Magister Artium - MA / The study through the topic: An investigation of Zimbabwe's contemporary heritage practices of memorializing war: A case study of the Heroes' Acres in Matabeleland South Province focuses on post liberation war memorialisation and management in the post-colonial state of Zimbabwe. It analyses the emergence and management of war memorials and shrines in the form of heroes' acres, in the province of Matabeleland South in Zimbabwe from 1988 to 2010. Zimbabwe attained independence in 1980 after a long protracted war waged by two guerrilla movements against the unilaterally declared independent state of Rhodesia led by Ian Smith. Post-1980, ZANU (PF) became the dominant political party in the new state now renamed Zimbabwe. A national memorialisation structure was established soon after independence; charged with ensuring a befitting memorialisation of the war of liberation. Post-independence political contradictions between the parties notwithstanding, the results of the 1980 election showed an ethnicized landscape, a trajectory that has been at the centre of the national political discourse. Political disturbances in the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces became one of the most important and interesting historical issues that unsettled the nation in respect of memorialisation. Against this background, this research proposes to assess how political actors contributed to the issue of memorializing a war in post-1980 Zimbabwe. Using the central question which arose from a critique of Zimbabwe's memorialisation structure as a graded one, in which the local site subordinates the national, the research aims to examine whether the shifts in the political and management spheres of the heroes acres as represented by the inclusive government currently governing the country and the transferring of management duties of heroes acres to the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe, has managed to challenge the claim made above. By embarking on this work, the research aims to examine whether the local memorial sites actually act as mere subordinates in a deliberate graded structure to the national shrine represented by the National Heroes' Acre in Harare, within the politics of memorialisation.

The purpose of my research was to investigate participative management at the Albany Museum with a view to generating knowledge and insights that can be used to support senior management’s engagement with participative management at mid-management level. My interest was to investigate participative management with regards to five HODs of the Albany Museum with a view to generating knowledge and insights that can be used to support senior management’s engagement with participative management at mid-management level. The research was informed by the interpretive paradigm. The interpretive paradigm does not concern itself with the search for broadly applicable laws and rules but rather seeks to produce descriptive analyses that emphasise deep interpretation and understanding of social phenomena through the meaning that the people assign to them. This study is mostly descriptive and presents the reality of participants from their own experience. Semi-structured interviews and observation capture ‘insider’ knowledge that is part of an interpretive methodology. The study found that participative management was both understood and generally accepted as a good way to manage an organisation, and even members who were critical of it could see its benefits. However, the fractured and diversified structure of the organisation calls for a particularly skillful application of this management approach, one which would also demand leadership and a greater sense of working towards what are called collegial models of management. Whether this is in fact desirable for a museum is debatable.

The thesis examines the photographic collection of Joseph Denfield, an archivist and historian who experimented with photography over a twenty-year period. The study is located within the field of critical visual studies that focuses on historical photography in its depiction of identities and groups in the context of social change. The thesis pays attention to the manner and extent to which Denfield participated in regional visual economies at various moments during his photographic career in order to establish his contribution towards a visual history in Africa and more broadly Southern Africa. It follows Denfield’s career trajectory chronologically. It begins with a study of his photographic work in Nigeria which was oriented around so-called ‘pagan tribes’ and which was framed within the discourse of ethnography. It then pays attention to his growth as an artist in photography that resulted from years of exhibiting in salons. I read these photographs and texts in relation to his earlier work in Nigeria given the extent to which he drew on anthropological discourses. It is through his involvement with photographic art circles that Denfield developed as a historian as a result of his research into the history of photography and regional visual histories. This took the form of both unearthing historical photographs as well as photographing historical sites to construct the past in particular ways through the visual. At each stage he translated these histories into public forms of representation and power thus he figures among a small group of ‘colonial’ photographers that shaped the visual economy of Southern Africa. Through a detailed study of his work, the thesis thus aims to re-think through new dimensions of visual culture.

