This study explored how workers in two small museums on Vancouver Island were responding curatorially and pedagogically to the social issues of our times. It was inspired from my own work in a small museum, as well as the idea that museums can be agents of change in our deeply troubled world. Specifically, I investigated how these small museum workers integrated new critical and creative practices into their daily work and the challenges and constraints they faced. Adopting institutional ethnography as inquiry, I used interviews, participant observation and focus groups to explore how the study participants navigated community relations, historical discourses, exclusions and institutional restrictions. My findings show the participants tackling issues of power and privilege by enacting cultural democracy through shared curatorial authority; actively engaging with a diversity of communities; integrating women’s lives and issues in the exhibits; using the archives to share lesser-known histories; and employing a variety of aesthetic and embodied practices to raise awareness and engage community. While some visitors and members were resistant to the changes, my study suggests that most welcomed the new stories and practices, which speaks to how the participants mobilisd pedagogies of challenge and care. Challenges remained in the forms of a gendered bureaucracy; lack of funding; and job precarity. I conclude this study with recommendations for how small museums might be further supported in this important curatorial and pedagogical work. These include the development of regional and collaborative learning frameworks; the re-imagining of governance; and the adoption of ‘decent work’ principles in these institutions. / Graduate

The purpose of this action research study was to determine how a critical theory curriculum implemented in a college-level art appreciation course impacted student understanding of an encyclopedic art museum. A critical theory-based curriculum unit was designed and implemented, and students were given assignments to assess their learning. The most significant assignment centered on a self-guided student visit to the art museum in which students made detailed observations of the museum spaces and responded to articles critiquing museum practices. These documents, together with class discussions and my personal observations, were analyzed and described in this research study. The data revealed that students had a high level of regard for and interest in art museums, were capable of understanding how history and context influences museum practices, detected multiple instances of bias in art museum galleries, and self-reported high levels of cognition and empowerment based on their experiences. The data suggested that, in college students, both art appreciation instructors and museum educators have an ideal audience in which to facilitate sustained, higher-level, critical theory-based museum learning experiences.

The aim of this study is to investigate to what extent Swedish museums perceives TikTok as a useful social media application to reach Generation Z (Gen Z), the essay additionally examines how young people are influenced by social media in relation to museums. To examine this, two different surveys were conducted, one dedicated to museums in Sweden, the other to Gen Z. The results of the study show that very few of Swedish museums in the studies selection group use TikTok, especially in comparison to the selection group consisting of Gen Z where more than half informants use the application. TikTok is a relatively new social media, and many museums are already using as many applications as they have the time and resources for at the moment. The study shows that one of the popular uses of social media in general for museums is marketing. Marketing on TikTok does not fall into the traditional frameworks of marketing strategies, something museums have to be aware of if they want to use the application effectively. The results of the study also shows that TikTok is one of the better applications if you want to reach new audiences in Gen Z, this is largely due to the applications ”For you page” and its unique algorithm. However, the ”For you page" does not make it easier for museums to communicate with their existing audiences. This is because the ”For you page" does not always ensure that you get recommended videos from the users you follow, even if it’s more likely for that to happen. The study shows as well that the majority of Gen Z informants would be motivated to visit museums if they were inspired enough by its content on TikTok or other social media. The survey responses indicate that most informants believe that they are influenced by what they see on TikTok/Social Media, there is thus a high possibility that the types of videos museums choose to publish on TikTok will influence how Gen Z perceives them. This is a two years master’s thesis in Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the concept of spolia and its analytical potential. The historical development of the concept from Roman antiquity to the present is examined, focusing on specific turning points, and two artefacts – a set of columns and a vase from the National Museum in Stockholm – are analysed. The different sections of the thesis are intertwined through methodological thematizations of power, violence and temporality. By activating older meanings of spolia, as well as introducing new ones, the concept is expanded through the study. It becomes a critical tool useful in understanding composite objects, which are analysed in terms of form, function and migratory paths. The study revolves around a contemporary museum setting but moves between several contexts and time periods. The expanded, critical concept that this thesis develops can therefore be used in other studies.

This study examines the use of Instagram by the Swedish County Museums through the perspective of museum professionals in charge of the museums’ Instagram accounts. The purpose of the study is to find out how and why the Swedish County Museums use Instagram. The primary source material of this paper is a survey sent out to 23 County Museums in Sweden. 19 of these museums answered the survey, equaling a response rate of 83 percent. Through comparisons and content analysis, aspects of the county museums’ Instagram use are examined.  Results of the study show that the county museums see many purposes with using Instagram, for example marketing, information and making the knowledge and collections of the museum accessible. Interaction and dialogue with visitors are also important uses for most of the museums, but the study shows that this might be secondary to marketing, informing, and making knowledge and collections accessible. Results of the study also show that the way in which the county museums operate in their work with Instagram differs between the museums, with some museums having only one employee working with the Instagram account while other museums have several employees working and collaborating with the museums Instagram account. When it comes to the employees being in charge of the museums Instagram account, the study shows that a majority of these have a work title that relates to communication. The study also shows that many of these employees have similar work and academic backgrounds in for example culture, art, media and communications. This is a two years master’s thesis in Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies.

