Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926

Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926 PDF Author: Steven Conn
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226114934
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Conn's study includes familiar places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Academy of Natural Sciences, but he also draws attention to forgotten ones, like the Philadelphia Commercial Museum, once the repository for objects from many turn-of-the-century world's fairs. What emerges from Conn's analysis is that museums of all kinds shared a belief that knowledge resided in the objects themselves. Using what Conn has termed "object-based epistemology," museums of the late nineteenth century were on the cutting edge of American intellectual life. By the first quarter of the twentieth century, however, museums had largely been replaced by research-oriented universities as places where new knowledge was produced. According to Conn, not only did this mean a change in the way knowledge was conceived, but also, and perhaps more importantly, who would have access to it.

Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926

Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926 PDF Author: Steven Conn
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226114934
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

Get Book Here

Book Description
Conn's study includes familiar places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Academy of Natural Sciences, but he also draws attention to forgotten ones, like the Philadelphia Commercial Museum, once the repository for objects from many turn-of-the-century world's fairs. What emerges from Conn's analysis is that museums of all kinds shared a belief that knowledge resided in the objects themselves. Using what Conn has termed "object-based epistemology," museums of the late nineteenth century were on the cutting edge of American intellectual life. By the first quarter of the twentieth century, however, museums had largely been replaced by research-oriented universities as places where new knowledge was produced. According to Conn, not only did this mean a change in the way knowledge was conceived, but also, and perhaps more importantly, who would have access to it.

Museums in Motion

Museums in Motion PDF Author: Edward Porter Alexander
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 9780759105096
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
In 1979, Edward P. Alexander's Museums in Motion was hailed as a much-needed addition to the museum literature. In combining the history of museums since the eighteenth century with a detailed examination of the function of museums and museum workers in modern society, it served as an essential resource for those seeking to enter to the museum profession and for established professionals looking for an expanded understanding of their own discipline. Now, Mary Alexander has produced a newly revised edition of the classic text, bringing it the twenty-first century with coverage of emerging trends, resources, and challenges. New material also includes a discussion of the children's museum as a distinct type of institution and an exploration of the role computers play in both outreach and traditional in-person visits.

Museum Object Lessons for the Digital Age

Museum Object Lessons for the Digital Age PDF Author: Haidy Geismar
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 1787352838
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
Museum Object Lessons for the Digital Age explores the nature of digital objects in museums, asking us to question our assumptions about the material, social and political foundations of digital practices. Through four wide-ranging chapters, each focused on a single object – a box, pen, effigy and cloak – this short, accessible book explores the legacies of earlier museum practices of collection, older forms of media (from dioramas to photography), and theories of how knowledge is produced in museums on a wide range of digital projects. Swooping from Ethnographic to Decorative Arts Collections, from the Google Art Project to bespoke digital experiments, Haidy Geismar explores the object lessons contained in digital form and asks what they can tell us about both the past and the future. Drawing on the author’s extensive experience working with collections across the world, Geismar argues for an understanding of digital media as material, rather than immaterial, and advocates for a more nuanced, ethnographic and historicised view of museum digitisation projects than those usually adopted in the celebratory accounts of new media in museums. By locating the digital as part of a longer history of material engagements, transformations and processes of translation, this book broadens our understanding of the reality effects that digital technologies create, and of how digital media can be mobilised in different parts of the world to very different effects.

Sight Unseen

Sight Unseen PDF Author: Martin A. Berger
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520244591
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
"A compelling and challenging work."—Frances K. Pohl, author of Framing America "Berger is unafraid to tackle the major issues, and this book shows it."—Bruce Robertson, author of Marsden Hartley and Reckoning with Winslow Homer "Berger, writing on topics as diverse as landscape photography and early film, pushes into fascinating issues of gender, race, and class with sensitivity, insight, and largely jargon-free analysis. Having made a mark as a key Eakins scholar, he promises to achieve a similar feat in Sight Unseen, getting us to rethink traditional material in a new light."—John Wilmerding, Christopher Binyon Sarofim Professor of American Art, Princeton University

Science Museums in Transition

Science Museums in Transition PDF Author: Carin Berkowitz
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822982757
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
The nineteenth century witnessed a dramatic shift in the display and dissemination of natural knowledge across Britain and America, from private collections of miscellaneous artifacts and objects to public exhibitions and state-sponsored museums. The science museum as we know it—an institution of expert knowledge built to inform a lay public—was still very much in formation during this dynamic period. Science Museums in Transition provides a nuanced, comparative study of the diverse places and spaces in which science was displayed at a time when science and spectacle were still deeply intertwined; when leading naturalists, curators, and popular showmen were debating both how to display their knowledge and how and whether they should profit from scientific work; and when ideals of nationalism, class politics, and democracy were permeating the museum's walls. Contributors examine a constellation of people, spaces, display practices, experiences, and politics that worked not only to define the museum, but to shape public science and scientific knowledge. Taken together, the chapters in this volume span the Atlantic, exploring private and public museums, short and long-term exhibitions, and museums built for entertainment, education, and research, and in turn raise a host of important questions, about expertise, and about who speaks for nature and for history.