Lieu d'accès aux connaissances, le musée agricole véhicule l'image du patrimoine et des enjeux culturels et professionnels de l'agriculture. Le monde agricole a été progressivement mis en scène dans l'espace du musée, puis dans l'espace paysager, au moyen d'aménagements variés : équipements muséographiques, et enfin dans l'espace virtuel avec les musées en ligne. Les musées du monde agricole ont été voulus par les intermédiaires savants, les pouvoirs publics et « ceux qui font l'agriculture » : agriculteurs eux-mêmes, organisations professionnelles et industrielles. Ils se sont multipliés à l'image de la variété même des visages de l'agriculture. À travers la pluralité de leurs approches et de leurs collections, les musées d'agriculture ont répondu depuis 1920 à des enjeux circonstanciés, identitaires, culturels, territoriaux et symboliques, jusque dans le contexte nouveau du développement territorial de ce début de XXIe siècle. Ils véhiculent l'image de l'agriculture que veulent donner les acteurs et partenaires des mondes agricole et culturels : tradition et modernisme. Ce processus de patrimonialisation rend légitime l'intégration du monde agricole à l'histoire culturelle de la nation. Il est question des modes et moyens par lesquels le monde agricole est représenté de 1920 à 2014 dans les structures muséales et en particulier aux musées du Compa et de la Bertauge depuis les années 1970. Dans le cadre de l'histoire culturelle, il est montré que les musées du monde agricole se sont développés dans le creuset de l'éducation, du folklore et qu'ils entrent de manière diversifiée dans l'ère de la valorisation du patrimoine jusqu'à intégrer territoires et paysages. / The agriculture museum is a place of knowledge which conveys the image of the rural heritage, as well as its cultural and professional issues. The agricultural sector has been progressively staged within the museum space, then in the landscaped scenery, with the use of various facilities: museum equipment, and finally in the virtual space with online museum.Agriculture museums have been designed by scholar intermediaries, public authorities and "those who are agriculture» such as farmers themselves, business and industrial organizations. They multiplied the image of the same variety of faces of agriculture.Through the diversity of their approaches and their collections, agriculture museums have responded since 1920 to identity, cultural, territorial and symbolic issues into the new context of territorial development of the early twenty-first century. They convey a traditional and modernist image of agriculture in tune with the wishes of the different players and partners in the agricultural and cultural worlds. This process legitimizes the integration of the agricultural heritage to the cultural history of the nation.We examine the ways and means by which the agricultural world is shown from 1920 to 2014 in museum structures and in particular the Compa and Bertauge museums since the 1970s. Through cultural history, it is shown that agriculture museums have developed in the crucible of education and folklore; They developed in a diversified way in the era of the development of heritage to integrate territories and landscapes.

Master's thesis deals with consumerism in culture. Thesis analyzes cultural institutions and the way they are influenced by consumer society and the requirements of the general public -- the masses. The first part defines the term of culture, consumerism and consumer society. Next part discuss Culture in meaning of Art and permeation of consumerism into the selected domain of culture -- theaters, cultural centers and museums (art galleries). The final part of thesis demonstrates the influence of spectators and visitors to the specific selected representatives of Brno's cultural scene. The survey was conducted through interviews with representatives of Reduta Theater, theater for children Polárka Theater, Cultural Center Semilasso and Wannieck Gallery, currently renamed Richard Adam Gallery.

Since the 1990s, a trend in the UK museum sector for developing community partnerships has witnessed a ‘participatory drive’ that aims to embrace social diversity by engaging communities in the co-creation of exhibitions and other museum work. In this context, the Internet broadly, and social media in particular, are seen as complementary to museum processes of reciprocal exchange and public access. However, as this thesis stresses, treating the Internet and social media as complementary and convergent with the participatory drive in museums is assumptive and has been under-analysed, and its difficulties and complexities understated. In this context, this practice-based research carefully unpicks and critically analyses naturalised assumptions about online resources and social media practices in museums by tracing the cultural history through which the participatory museum has developed and contrasting it with the much later sociology of the Internet. The participatory drive is seen to be mediated through society’s agencies for local governance, healthcare and education services, as well as neighbourhood groups and families. These structures act then as a bridge organising people in space and time. In turn, museums’ digital practices often assume similar social organisation in their approach towards public engagement. However, the distributed architecture of the Internet has the effect of compressing time with space, enabling group organisation and public spaces to bypass society’s structures and instead place the individual at the centre of a network of relationships that self-organises according to the social capital displayed in online behaviour. Accordingly, the thesis argues, there is anapparent mis-match between museums on the Web and the online public, which affects negatively public engagement online. By bringing Bourdieu’s theories of social space and social capital into the realm of the Internet, drawing on cultural historical activity theory and reflecting on a research residency at the Whitworth Art Gallery, this thesis goes on to examine why museums find it challenging to engage with online publics. Its research practice aimed to ‘open’ the digital collections of the participating museum into the same time and space as the online public. This included triggering, following, documenting and critically reflecting upon processes, challenges and actions of digital engagement and the people involved in them. The thesis reflects on the research practice’s organisational and cultural challenges, which relate to the fact that it contradicted the museum’s existing departmental organisation and symbolic representation of public access and engagement. It goes on to argue that when digital practices of museums are attuned to the ecology and spatial structure of the online public, the outcomes are misrecognised as unrelated to museums’ core practices of social inclusivity. Instead, the argument continues, museums need to open up to emerging concepts of digital public space and publicness, in order for their digital practices to be relevant to online publics.

