Curator: The Museum Journal最新文献

Museum educators' (MEs) visions and desires for career development represent an idealized and aspirational identity of being better museum educational professionals. As part of a larger project that explored museum educators' self-concept as education professionals in China, this preliminary study explored 23 Chinese science museum educators' thoughts and ideas about their imagined professional identity in terms of describing personal desires for professional development pathways. Informed by a Possible Selves theoretical perspective, museum educators in this study elucidated five hoped-for professional development approaches, including cross-departmental communication, external communication, formal training in an engaging approach, peer support, and self-regulated learning. Their expectations for professional growth, to a large extent, were derived from personal reflection and social comparison on the basis of their past work experiences in museum institutions. Therefore, their imagination about future professional development was deeply influenced by the complicated sociocultural and political contexts in which they lived and worked. As the professionalization of science museum educator work in China is at a relatively early stage of emergence, this study provides insights that may help scaffold and direct professionalization efforts of museum education practices in China, and other countries and regions with similar contextual situations.

Modern Heritage in the Anthropocene draws from a critical selection of the 54 papers presented at the second International MoHoA conference Modern Heritage in the Anthropocene, (October 26–28, 2022), hosted by The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, in partnership with the University of Liverpool's School of Architecture. The conference expanded MoHoA's aim of encouraging equitable approaches to modern heritage as an urgent and essential response to an age of planetary crises whose roots are entangled with centuries-old culture of extraction, exploitation, and domination. Building on the lessons learned from the first MoHoA conference, Modern Heritage of Africa (2021), hosted by the University of Cape Town and the subject of an earlier special edition of Curator (65/July 3, 2022), this second conference emphasized the interconnection between these cultures and the dawn of the Anthropocene. Participants were asked to reflect on reconceptualized formulations of modern heritage and its entangled relationship with the planetary crises experienced, albeit unevenly and unequally, by all living and nonliving things. This paper assembles and reflects on the contributions of 18 peer-reviewed papers that collectively demonstrate the range and depth of topics presented. In the spirit of equity, diversity, and inclusivity and in line with MoHoA's decentering, decolonizing, and reframing agenda, these have also been chosen to reflect the different contributors' experiences, from senior academics to young and early career professionals.

Exhibitions have become a major highlight of information communication and innovative services in Chinese libraries, archives, and local chronicles museums in recent years. However, many of these exhibitions have been hindered in “dialogue” with their audiences, leading to a limited impact. Hence, this study employed a triangulation approach, combining literature analysis and empirical study, to identify the existing problems of libraries, archives, and local chronicles exhibitions. On the one hand, perspectives were refined from previous studies through literature analysis to establish a research foundation for exhibition issues. On the other hand, nine institutions were selected for empirical study through importance-performance analysis (IPA) in east, central, and west China, integrating audience perspectives into problematic space. Based on the triangulation evidence, the problems mainly focus on three aspects: architectural planning, exhibition business, and public services, whereas the causes of the problems include stereotypes, late start points, and so on. The root causes appear to lie in the failure to transform from the document center to the public center, and the imbalance of curatorial theory research as a constraint bottleneck. These findings are expected to be utilized to enhance the specialization of Chinese documentary exhibitions, which attempt to overcome the difficulties of audience understanding and realize the real value of documents and the communication function of the media, thus promoting an effective dialogue between exhibitions and audiences.

This research aims to explore early concrete bridges in China, especially those from 1950s to 1970s, as a form of modern heritage. It asserts that there are inherent contradictions in how these bridges were perceived over half a century later. Although this may affect their listing as cultural heritage, it also makes them a representative case for a decentered approach to modern heritage not only at an international level, but also within a particular national context. In a country still building concrete bridges of ever-increasing scales, early concrete bridges in China, despite their age, are seldom considered as cultural heritage. However, while historically and technologically these bridges were close to the everyday lived experiences, they are often more difficult to research than older, pre-1949 buildings and structures. This is not only because of the lack of readily available archives, but also that these bridges, especially the iconic “double-curved” bridges, which were politicized during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), represented an important period in modern Chinese history that is still politically sensitive and contested, possessing cultural values that mean vastly different things for different people. This is illustrated by the case study of three bridges in Nanjing: the Yangtze River Bridge of Nanjing, arguably the most famous Chinese bridge in the twentieth century; the Little Egret Bridge (Bailu Bridge), an early double-curved bridge, which is said to be a prototype of the former; and the Xiaolingwei Experimental Bridge, an important landmark in the development of the double-curved bridge but entirely forgotten after the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Accounts from before, during, and after the Cultural Revolution provide very different narratives about the process of their design and construction. Their different geographical locations and different associations with this turbulent and contested period of modern Chinese history also affects their conservation status today. All these factors combined make these bridges an exemplar of dissonant modern heritage that, although situated in a Chinese context, has important lessons globally for our understanding of the impact and legacies of modernity.

