Thèse de doctorat--Archéologie--Paris 1, 2003. / Bibliogr. p. I-XVI.

Mémoire d'étude diplôme de conservateur des bibliothèques : bibliothéconomie : Villeurbanne, ENSSIB : 2008. / Texte intégral. Résumé en français et en anglais. Bibliogr. f. 73-77.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Delaware, 2009. / Principal faculty advisor: Lawrence Nees, Dept. of Art History. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis examines Charles Willson Peale’s utilization of visual metaphors within his founding institution, The Philadelphia Museum. After establishing himself as a portrait painter, it became second nature for Peale to employ an aesthetic approach when developing museum exhibits and programs. Throughout his practices he continuously used imagery and objects to represent broader fields of research, along with his views as a naturalist and American patriot. By using these allegorical forms to arouse the public’s curiosity, he was able to attract more visitors to his museum and subsequently draw them into the learning process. / text

This research is an in-depth look into a museum striving to put into practice qualities of a socially responsible museum by providing educational programs for an underserved audience. The purpose of this research is to study the qualities and characteristics of two Community Partnership programs for court-involved youth at the San Diego Museum of Art. Identifying the qualities and characteristics of this particular museum program could be utilized by other museums in creating similar programs. Detailed data collection in the form of observations, interviews, and documentation provided a comprehensive view of this program. The research concludes with recommendations for other museums implementing similar programs and is based on the findings from the San Diego Museum of Art's work with court-involved youth. / text

This qualitative case study focuses on the efforts of the education staff at the Meadows Museum of Art as they planned and implemented INsights and OUTlooks – an inclusive educational program, meaning that it was designed for sighted and non-sighted visitors. Although this is an inclusive program, the study concentrates mostly on how it was designed to make art accessible to visitors with visual impairments. The researcher interviewed the staff in charge of leading the program, observed two program sessions, and attended staff meetings related to INsights and OUTlooks to gain a better understanding of how it functions. Current literature (Andrus, 1999; McGinnis, 2007) within the field of art education suggests that staff at art museums should adopt inclusive practices as they design programs and exhibitions. This study explores the process of creating such a program, the tools and approaches utilized to make art accessible to visitors with visual impairments, and the benefits of being inclusive. Research studies such as this one add to the existing but limited literature regarding inclusive programming in art museums. / text

In 1929, Henry Ford opened Greenfield Village, his outdoor history museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Fourteen years earlier, Ford announced that written history was bunk. The museum was designed to reshape the historical project by celebrating farmers and inventors in lieu of military heroes and politicians. Included among the structures were Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park Laboratory, Noah Webster’s home, and Ford’s Quadricycle shop. Ford used architecture and material culture to connect American progress to self-made manhood, middle-class domesticity, and the inventive spirit. Despite signs that the struggling automotive industry is responsible for Michigan’s economic decline, the site is popular--since 1976 over one million visitors have attended each year. This project examines this phenomenon, which exemplifies how publics often fail to link past and present in the same way that scholars do. The Village’s largely unexplored archives documenting its internal history are mined, along with primary and secondary sources on the histories of public history and the Detroit metropolitan-area. Chapter one studies the site’s construction and audiences during Ford’s presidency arguing that the populist public images of Ford and Edison mediated encounters with the Village. Chapter two links the site to the racial politics of the Detroit metro-area, which marked the Village as an alternative public space for whites. Chapter three draws on visitor surveys, to show how patrons’ worldviews were shaped by the politics of populistconservativism. Chapter four explains how the appointment of an academic as president ensured the addition of progressive historical narratives, but the site’s location in Dearborn impeded efforts to draw a larger African American audience. In the mid-1990s, the fifth chapter contends, administrators successfully sought new patrons by blending progressive history and entertainment. This project argues that the Village is popular because it articulates both visitors’ longing for an imagined past, and desires for alternative futures. It also proposes that representations of the past are understood not only through a study of their internal histories, but by placing them in the broader contexts of the economy, politics, and social relationships of the geographic area in which they are located. / text

The late seventeenth century was the golden age of the printed descriptive catalogue. Nehemiah Grew’s 1681 catalogue, Musæum Regalis Societatis, printed for London’s Royal Society, exemplifies this elaborate published genre of early museum literature during a particular moment in time when collecting and ordering were methods of understanding the world. This thesis explores the importance of ephemeral texts in historical study by analyzing the prose used in Grew’s catalogue. Musæum Regalis Societatis opens a window onto late seventeenth-century English culture, providing insight into Grew’s opinions about contemporary religious and political debates and illustrating trends within scientific thought; most notably, the influence of Francis Bacon’s new empirical methods on Grew’s object descriptions. This results in a densely descriptive catalogue with vivid object descriptions, creating a virtual guide to the Repository. However, with the eighteenth-century development of museums as sites of leisure and the rise of experts and professionals in the burgeoning scientific disciplines, there is a noticeable decline in this genre of descriptive catalogue. Thus, Grew’s catalogue exemplifies a critical moment in the late seventeenth century in which scientific catalogues were published for a broad general public. / Graduate

Today, many museums both around the world and in Britain are in the process of renewing, rejuvenating, refurbishing and/or rebranding themselves. These museums are actually doing this in order to be able to respond better to the evolving needs and wants of consumers, which change continuously as a result of the transformations that take place in the consumer culture. The central aim of this thesis is to investigate the paradigm shifts happening in contemporary British museums, which evolve parallel to the evolving British consumer culture. These paradigm shifts actually seem to be a reflection of the paradigm shifts that are happening in 21st century museums all around the world, in general. Museums of today are highly interested in branding and they invest in it to a great extent. This is in part due to the effects of postmodernism on museums. This fondness for branding seems to turn museums into objects of consumption, makes them like other products in the market. Another aim of this thesis is to investigate how contemporary museums are defined as objects of consumption and managed as brands. For this purpose, Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM), a British museum situated in Exeter, which has been going through an inclusive refurbishment process for the last four years, has been selected for carrying out an extended case study on. Diverse data collection tools have been used such as participant and non-participant observations were made; in-depth interviews with especially staff members and also some other stakeholders like volunteers and visitors were carried out, photographs were taken; website of the museum was analysed; a lot of field notes were taken and then these data have been analysed. The RAMM example and also the literature review made on world museums in general have shown that the museums of the last century have got into the direction of uniting and co-creating value with their visitors, in their museums. This is a thorough democratization process in the museum. In order for this to take place, museums have taken the interaction and participation levels with their visitors much higher. Detailed accounts on these and other phenomena about new museums can be found in the thesis.

The tracking of artifacts in museums can be a cumbersome and error-prone process. A system that performs this tracking manually would help prevent mistakes and could be utilized to help attract and retain museum visitors. This thesis outlines the design and implementation of a three-part system for accomplishing this goal. By combining a powerful RFID infrastructure with a server and an intuitive mobile-device application, the project in this thesis aims to provide an automated way to keep track of artifacts, as well as to provide an application that makes the traversal of the museum intuitive and enjoyable for visitors. The application is built on Apple’s iOS platform in order to reach the multitude of users already in possession of iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches. An initial evaluation shows the system behaves as expected and that it could be a useful tool to museums. / text