This thesis explores the function, classification, and re-contextualization of historical photographs as they are understood and digested by art museums. The Abel Boulineau French Regional Life collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), which I researched, re-organized, and re-attributed during the summer of 2010, provides a case study for this topic. I investigate the contingencies of meaning surrounding late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century photography, and the inadequacy of art historical models for interpreting works not originally created as aesthetic objects. I explore how museums must understand and grapple with its early photography, and the implications of re-contextualizing such collections within its institutional discourses. The work of producing an attribution places necessary emphasis on photographs as historical entities, and recovers information about their original creation and circulation. Surveying the French Regional Life collection reveals both the pragmatic and theoretical issues involved in making an analysis of early photography.

This thesis explores the function, classification, and re-contextualization of historical photographs as they are understood and digested by art museums. The Abel Boulineau French Regional Life collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), which I researched, re-organized, and re-attributed during the summer of 2010, provides a case study for this topic. I investigate the contingencies of meaning surrounding late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century photography, and the inadequacy of art historical models for interpreting works not originally created as aesthetic objects. I explore how museums must understand and grapple with its early photography, and the implications of re-contextualizing such collections within its institutional discourses. The work of producing an attribution places necessary emphasis on photographs as historical entities, and recovers information about their original creation and circulation. Surveying the French Regional Life collection reveals both the pragmatic and theoretical issues involved in making an analysis of early photography.

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio State University, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 70-75).

Thesis (M.P.A.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 1999. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2939. Typescript. Abstract precedes thesis as preliminary leaves. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 65-68).

Thesis (M. Arch.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes special report study entitled: Water : the scientific and spiritual reading of water and its influences in Thai culture. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes special report study entitled: Thematic exhibition display. Includes bibliographical references.

Hoarding tends to appear in museum studies scholarship primarily as a foil for “proper” museological collecting. Yet hoarding has attracted a constellation of assumptions and meanings. In popular discourse, hoarding is often perceived as a behavior learned from a life of deprivation, while clinical discourse about hoarding seeks to determine how it should be classified in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. These multiple perspectives inform the ways in which hoarding, and by extension collecting and museum practices, can be defined and understood. This report, then, examines how the idea of the museum is incorporated, reworked, or even rejected in three case studies of hoarding: art-historical approaches to Andy Warhol’s hoarding habits; "Clean House," a television show that cleans and redecorates families’ cluttered homes; and "Hoarders," a television show that pairs hoarders with psychiatrists and professional organizers. In each case study, the discourse surrounding the hoarder attempts to bring hoarding in line with “acceptable” collecting practices. At the same time, this particular discourse competes with other messages about the cultural role of collecting, generating a dialogue with important implications for collecting institutions about acquisition and appraisal, curatorial and archival bias, and institutional identity. / text

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Museums are becoming increasingly more interactive, educational, and community-centered. In light of these changes, my design studies have focused on exhibition design for art museums, which, due to the nature of their collections, have been slower in adopting interactive strategies. This report summarizes the history of museums and illustrates how educational theories can be applied to exhibit design. Moreover, I present my design investigations, which resulted in a methodology for critiquing and reinventing museum displays of art. / text

In this paper, the imagery of public exhibition spaces, museums, and public collections is discussed in relationship to my body of work. I engage ideas of stillness, the creation of alternate realities, and how preconceptions shape interpretation. My interest in stillness and the activation of captured moments is expressed through the relationship between Cabela’s and my photographic archive. By compositing and reconstructing these images, I shift the viewer’s perception of reality. I thus explore how these aesthetic considerations generate fictitious interpretations. Dependent upon the viewer, my drawings transform the reality of the photographic so that we are confronted by the nature of our preconceptions. / text