Museology
Museology, or museum studies, is the study of museums. It explores their history and role in society, as well as their activities, including curating, preservation, public programming, and education.
Terminology
The words that are used to describe the study of museums vary depending on language and geography. For example, while “museology” is becoming more prevalent in English, it is most commonly used to refer to the study of museums in French (muséologie), Spanish (museología), German (Museologie), Italian (museologia), and Portuguese (museologia) – while English speakers more often use the term “museum studies” to refer to that same field of study. When referring to the day-to-day operations of museums, other European languages typically use derivatives of the Greek “museographia” (French: muséographie, Spanish: museografía, German: Museographie, Italian: museografia, Portuguese: museografia), while English speakers typically use the term “museum practice” or “operational museology”
Development of the field
The development of museology in Europe coincided with the emergence of early collectors and cabinets of curiosity in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. In particular, during The Age of Enlightenment anthropologists, naturalists, and hobbyist collectors encouraged the growth of public museums that displayed natural history and ethnographic objects and art in North America and Europe. In the 18th and 19th centuries, European powers’ colonization of overseas lands was accompanied by the development of the disciplines of natural history and ethnography, and the rise of private and institutional collection building. In many cases museums became the holding places for collections that were acquired through colonial conquests, which positioned museums as key institutions in Western European colonial projects.
In the 19th century, European museology was focused on framing museums as institutions that would educate and “civilize” the general public. Museums typically served nationalist interests, and their primary purpose was often to celebrate the state, country, or colonial power. Though World's Fairs, such as The Great Exhibition of 1851 in London or the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition, were temporary, they were some of the first examples of large-scale exhibition spaces dedicated to nationalist agendas; both Britain and America wanted to assert themselves as international leaders in science and industry. In some cases world's fairs became the basis for museums. For instance, The Field Museum in Chicago grew out of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.
In the European context, the first academic journal on museology was the "Zeitschrift für Museologie und Antiquitätenkunde sowie verwandte Wissenschaften" (Journal for museology and antiquarianism as well as related sciences, 1878–1885) founded and edited by Dr Johann Georg Theodor Graesse (1814–1885), director of Dresden Porcelain Collection at the time. The journal was published twice a month from 1878 to 1885, and ended when the founding editor died. The Zeitschrift für Museologie was followed by the second German journal on museology, Museumskunde (since 1905), which was founded in Dresden by Dr Karl Koetschau (1868–1949), director of the Dresden History Museum at the time. Since 1917, the journal Museumskunde has become the official periodical of the Deutscher Museumsbund e.V. (German Museums Association, since 1917).
Museums Association, the first professional membership organization for those working in the museum field, was established in London in 1889. In 1901, they developed the Museums Journal, the first English periodical devoted entirely to the theory and practice of museums, which was followed by the American Association of Museum’s Museum Work in the United States (1919). With the creation of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) in 1946, the study of museums gained increasing momentum and exposure, though at the time most of the scholarly focus was on operational museology, or museum practice.
Beginning in the 1950s, new forms of museology were emerging as a way to revitalize the educational role of museums. One attempt to re-envision museums’ role was the concept of Ecomuseums, first proposed publicly at ICOM’s 9th International Conference in France (1971). Ecomuseums proliferated in Europe – and still exist around the world today – challenging traditional museums and dominant museum narratives, with an explicit focus on community control and the development of both heritage and sustainability. In 1988, Robert Lumley’s book The Museum Time Machine “expressed the growing disquiet about traditional museological presuppositions and operations”. The following year, Peter Vergo published his critically acclaimed edited collection The New Museology (1989/1997), a work that aimed to challenge the traditional or “old” field of museology, and was named one of the Paperbacks of the Year by The Sunday Times in Britain. Around the same time, Ivan Karp co-organized two ground-breaking conferences at the Smithsonian, Exhibiting Cultures (1988) and Museums and Communities (1990), that soon resulted in highly influential volumes of the same names that redefined museums studies. Scholars who are engaged in various “new” museological practices sometimes disagree about when this trend “officially” began, what exactly it encompasses, and whether or not it is an ongoing field of study. However, the common thread of New Museology is that it has always involved some form of “radical reassessment of the roles of museums within society”.
Critical theorists like Michel Foucault, Walter Benjamin, and Benedict Anderson also had a profound influence on late 20th and early 21st century museology. As other disciplines began to be critically reassessed, often adding the term “critical” to their new titles (i.e. critical race theory), a discourse of critical museology also emerged, intensifying around the turn of the 21st century. It arose from a similar critical discourse as New Museology and shares many of its features, so much so that many scholars disagree about the extent to which you can distinguish one from the other. In other words, while some scholars say that New Museology was a watershed moment in the late 20th century and critical museology is a related but separate movement in the early 21st century, others argue that New Museology is an ongoing field of study that has many manifestations and names, one of which is critical museology.
The latest movements in museology tend to focus on museums being interdisciplinary, multi-vocal, accessible, and open to criticism. While these critical discourses dominate contemporary museology, there are many different kinds of museums that exist today, some are engaged in new and innovative practices, and others are more traditional and therefore, less critical.
References
- Related SM-201 Museum articles
- United States
- Britain
- Germany
- Spain
External links
- Calls to Action – Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
- Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage
- Guerrilla Girls
- International Council of Museums
- Making Culture Lab
- Task Force Report on Museums and First Peoples
- Truth and Reconciliation Commission
- TRC - 94 Calls to Action
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