An emerging body of evidence indicates that museum object handling sessions offer short term benefits to people in health care settings. The aim of this study was to further understanding of the psychological and social aspects of a museum object handling group held in an older adult mental health setting. Older adults (N = 42) from a psychiatric inpatient ward with a diagnosis of depression or anxiety took part in one or more of a series of nine museum object handling group sessions. Audio recordings of the sessions were subjected to a thematic analysis. Five main themes were identified: “responding to object focused questions”, “learning about objects and from each other”, “enjoyment, enrichment through touch and privilege”, “memories, personal associations and identity” and “imagination and storytelling”. The first four themes were congruent with existing literature associated with positive wellbeing and engagement outcomes. Imagination and storytelling was a new finding in the group context. This study offers preliminary support for museum object handling group sessions as an intervention in this healthcare setting. There may be potential to develop the therapeutic aspects of the sessions. Further research is recommended and areas for enquiry discussed.

The emotional part of a museum experience is being debated and there is research pointing towards the affective part of learning. The purpose of this study is to examine how museum pedagogues reason about the usage of affective learning in their work and to investigate whether they consider affective pedagogy is a part of their work or not. Furthermore how they consider themselves working, or not working, with feelings in their pedagogy. A key factor in this study has been to work interdisciplinary with both museum pedagogy and social science with theoretical perspectives of feelings such as happiness, sadness, anger, disgust and fear, and with theories such as Feelings & materiality and Pedagogy of Feeling. Methodologically a qualitative interview study museum pedagogues have been used together with observation of four Swedish state- and country museums. In this thesis it is shown that the interviewed museum pedagogues indeed have acknowledged the fact that the museum is an affective place, but the interviewed had different way of make use of feelings. They all agree on the fact that feelings can support the learning process, and that all the different feelings have their own effect on learning. Also that the museum pedagogues have some influence on the feeling that the exhibitions are to emit, which could be used in the pedagogues favor if the exhibition consists of hard and problematic feelings. However, in contrast to this it seems that few of the museum pedagogues discuss the affective influence of a upcoming exhibition or program, or evaluate a project in what feeling the visitors experienced during the visit. This is a two years master’s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo, a partir das reflexões teóricas sobre arte e antropologia, realizar uma análise interpretativa sobre a construção e representação do sagrado afro-brasileiro em um dos núcleos expositivos do Museu Afro Brasil. A análise do ato expositivo e a pesquisa iconográfica em um dos núcleos do acervo permanente da instituição será utilizada como ponto de partida para pensarmos na presença do sagrado nesse ambiente, tendo como aspecto central de estudo a forma como se constrói e se manifesta o trabalho expográfico que fica a cargo, principalmente, do atual diretor e artista plástico Emanoel Araujo. Refletir sobre os artistas, objetos e símbolos presentes no núcleo Religiosidades Afro-brasileiras a partir de sua expografia nos ajudará a pontuar questões relevantes quanto aos fenômenos estético e religioso presentes em uma das categorias da arte afro-brasileira, assim como sobre as interpretações que se fazem desse encontro no espaço museológico pelos públicos que o frequentam, um campo ainda de abordagens latentes. / This work aims, from the theoretical reflections on art and anthropology, to create an interpretative analysis on the construction and representation of the Afro-Brazilian sacredness in one of the exhibition sectors of the Afro Brazil Museum. The analysis of the exhibition act and the iconographic research in one of the permanent collections of the institution, will be used as a starting point to think about the presence of the sacred in this environment, having as a central aspect of the study the way in which the exhibition display is constructed and manifests itself as an outcome, mainly, of the current director and visual artist Emanoel Araujo. To think the artists, objects and symbols present in the Afro-Brazilian Religiosities sector from their exhibition display will help us to point out relevant questions about the aesthetic and religious phenomena present in one of the categories of Afro-Brazilian Art, as well as on the interpretations that are being made with the encounters in the museum space by the attending audience, a field of latent and possible approaches.