This paper investigates the multiple architectural modernities in colonial and postindependence Nigeria. After examining the theoretical basis for multiple modernities and the use of architecture as a vehicle to study modernity, it identifies the colonial, tropical, and postcolonial modern as multiple architectural modernities that existed in colonial and postcolonial Nigeria. The criteria with which the multiple modernities were delineated were historical settings, key participants, distinguishing features, and meanings. This provides a plausible framework to understand modernities in other contexts beyond architecture and opens the possibility of elucidating various modernities and enriching the repository of modern heritage. Devising such broad definitions of modern heritage responds to the call of the Cape Town Document on Modern Heritage for expanded definitions of what constitutes the modern, while enabling the accounting for and stratification of multiple memories and narratives, and the inclusion of many types of modern architecture in conservation conversations.

Considered for a long time by the art world as “primitive,” African art has always been used by Africans as a way of telling the story of their time, of establishing a connection between the visible and the invisible, the here and the hereafter. With colonization and then Independence, the notion and forms of African art have evolved through complex and diverse encounters with modernity to a contemporary art form that reflects the multiple identities of the continent and its diasporas. While the notion of modern art was initially strongly influenced by the West, as evidenced by the first schools of arts established on the continent, it gradually asserted its place and identity as both universal and specific to the continent and its history. This (r)evolution is taking place through two parallel movements, both within and outside Africa, supported by the organization of major international and regional events and the establishment of dedicated art spaces in Africa and globally.

The proposed construction of the controversial Amazon African headquarters at the River Club site in Cape Town encompasses several issues related to modern heritage, colonial practices, sustainable development, the nature-culture divide, and the Anthropocene. Although approved by the City of Cape Town and the provincial government of the Western Cape, with plans for residential and business units, activists, researchers, environmental organizations, workers' unions, and social justice coalitions associated with indigenous Khoe and San groups oppose the development on the grounds of the symbolic and historical importance of the site earmarked for development. The paper aims to explore the significance of the site, analyze the ensuing confrontations and contestations and examine how the site represents spaces of public history, urban spatial construction, and memory. The focus of the paper will be the complex interplay between social, cultural, ethical, and political forces, and their intersection with legal and institutional policy processes at different levels of the state and the local. Ultimately, the paper challenges the claim of the City of Cape Town, the provincial government, and the developers that their version of historical progress is equitable and fair, and raises a broader question about Eurocentric ideas of emancipation, aesthetics and notions of history, heritage and development.

Families of children with autism and other special educational needs may often feel excluded from social activities and/or report on lack of quality family time. Some museums offer individual booking times for families outside their regular public opening hours. Such relaxed openings in museums present opportunities for families to participate in leisure activities that suit their sensory and social needs. However, further exploration of the meaning of such programs to families is needed to enhance the inclusive offer of museums. This research study evaluated the feedback and reflection of creative workshops conducted in The National Museum of Computing during its relaxed openings for families with children with autism and other special educational needs. The findings of the project highlight the benefits of the creative workshops with sensory-friendly aspects, evidenced by the observed engagement of children and families in the activities and interpreted through data from child and parental questionnaires and facilitator reflective log.

Researchers have been documenting how museums used social networks during the COVID-19 global health emergency, however, to date there has been limited assessment of museums' uses of Instagram at that time. This article begins to address that gap with a case study of Philbrook Museum of Art's approach to that platform during the early months of the pandemic. We use a mixed-method inquiry featuring social media analysis and a series of interviews with staff at the museum to analyze the museum's use of Instagram to maintain a presence within followers' lives during this intensely challenging period. To frame our analysis we introduce Gibbs et al.'s (Information, Communication & Society, 2015, 18, 255) concept of “platform vernacular” to digital heritage studies, trialing its use to critically analyze the combination of affordances, practices, and communicative conventions that Instagram convenes for the museum. We find this approach to be both theoretically and practically insightful, with the potential to inform more meaningful, authentic, and transparent interactions between institutions and users within social networks.

The relationship between heritage and waste in the context of the Anthropocene has always been intricate. Historically, heritage and waste were viewed as opposing concepts, but in the Anthropocene, they are inextricably linked and interwoven, resulting in the creation of in situ and ex situ productions that leave deep imprints on their territories. How we deal with these landscapes of waste, or wastescapes, as a form of modern heritage is increasingly a concern for museums, which have a potentially pivotal role in addressing the phenomenon of global waste and educating the public about responsible consumption. The review of diverse exhibitions and artworks explores the cultural and social dimensions of waste, considering it as a form of modern heritage derived from and shaped by human activities that have become a planetary phenomenon in the twenty-first century. It also unveils the connections between economic power, waste management, and environmental impact. In conclusion, current museum practice responds to a reevaluation of what is considered material culture, understanding it as testimonies of the present, with the aim of highlighting the role of museums as platforms for critically examining complex issues related to waste, enabling diverse ways of addressing the environmental and social injustices associated with waste management.