Museums in Motion

Museums in Motion PDF Author: Edward P. Alexander
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442278811
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
Here is a complete introduction to the history of museums, types of museums, and the key roles that museums play in the twenty-first century. Following an introductory chapter looking at what a museum is today, Part I looks at the history and types of museums: art and design museums natural history and anthropology museums science museums history museums, historic houses, interpretation centers, and heritage sites botanical gardens and zoos children’s museums The second part of the book explores the primary functions of museums and museum professionals: to collect to conserve to exhibit to interpret and to engage to serve and to act The final chapter looks at the museum profession and professional practices. Throughout, emphasis is on museums in the United States, although attention is paid to the historical framing of museums within the European context. The new edition includes discussions of technology, access, and inclusivity woven into each chapter, a list of challenges and opportunities in each chapter, and “Museums in Motion Today,” vignettes spread throughout the volume in which museum professionals provide their perspectives on where museums are now and where they are going. More than 140 images illustrate the volume.

Museum Registration Methods

Museum Registration Methods PDF Author: John E. Simmons
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538113120
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 605

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Book Description
Since the first edition was published in 1958, Museum Registration Methods has defined the profession and served as a fundamental reference for all aspects of collections registration, care, and management. The sixth edition of Museum Registration Methods is a comprehensive guide to registration and collections management for museums, from acquisition to use and deaccessioning. The authors and other contributors come from a wide variety of museums and specializations. The 56 chapters in this edition are either new or updated, and include the history of the profession, the role of the registrar in the museum, managing very large collections, developing and implementing collection management policies, documentation of collections, accessioning, condition reports, deaccessioning, repositories, and provenance research. Contemporary and digital art, living and natural history collections, loans, exhibitions, found-in-collection objects, shipping, records management, and electronic data management are also addressed, along with object handling and numbering, digitization, condition reporting, preventive care, storage on and off-site, inventory, moving and packing, shipping nationally and internationally, couriering, risk assessment, security, insurance, integrated pest management, ethics, sustainability, sacred and culturally sensitive objects, intellectual property rights, appraisal, ethical and legal issues, and research. The book includes a comprehensive resource list, glossary, hypothetical situations to ponder, and model collection forms.

Decolonizing Museums

Decolonizing Museums PDF Author: Amy Lonetree
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807837148
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Museum exhibitions focusing on Native American history have long been curator controlled. However, a shift is occurring, giving Indigenous people a larger role in determining exhibition content. In Decolonizing Museums, Amy Lonetree examines the co

Nothing Succeeds Like Failure

Nothing Succeeds Like Failure PDF Author: Steven Conn
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501742086
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Do business schools actually make good on their promises of "innovative," "outside-the-box" thinking to train business leaders who will put society ahead of money-making? Do they help society by making better business leaders? No, they don't, Steven Conn asserts, and what's more they never have. In throwing down a gauntlet on the business of business schools, Conn's Nothing Succeeds Like Failure examines the frictions, conflicts, and contradictions at the heart of these enterprises and details the way business schools have failed to resolve them. Beginning with founding of the Wharton School in 1881, Conn measures these schools' aspirations against their actual accomplishments and tells the full and disappointing history of missed opportunities, unmet aspirations, and educational mistakes. Conn then poses a set of crucial questions about the role and function of American business schools. The results aren't pretty. Posing a set of crucial questions about the function of American business schools, Nothing Succeeds Like Failure is pugnacious and controversial. Deeply researched and fun to read, Nothing Succeeds Like Failure argues that the impressive façades of business school buildings resemble nothing so much as collegiate versions of Oz. Conn pulls back the curtain to reveal a story of failure to meet the expectations of the public, their missions, their graduates, and their own lofty aspirations of producing moral and ethical business leaders.

A Sense of Things

A Sense of Things PDF Author: Bill Brown
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226076318
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
In May 1906, the Atlantic Monthly commented that Americans live not merely in an age of things, but under the tyranny of them, and that in our relentless effort to sell, purchase, and accumulate things, we do not possess them as much as they possess us. For Bill Brown, the tale of that possession is something stranger than the history of a culture of consumption. It is the story of Americans using things to think about themselves. Brown's captivating new study explores the roots of modern America's fascination with things and the problem that objects posed for American literature at the turn of the century. This was an era when the invention, production, distribution, and consumption of things suddenly came to define a national culture. Brown shows how crucial novels of the time made things not a solution to problems, but problems in their own right. Writers such as Mark Twain, Frank Norris, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Henry James ask why and how we use objects to make meaning, to make or remake ourselves, to organize our anxieties and affections, to sublimate our fears, and to shape our wildest dreams. Offering a remarkably new way to think about materialism, A Sense of Things will be essential reading for anyone interested in American literature and culture.