmes question the extent to which they are able to address social inclusion in the city. Recent developments – the production of the city’s newest museum as part of the riverside regeneration in particular – reveal how the installation of the iconic museum is closely allied to the wider project of urban economic regeneration. The planning of the Riverside Museum, however, has been attentive to the social inclusion agenda, particularly through the questions of access. Finally, the research shows how the city’s dominant growth agenda has resulted in a changing role for curators, shifting their agency away from a more traditional practice in which they were key gatekeepers, coordinating what museums displayed and how they did so, and towards a role that reflects a more scrutinised form of managerial control.

Master of Science / Department of Communications Studies / Gregory Paul / This report investigates how American art museums have adopted interactive technologies on their websites. The use of such technologies brings to the forefront a tension regarding authority over visitors’ experience of and interpretation of art both in person and online. Interactive tools on 15 art museum websites were coded as enabling one of three types of interaction: human-to-computer, human-to-human and human-to-content. Human-to-computer interactive features were most prevalent on museum websites, followed by human-to-human and human-to-content interactive technologies respectively. The findings demonstrate a tension between the goals of art museums in wanting to engage visitors in co-creation of meaning about art on the one hand and wanting to maintain their traditional authority over that meaning on the other. The report concludes by offering recommendations for how museums can use interactive technologies more effectively in order to maintain their role as centers of social and cultural life.

Community-based museums in British Columbia are testaments to the importance of belonging and social identity. Three case studies, the Saanich Pioneer Museum, the Kamloops Museum Association and the Langley Centennial Museum in Fort Langley demonstrate how community identity was the focus of collective memory construction. Museum buildings were also iconographic sites. This research draws on museum society minutes, records, journals and displays, and personal interviews. It examines the role of earlier groups and events, from agricultural fairs to fraternal organizations in these museums' origins. The influence of provincial and federal government policies and funding, Centennial celebrations, and umbrella organizations such as the British Columbia Museums Association are also analysed. Socialization, interaction, memorabilia, commemorations and celebrations were all part of the creation of collective memory, and demonstrate how belonging was vital to these museums' creation and histories. / Graduate