The Natal Provincial Museum Ordinance, No. 26 of 1973, made provision for the establishment, control and management of museums and art galleries in KwaZulu-Natal by the Provincial Administration. A museum service was created to provide technical and professional assistance to those museums which are affiliated to the Service. Twenty-one years later, museums in general, including those in KwaZulu-Natal, are discussing a restructuring of museums and policies. A new national policy for museums in South Africa is envisaged within the foreseeable future. This will effect the museums in KwaZulu-Natal. The development of the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Museum Service has never been fully documented. As it is possible that the Museum Service in its present form might change, the author considered it relevant to research the development of the Service since its inception in 1974. Unpublished documents formed the bulk of the material used for the study. This includes minutes of the Museum Service Advisory Board; minutes of affiliated museum committee meetings; unpublished reports; memoranda and letters. The official legislation relating to the Museum Service, as well as resolutions taken by the Executive Committee of the Province of KwaZulu-Natal, were studied. In some instances, the author used personal knowledge gained while working at Museum Service, to augment written sources. Verbal communications with Museum Service staff members and individual curators also provided information. The findings of the study clearly show that the problems experienced in 1985, i.e. too few staff and too little money in relation to the number of affiliated museums, are still experienced. The service which Museum Service provides is of a high quality, but the delay in providing displays to affiliated museums or upgrading the displays that have been mounted, is a problem. The Restoration Section is also in need of more staff, including apprentices who can be taught the techniques of restoration. These problems will become more serious as the Service starts supplying museum services to the rural and disadvantaged areas of KwaZulu-Natal. However, these problems can be overcome if funding is increased and more staff are appointed. The Service has the infrastructure and know-how to provide a valuable service to the museums of KwaZulu-Natal. The study was significant in that it documented the past history of the Museum Service and showed, not withstanding the problems the Service has experienced, what has been achieved in the twenty-one years of its existence. The valuable foundation which has been laid should serve as an inspiration for the future. / Thesis (M.I.S.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1997.

<p>The second half of the 1990's was marked by a significant reworking of memory and history in South Africa. WHilst the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was involved in its hearings on amnesty applications and gross human rights violations, new museums were emerging and older ones began reshaping their displays. This thesis interrogated the changing representations of history, culture, identity and heritage in one South African city, Port Elizabeth, which in 2005 was re-named the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipal area. This discussion examined, at times, the historical era prior to South Africa's democracy and the period after the first democratic elections of 27 April 1994.</p>

<p>&nbsp / <span style="font-size: 12pt / font-family: &quot / Times New Roman&quot / ,&quot / serif&quot / mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman' / mso-ansi-language: EN-US / mso-fareast-language: EN-US / mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">District Six was a community that was forcibly removed from the centre of Cape Town after its demarcation as a white group area in 1966. In 1989, the District Six Museum Foundation was established in order to form a project that worked with the memory of District Six. Out of these origins, the District Six Museum emerged and was officially opened in 1994 with the museum in the 1980s occurred at the same moment that the social history movement assumed prominence within a progressive South African historiography. With the success of <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic">Streets, the decision to &lsquo / dig deeper&rsquo / into the social history of District Six culminated in the opening of the exhibition, Digging Deeper, in a renovated museum space in 2000. Oral history practice, as means of bringing to light the hidden and erased histories of the area, was embraced by the museum as an empowering methodology which would facilitate memory work around District Six. In tracing the evolution of an oral history practice in the museum, this study aims to understand how the poetics involved in the practices of representation and display impacted on the oral histories that were displayed in Digging Deeper. It also considers how the engagement with the archaeological discipline, during the curation of the Horstley Street display as part of Streets, impacted on how oral histories were displayed in the museum.</span></span></p>

See abstract in full text document. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.

