Curator: The Museum Journal最新文献

As theorized by Reilly, curatorial activism emerged from the Global North within curatorial and museological discourse as a framework to address the exclusion of marginalized artists from the art historical canon. This paper contributes to the ongoing discourse on curatorial activism, specifically within the Indian context, by critically examining its application in Indian art institutions. Drawing from critical concepts in New Museology and Reilly's curatorial activism, this study analyzes key exhibitions curated at two prominent art centres—New Delhi and Mumbai—exploring how curators engage with activist art practices and institutional critique. By examining the curatorial strategies employed—specifically, revisionism, area studies, and relational studies—within these exhibitions, the paper investigates how issues of caste, regional identity, and marginalization are addressed, particularly within India's unique sociopolitical context. Through this empirical lens, the study evaluates how curatorial activism operates within Indian art institutions and its implications for reshaping dominant narratives in contemporary art discourse.

Since the 1950s, radiography has been a tool used in the scientific analysis of artworks of diverse media. For ceramics, this non-destructive process allows interior views of vessels, giving insight into material composition, artistic practice, and original use. Recent advances in CT imaging can now reveal different materials within the scan range, illuminating, for example, metal components of the clay or within the decorative slip. This case study discusses the medical imaging of eight ceramic vessels dating from circa 300–1500 CE from Central and South America from the perspective of the radiologists and curatorial team who led the collaboration at Duke University. The resulting CT scans shed light on ancient artistic practice, in addition to the use of these objects in ritual and musical performance. This article provides an overview of those findings while providing recommendations for best practices in creating partnerships between museums and medical imaging departments.

Sound, often perceived as intangible, is now increasingly recognized as a tangible entity, sparking significant research interest. Museum practitioners and curators are particularly drawn to sound's interactional prospects, its expressive capabilities, and its ability to convey meaning, whether in representational, emotional, aesthetic/hedonistic, or sensorial terms. I initially proposed a typology that classifies multimodal museum practices centered on sound. This was the focal point of my article Museums as Sites for Displaying Sound Materials: A Five-Use Framework (Cortez 2022), where I delineated five categories—each pinpointing a distinct area of practice. The present article introduces two revisions. Firstly, it expands this theoretical framework by introducing two additional categories. Secondly, it further solidifies the entire framework by adopting a genre-based approach, inspired by Michael Halliday's functional grammar. My insights into each category are illustrated with real-world-examples from the 104 exhibitions I have visited, showcasing sound in various creative ways.

We reflect on our work with several South African natural science museums, most of which lack positions dedicated to managing biodiversity data. We argue that there is a need to recognize the profession of biodiversity data curation, an example of which is described in the area of taxonomic data cleansing and publication. Greater recognition could elevate this work to a professional level and address the lack of capacity in museums, encourage data curators to develop their skills, and give museums a well-trained cohort from which to recruit professionals. We argue that the use of industry-standard tools and practices will improve the integrity, security, and usefulness of potentially valuable biodiversity data. We propose a model of joint responsibility for server administration and biodiversity database hosting, to enable under-resourced museums to benefit from the systems administration capacity of a well-resourced organization.

In this paper, I explore the rational and characteristics of exemplar-based thematic exhibitions as an approach to promoting children's moral feeling in China's museums. This approach concerns the interaction between historical events, moral exemplars, as well as children's emotional and moral experiences in the context of an exhibition on a particular theme. By analyzing the specific thematic exhibition titled Caretakers of the Mogao Caves, I will argue that, by focusing on relevant exemplars, affective stories, and reflective dialogues, museums can provide fertile ground for kindling children's moral feelings of empathy and developing their conscience.

This study aims to identify types of red tourists based on their travel motivations for visiting the museum commemorating Deng Xiaoping, with a focus on their experiential sense of national identity conceived by the two identified groups ahead of the centennial celebration of the Communist Party of China. Survey data collected from 349 mainland Chinese tourists revealed that red tourism in China is a complex cultural, social, and economic phenomenon, rather than merely an agent of political socialization, because the museum attracts red tourists who are interested not only in patriotic education and commemoration but also in leisure and recreation. Red visitors seem to be patriots who identify China as a multi-ethnic country and a great nation, whereas red pilgrims are more likely to align with specific political ideologies, such as socialist road and core socialist values. The study enhances our understanding of the types of red tourists and their individual differences in travel motivations and national identity, suggesting curators evaluate the effectiveness of their marketing strategies and consider making minor changes to the exhibits for different types of visitors.

The push to “queer the museum” calls for an increase in the inclusion of LGBT+ artworks and artists as an intervention into the heterosexual museum and canon. While popular, the display of queer, abstract objects is complicated as many museum visitors do not perceive the LGBT+ themes. In this article, I present the data on audience interpretation of two candy spill installations, Untitled (L.A.) (1991) and Untitled (Placebo-Landscape-for-Roni) (1993), when they were featured in exhibitions at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR. Participant observation of and interviews with visitors demonstrate that while they understood the piece as a disruption to the site, no LGBT+ content was perceived. I make specific recommendations to museums based on the findings that argue the installation display, label text and placement, and museum staff training impact the viewer's understanding. As museums continue to participate in the queer turn, more should be considered when tackling the ethical display of LGBT+ works.