PADOVAN, T. L. Teoria Crítica e indústria museal: reflexões contemporâneas para pensar as ciências e os museus do tempo presente. 2016. 384 f. Dissertação (Mestrado) - Programa de Pós-graduação Interunidades em Museologia, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2016. Quantidade de visitantes, metas a cumprir, captação de recursos, dinamismo na prestação de serviços especializados... Estes são alguns dos termos do mundo dos negócios que, cada vez mais, figuram no linguajar dos gestores que atuam no âmbito dos grandes museus contemporâneos. Assim como quaisquer outras instituições culturais, os museus estão cada vez mais associados à lógica de mercado e à sociedade de consumo. Tais características ensejam a entrada da cultura na esquemática do capitalismo moderno e, para os frankfurtianos Theodor W. Adorno e Max Horkheimer, este movimento de apropriação da cultura pelos mercados é compreendido a partir do conceito de indústria cultural. As grandes empresas que gerem os meios de comunicação de massa foram algumas das primeiras a perceberem as benesses advindas dessa indústria que, com o tempo, se embrenhou em todos os demais âmbitos da produção cultural. Os museus, filhos mais novos da indústria cultural, passaram por diversas transformações que os levaram a também fazer parte desse processo. Nesse ínterim, dentre os museus de ciência e tecnologia, emerge um tipo de instituição museal que chama a atenção: os centros de ciências. Compostos majoritariamente por objetos reproduzidos, ou seja, por modelos científico-pedagógicos e aparatos tecnológicos, ao invés de objetos histórico-preservados, estes museus buscam aliar o ensino de ciências à diversão pública. Munidos das novas tecnologias e da noção de interatividade expositiva, estes espaços são comparados a parques temáticos e, não raro, preferem não ser associados ao termo \"museu\". Dessa forma, empreendo neste trabalho a tarefa de explicar a maneira pela qual os museus passaram a levar em conta os ditames da indústria cultural e, também, demonstrar como os centros de ciências, enquanto poderosas instituições museais da contemporaneidade, tem alçado voo na construção não só de objetos, mas de modelos de museus reprodutíveis, componentes que acredito serem básicos para refletir sobre o que chamo neste trabalho de indústria museal. / PADOVAN, T. L. Critical Theory and the museum industry: contemporary reflections to think about sciences and museums in the present moment. 2016. 384 f. Dissertation (Master Degree) - Programa de Pós-graduação Interunidades em Museologia, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2016. Number of visitors, goals to achieve, fund-raising, dynamism in specialized services, these are some common terms among the business world, which are increasingly part of the cultural managers\' language in major contemporary museums. As in any other cultural institutions, museums have been more related to the logics of the market and the consumption society. Such characteristics entail the entrance of culture in the modern capitalism scheme and, according to the frankfurters Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, this movement of cultural appropriation by the markets is understood from the concept of cultural industry. The big corporations in charge of mass communication media was some of the first and realized the advantages of this industry which, with time, has plunged into all the remaining sites of cultural production. Museums, younger offspring of the cultural industry, have gone through various transformations that led them to be part of this process. In the interim, among museums of science and technology, a specific kind of museum institution stands out: science centers. Composed primarily of reproduced objects, in other words, scientific-educational models and technological apparatuses instead of historic-preserved objects, this museums aim at allying the teaching of science to the public entertainment. Provided with new technologies and the notion of expository interactivity, these spaces are compared to thematic parks and often prefer not to be associated with the term \"museum\". In this way, I engage in this work, the objective of explaining how museums have started to take into consideration the politics of the cultural industry while demonstrating how the science centers, as powerful institutions of contemporary times, have taken off in the construction of not only objects, but of models of reproducible museums, components that I believe to be primary in the comprehension of what I call in this work the museum industry.

O presente trabalho tem como objeto de estudo o patrimônio intangível ou imaterial e suas formas de musealização. Sendo os museus lugares máximos de presença do patrimônio, visa-se descobrir, identificar e metrisar as relações construídas entre os bens imateriais ou intangíveis e esses espaços. Para tanto a investigação parte da historicidade da definição de patrimônio, e em como se vinculam patrimônio material e imaterial. Em um segundo momento, o objeto de estudo é analisado in locu, no Memorial da Resistência de São Paulo, onde se aplica a parte experimental da pesquisa, e que correspondente ao seu terceiro momento, com o intuito de identificar como o imaterial é musealizado e como ele é percebido por seus públicos. Para tanto o foco da análise recai sobre o Programa Coleta Regular de Testemunhos, pois por meio dele o museu coleta a referência patrimonial a qual se dedica e constrói os processos museológicos do Memorial da Resistência de São Paulo. Deste modo, é empreendida uma análise das intenções do programa, sua relação com as demais linhas programáticas, e seus resultados verificados na exposição, por meio de fontes institucionais e avaliações de público. Por fim, uma análise mais geral busca localizar a participação dos atores sociais e agentes da memória nos processos de preservação. / The present work has as its studied objetc the imaterial or intagible heritage and their ways of musealization. Being the museums the maximum places of heritage presence, we aim to discover, identify and measure the built relationships between the immaterial or intangible assets and those spaces. To attend this purpose the research begins from the historicity of the definition of heritage, and how is the binding between tangible and intangible heritage. In a second step, the object of study is analyzed in locus in the Memorial of Resistance of São Paulo, where it is applied the experimental part of the research, and that corresponds to the third point of this research, in order to identify how the intangible is musealized and how it is perceived by its stakeholders. To do this the focus of analysis is on the Program of Regular Collection of Testimonies, because through it the museum collects the heritage reference in which works and builds the Memorial of Resistance of São Paulo\'s museological processes. Thus, an analysis is undertaken of the intentions of the program, its relationship with other programmatic lines, and their verified results on exhibition through institutional sources and reviews of public. Finally, a more general analysis seeks to locate the participation of social actors and memory agents on preservation processes.