Broadly speaking, art can be described as man’s emotion made tangible, providing a visual memory of the past. Resistance art is no different save the strength of its embedded meaning bound to context through signs and cultural references. In a pre-liberation South Africa, resistance art formed one of the critical voices of opposition to the apartheid regime and from the Rorke’s Drift Art and Craft Centre in Zululand this voice resounded. The memory of this together with the memory of the Rorke’s Drift artists has become dissociated from the actual place resulting in a gap in the history of South African art as well as the history of KwaZulu-Natal and South Africa. In light of this, this document explores the potential of art to generate built-form. By examining the link between man, society and art through the review of relevant literature, it is found that memory can be revived as a key driver behind the meaning of art and built-form through the provision of place as governed by issues of cultural identity, symbols and meaning context and the experiential. This conclusion is extended through precedent studies to include the art in question and is proved through the use of a case study. The significance suggested is that there is a global opportunity for art to provide meaning to the built environment and a local potential to directly address the loss of meaning and memory of Rorke’s Drift. In other words, it is proposed that meaning can be returned to Rorke’s Drift if the fundamental issues of memory are addressed, thereby continuing the narrative of South African art and contributing to it in the future. / Thesis (M.Arch.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.

No description available.

This dissertation aims to analyse how spatial design affects experiences and meaning making in museums. The overarching question is what the spatial elements and forms within museums communicate to those who visit them. This is specifically explored in five museums in Rome: Museo dell’Ara Pacis, Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Centrale Montemartini, and MAXXI. The method used for analysing the museum spaces was based on observations that followed a method plan consisting of visiting the spaces on several occasions and describing the spaces and my own experiences of them with a focus on spatial aspects such as layout, disposition of exhibitions, material, volume, light, and colours. This also included conversations with first-time visitors, one in each of the five museums, about their experiences of the visit. My own experiences and the five visitors’ descriptions are analysed in dialogue with theoretical perspectives. The theoretical framework consists of perspectives from diverse academic disciplines. The most essential of these are museological aspects on museum experiences, authenticity, and spatial matters. Multimodality, semiotics, hermeneutics, and art-architecture theory are applied in relation to analysis of spatial factors and symbolic meanings as well as to authentic experiences and understanding of history. Phenomenological approaches to the body as the medium through which we perceive the world is central in this study. The five museums are treated and analysed individually in each of their chapters and the results reveal that although they are radically different from each other in terms of their contents and display concepts, they have corresponding factors in common. In the final chapter, the museums are discussed in relation to perspectives on spatial design in museums in a broader sense and the conclusions are drawn on a more general level. The discussions include aspects of authentic experiences of both historical and contemporary factors as well as on the issue of balance and imbalance in relation to museum spaces. Museum spaces are inseparable from their contents. Space and exhibition elements influence each other and meaning is formed in their relationship. When imbalanced, museum spaces might evoke sensations of confusion and frustration. When balanced, on the other hand, they can create atmospheres that evoke sensations of excitement, comfort, and curiosity. Museum spaces can stimulate the motivation to understand the exhibition context or encourage visitors to imagine themselves situated in another time and place. Different kinds of experiences occur when we are present in a museum, but it is not always obvious to us that spatial design is a contributing factor. The impact that spatial design has on our experiences and meaning making is considerable and as this study argues, there is reason to further acknowledge space as an essential element in museums. / <p>Av rättighetsskäl har några av bilderna inte publicerats i den digitala versionen av denna avhandling. För att se samtliga bilder, se den tryckta versionen.</p><p>For copyright reasons, some of the images have not been published in the digital version of this dissertation. To see all of the images, see the printed version.</p>

Museums have been intimately connected to the discipline of anthropology since the colonial era when curiosity cabinets were created to house "exotic" items from afar that were used to represent "exotic" people and their cultures. However, with the postmodern debates in anthropology, both the discipline and museums have begun to realize that most displays reveal more about those who create them than about those who are on display. This realization combined with the rise in Native American concern for the control of material culture that was taken from them and their involvement in civil rights activism has brought Native objects and their display to the forefront of these debates. This has resulted in a push for true collaboration in the discipline as well as museums, which is forcing museums to work with Native Nations in developing displays that fulfill the museums' needs and that relinquish power to Native Nations in the exhibit development process. This project involved the collaboration between the Miami Indians of Indiana and the researcher to create an exhibit that will be displayed in the Miami community. This thesis follows that intimate connection between museums and anthropology and looks at the exhibit to examine what it reveals about Miami community identity. / Department of Anthropology