The aim of my diploma thesis is the exploration of the fine arts presentation options and methods with a focus on contemporary fine arts in context of the museums of art. The main terms concerning the topic are defined in my work prior to the main research of the museums of art and the presentation of fine arts. In the beginning of my work the reader can familiarize himself with the historical development of art museums from its genesis until the present form of this institution. Following the research part I am explaining the main aspects relevant to the presentation of fine arts, such as the spatial character of art museums and the evolution of its design. One part of my work is focused on a role of curator, who is a very important figure in the presentation of fine arts. The main basis of art museum are its art collections, which are transformed into long-term exhibitions. On the other hand, the museum should also manage the production of temporary exhibitions which plays an essential role in the presentation of fine arts in the last few decades. The methods and technique of installations are no less important for the presentation. All these aspects are described in my diploma thesis and supported by concrete examples from various museums. In the last part of my work, the theoretical thesis are applied on a specific example of an institution with the largest art collection in our country - Veletržní palác.

Museums and libraries are considered large repositories of human knowledge and human culture. They have similar missions and goals in distributing accumulated knowledge to society. Current digitization projects allow both, museums and libraries to reach a broader audience, share their resources with a variety of users. While studies of information seeking behavior, retrieval systems and metadata in library science have a long history; such research studies in museum environments are at their early experimental stage. There are few studies concerning information seeking behavior and needs of virtual museum visitors, especially with the use of images in the museums' collections available on the Web. The current study identifies preferences of a variety of user groups about the information specifics on current exhibits, museum collections metadata information, and the use of multimedia. The study of information seeking behavior of users groups of museum digital collections or cultural collections allows examination and analysis of users' information needs, and the organization of cultural information, including descriptive metadata and the quantity of information that may be required. In addition, the study delineates information needs that different categories of users may have in common: teachers in high schools, students in colleges and universities, museum professionals, art historians and researchers, and the general public. This research also compares informational and educational needs of real visitors with the needs of virtual visitors. Educational needs of real visitors are based on various studies conducted and summarized by Falk and Dierking (2000), and an evaluation of the art museum websites previously conducted to support the current study.

This thesis discusses the relatively new approach of art education, by paralleling it to Marxist ideology on art. The Dallas Arts District is one example of a city where museum art education is in conflict: being adopted more vigorously by some and with less acceptance by others. In order to provide a glimpse into the museum ideology of downtown Dallas, previous schools of thought regarding the role of curators and the introduction of educators into museums will be detailed, as well as conflicts between these two factions. The following questions will be addressed: Is museum art education truly a movement which strives to infuse the American culture with a greater appreciation of art? Is there a link to overcoming Marx's key issue of class? How is the movement affecting the Dallas Arts District and to what extent is museum art education being utilized within this forum? Is the emphasis toward museum art education greater in Dallas than in other large cities across the United States, and if so, how has that affected the cities' patrons?

As a museum educator who embraces social education and reflects on the postmodern condition, I found working within a traditional museum context to present challenges. As a result, I conducted an action research project focusing on ways to improve my own practice and affect change based on my engagement with visual culture discourse and the docents I teach. Having chosen action research, I implemented various teaching approaches and collected data over the course of several months. These data collection methods included interviews, museum documents, observational notes, recorded teaching practice, and daily journal entries. Narrative analysis was then used to interpret the collected data, specifically focusing how participants, including myself, make sense out of our experiences and how we value them.