This dissertation reconstructs and investigates the origins of the Pérez Art Museum Miami. In 2013, the museum re-opened in a new, county-funded building to great acclaim and international attention, but the museum’s origins in the 1970s have been largely forgotten. A result of the 1972 “Decade of Progress” bond vote by county taxpayers that allocated funds to build a new art museum, the museum opened as the Center for the Fine Arts in 1983 as a non-collecting institution dedicated to displaying traveling exhibitions. The new institution represented the combined efforts of local government, business, and art to construct not only a place in which to view art but also as part of an overall plan to create a great metropolitan area. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

The history of museums in South Africa dates back to 1825 when the South African Museum (SAM) was established in Cape Town. Initially museums in South Africa were established for science and local history was seen as peripheral. Nevertheless, this began to change during the early 1920s as artifacts of historical nature gained popularity, saving them from historical oblivion in museums. Museums themselves broadened their role to become major centres of both scientific and historical knowledge. When museums started to include historical artifacts, they entered a terrain which was influenced by a racist ideology of segregation and then apartheid. Thus, they became centres of political discourse and mirrors of the white domination in South Africa. From the 1920s museums served to propagate certain myths which was based on the subjugation of Africans by white settlers. Museums played a pivotal role in entrenching ideas of white settlement in Natal as a triumph over barbarism, savage and heathenism. Exhibitions within the museums reflected certain identities at the expense of others. It was not until the 1980s that the political scenario forced museums to examine their role and adapt to the new order. This marked the beginning of a new dispensation in the politics and poetics of museum displaying. During the 1990s issues of representation in museums became popular. Historians were among those who became interested in the question of how to represent the South African a turbulent past in a post apartheid South Africa. This era was characterized by new displays which are more accommodative and represent diverse population groups of South Africa. Exhibitions in museums always involve political ramifications and ideas within exhibitions draw reference to the powerful groups in the making of political and social discourse. During the post- apartheid era, KwaZulu-Natal museums reflect new identities which are based on non-racialism and interaction of diverse people of the province. They no longer serve as reference point for white domination and educational programmes are more multidimensional and appeal to all sectors of our society. The thesis adopted in this piece of work is that museums are political institutions and reflect the political identities of the society that they live. They cannot be divorced from their time and circumstances. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2003.

19th century dime museums were a North American phenomenon that flourished in urban centres from the mid- to late-1800s. Named thusly due to their low admission cost, dime museums provided democratic entertainment that was promoted to all classes as affordable and respectable. The resulting facilities were crammed with art, artifacts, rarities, living human curiosities, theatre performances, menageries, and technological marvels. The exhibition Dr. Soanes’ Odditorium of Wonders strives to recapture the spirit and aesthetic of the dime museum to invoke wonder in the viewer and to combine art, artifacts, and oddities to provoke questions about the boundary between education and amusement. Both the academic and curatorial texts utilize a mix of methodological approaches appropriate to museology, art history and cultural history: theoretical research into historiographical issues concerning theories of display and spectacle; archival research and discourse analysis of historical documents, and material culture analysis (including the semiotics of display). / iv, 60 leaves : ill. ; 29 cm

This thesis is a critical study of two exhibits, First Encounters Spanish Exploration in the Caribbean and A Tribute to Survival. The objective of the thesis was to understand if and how indigenous activists, using the media as tool, were able to change curatorial approaches to exhibition development. Chapter 1 is broken into three sections. The first section introduces the exhibits and succinctly discusses the theory that is applied to this thesis. The second section discusses the objectives of the project and the third provides a brief outline of the document. Chapter 2 discusses the historical background of American museums in an attempt to highlight changes in curatorial attitudes towards the public, display, interpretation, and authority. Chapter 3 gives a more in-depth overview of the methodology and materials utilized in the thesis. Chapter 4 is a critical analysis of the literature for both First Encounters and A Tribute to Survival. Chapter five is a summary of the thesis and offers a conclusion of the effectiveness of using the media as a tool. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

The Douglas Summerland Collection is a fictional "monographically based history"1. In essence this research is concerned with the current debates about history recording, authenticity of the photograph, methods of history construction and how the audience digests new 'knowledge'. The narrative for this body of work is drawn from a small album of maritime photographs discovered in 2004 within the archives of the Port Chalmers Regional Maritime Museum in New Zealand. The album contains vernacular images of life onboard several sailing ships from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including the DH Sterling and the William Mitchell. Through investigating the'truth' systems promoted by the photograph within the presentations of histories this research draws a link between the development of colonialism and the perception of photography. It also deliberates on how 'truth' perception is still a major part of an audience's knowledge base. 1. Anne-Marie Willis Picturing Australia: A History of Photography, Angus & Robertson Publishers, London. 1988:253

The Douglas Summerland Collection is a fictional "monographically based history"1. In essence this research is concerned with the current debates about history recording, authenticity of the photograph, methods of history construction and how the audience digests new 'knowledge'. The narrative for this body of work is drawn from a small album of maritime photographs discovered in 2004 within the archives of the Port Chalmers Regional Maritime Museum in New Zealand. The album contains vernacular images of life onboard several sailing ships from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including the DH Sterling and the William Mitchell. Through investigating the'truth' systems promoted by the photograph within the presentations of histories this research draws a link between the development of colonialism and the perception of photography. It also deliberates on how 'truth' perception is still a major part of an audience's knowledge base. 1. Anne-Marie Willis Picturing Australia: A History of Photography, Angus & Robertson Publishers, London. 1988:253