Curator: The Museum Journal最新文献

This study focuses on the diversity, equity, access, and inclusion (DEAI) practices of informal science institutions (ISI) that are part of a statewide grants program. Data were collected to understand how ISIs interpret and implement DEAI in thought and action in their efforts to create more welcoming spaces for members of communities that are often underrepresented or marginalized in informal learning spaces. Modeled after the Cultural Competence Learning Institute's (CCLI) Framework, survey data were collected to understand DEAI practices being used to create welcoming environments. Interview data were collected 2 years later to understand how ISIs collaborate with others to center communities in their work. Results indicated that while DEAI was considered a high priority, strategies were limited. A positive relationship was found between the number of strategies used and perceived success. ISIs' stories of collaboration focused most often on transactional relationships with organizational partners. Those working with communities directly collaborated in needs-based or reciprocal ways. Results are interpreted in relation to the CCLI Framework's potential to provide benchmarks for both individual institutions and groups like our statewide grants program to use as comparison points for their own DEAI practice.

Set in the tradition of museum ethnography, this article looks at museum participation through the lens of labor. Based primarily on interview material, it analyzes the lengthy—and laborious—participatory process behind the creation of “Berlin Global,” an exhibition at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, Germany. The authors explore three aspects of participation related to labor, as identified in their research: the different types of knowledge and experience that participants bring with them, the organization of the participatory work process, and the presentation of the participants' contributions within the exhibition. The authors argue that because museum participation tends to be viewed as an act of civic duty, individually and socially meaningful, the different kinds of labor involved in it are often overlooked, resulting in power imbalances between curators and their external partners. A greater awareness of the labor demanded by participatory work is able to address this problem, decreasing the number of frictions and tensions, and thus making mutual beneficiality, participation's main goal, more achievable.

The use of digital museum objects has become an essential part of museums' communication and marketing strategies, research and teaching, and curatorial practices. This new visibility, amplified by the COVID-19 crisis, has not only revealed the possibilities of digital museum objects but has also underscored significant challenges, including the intricate relationship between digital museum objects and physical objects, the impact of digital museum objects on knowledge creation, and the online interaction with art and cultural heritage. Furthermore, it has drawn attention to the digital platforms that host digital museum objects, ranging from museum collection databases to online encyclopedias, cultural heritage platforms, and social media. The present paper explores these issues by examining how digital platforms are changing the way digital reproductions of artworks are used and reimagined, both inside and outside the institutions that house the artworks. To illuminate these dynamics, it looks at specific case studies, including the Getty Challenge, the online circulation of Delacroix's La liberté guidant le peuple, and the collection databases of Belgian museums and of the Mauritshuis. Theoretically, it combines the art historical concept of circulation with the notion of gray and colored memory drawn from digital memory studies. In doing so, it conceives of museum databases and cultural heritage platforms, as spaces of participation and neglect, of memory and oblivion, with a vast potential for producing new perspectives on art and cultural heritage and telling new (art) histories. In conclusion, the paper advocates for “circulation” as a key concept for revitalizing online collections of digital reproductions of artworks.