Throughout history, objects of art have been damaged and sometimes destroyed in earthquakes. Even though the importance of providing seismically adequate design for nonstructural components has received attention over the past decade, art objects in museums, either on display or in storage, require further research. The research reported in this study was undertaken to investigate the seismic vulnerability of art objects. Data for this research was gathered from three museums in Montreal. / The seismic behaviour of three unrestrained display cases, storage shelves, and a 6m long dinosaur skeleton model structure was investigated according to the seismic hazard for Montreal and representative museum floor motions were simulated for that purpose. Particular attention was paid to the support conditions, the effects of modified floor surface conditions, the sliding and rocking response of unrestrained display cases, the location (floor elevation) of the display case and/or storage shelves, art object mass, and the dynamic properties of the display cases/storage shelves. The seismic vulnerability of art objects was evaluated based on the seismic response of the display cases/storage shelves at the level of art object display. The display cases were investigated experimentally using shake table testing. Computer analyses were used to simulate the seismic behaviour of storage shelves, and the seismic sensitivity of the dinosaur structure was determined via free vibration acceleration measurements. The floor contact conditions and floor elevation had a crucial effect on the unrestrained display cases, causing them to slide or rock vigorously. The distribution of content mass had a large impact on the response of the shelving system. As a result of experimental and analytical analyses, recommendations and/or simple mitigation techniques are provided to reduce the seismic vulnerability of objects of art.

This thesis examines the concepts of value creation, capture and exchange in limiting the liability of newness for nonprofit museums entering the sector. There has been considerable examination of cultural value in relation to museums. However, little is known about how value is created, captured and exchanged for stakeholders in new museums. It is posited that value creation, capture and exchange constitute a value cycle. Through this value cycle management in new museums detects and limits the liability of newness. The ability to detect and limit the liability of newness enables the continuation of the museum. If the liability of newness is not limited, it may mean that a new museum exits the sector or is transformed. The concept of a value cycle is derived from an examination of the nonprofit management literature, aspects of the for-profit management literature and the arts and museum management literature. Value creation is a key concept in the three literature areas. Value creation in this context, is specifically defined as the worth of the physical manifestation of the museum. It resides in the building and the collection, services and programs within the building. It is suggested that this value needs to be transformed and consumed by a range of stakeholders. The transformation of value creation is denoted as value capture. Value capture is the appeal of programs, projects and activities. Value capture includes how well the products and services align with particular stakeholders, how accountable the managers are to stakeholders and how products and services are consumed by stakeholders. The measure of how managers have been able to capture value is in the realm of value exchange. Value exchange is the merit of programs, projects and activities. Value exchange is in the form of revenue raised through sponsorship; continuation of revenue investment by the principal stakeholder, the state; time and money transacted by visitors; and intangible exchange such as leadership and reputation enhancement through collaborations. A Value Cycle Framework of New Entrant Museums is then developed as a working analytical tool to assess how the value cycle operates and how the liability of newness is detected and limited by museum management. x The Value Cycle Framework is used to assess four cases. These case studies include the National Museum of Australia as a purpose built new entrant; the Australian National Maritime Museum as a purpose built new entrant; the Mint as a recycled new entrant; and the Earth Exchange as a refurbished new entrant. Each case is assessed discretely using secondary and primary source material and analysing qualitative data generated from interviews with key stakeholders. The cases are then compared in order to track similarities and differences in relation to value creation, capture and exchange. The research findings suggest that a value cycle is operating in relation to new entrant museums. This value cycle is dynamic and non-sequential. Until value creation is floated for a range of stakeholders it is difficult for managers to know the worth of their content, location or their building. Value creation is a nominal starting point, signifying the arrival of a new entrant in the museum marketplace. However, value capture is the zone that is the most vulnerable and volatile for managers of new museums. Typically in these case studies value capture includes a disruptive episode, such as a review process that indicates the liability of newness. Managers within the museum who can respond and resolve contradictions between museological beliefs and the demands of stakeholders (and in so doing limit the liability of newness) are likely to continue museum operations. Senior executives who find such reconciliation more difficult, jeopardize the future operations of the museum to such an extent that the museums close or are transformed within the museum sector. Through these four case studies a revised Value Cycle Framework is developed as an analytical device. This analytical framework can assist in understanding the processes involved in new entry for museums.