Curator: The Museum Journal最新文献

This study examines the history of legislation on the subject of curation in Israel and the state of the country's training programs for curators. Israel serves as a representative case study: While many museum activities and curatorial studies programs worldwide were initiated in order to ensure a trained museum staff, today, the scope of those who meet this criterion far exceeds the demand. Furthermore, as happened frequently in other countries, Israeli legislators in the 1980s did not understand that contemporary curation and museology are two very different fields, and a system to train the staff of museums was built together with the flourishing of contemporary curation. Hence, in legislation, these two fields are today bound together. This article builds on the Israeli case study to ask if separating these two fields will create more up-to-date programs.

With this issue, Curator: The Museum Journal has now implemented a policy requiring that all images contained in manuscripts published in our journal will require AltText descriptions in the main manuscript. The format for these descriptions should appear after figure location recommendations and figure captions in the main manuscript, indicated by capturing the beginning and end of the text with specific code for the typesetting team, and highlighting all text to be included in the HTML file in a red highlight as follows:

<alt text>Statue of Lincoln</alt text>

The guidelines for developing AltText can be found on the journal's Author Guidelines <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/21516952/homepage/forauthors.html> section of the website. This editorial provides a short description of the work that led to this new policy, the principles of access and inclusion that support this new policy, and offers detailed guidelines for authors to support their development of manuscripts.

Dixon, C.G., Hsi, S., Doren, S.V. (2022), Keeping voices in the room: Values clarification in codesign for equitable science and technology education. Curator: The Museum Journal, 66: 9–28. https://doi.org/10.1111/cura.12529

There was an error in omission in an acknowledgment that the material and publication is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2053160.

We apologize for this error.

This paper examines a collective identity shift among unionizing art museum workers. Pulling data from an action research study of museum union members, I argue that museum workers today are explicitly aligning themselves with working classes in building wall-to-wall labor unions and embracing the collective identity, or membership within the group, of “museum worker.” In analyzing this identity label, I draw from Bruce Lincoln's theories on discourse as a mechanism for constructing or dismantling affective social boundaries. The shift from “museum professional” to “museum worker” signifies a redefinition of creative labor and museum work rooted in cross-class solidarity and bears implications for effective grassroots organizing and coalition-building for institutional and social change.

We report on how we integrated smell into the classic children's story ‘The Three Little Pigs’ to enhance a public children's museum exhibition. The study employed Wenger's (1998) social theory of learning as its conceptual framework. It aimed to enhance children's sensory experience in a local Norwegian museum through a collaboration between academia and the industry. We used five abstract smells that were included in five wooden boxes and strategically placed around an adventure trail inside the museum (science factory). In this article, we reflect on the exhibition choices and findings, and recommendations for future children's exhibitions combining odors and narrative.

Museums and science centers are embracing collaborative design practices to invite diverse expertises into the design process. Co-construction of museum exhibits and experiences can help museums better engage and affirm local communities as well as facilitate disciplinary and educational research connected to museum experiences. To support more collaborative design processes, many museums are creating new frameworks capable of supporting authentic co-construction across wells of expertise, both within a museum infrastructure and with external partners. In this perspective, we share insights that have emerged through the development of such a framework at the Lawrence Hall of Science. We position this design framework as a collection of boundary objects (Star & Griesemer, 1989, 387) that can facilitate collaboration, and discuss the affordances of boundary objects for nurturing inclusive participation, knowledge-sharing, and shared ownership.

Lodovico Brunetti (1813–1899), professor of pathological anatomy at the University of Padua and founder of the Museum of Pathological Anatomy, believed that anatomical preparations were essential for the practice and teaching of pathological anatomy. At his arrival in Padua in 1855, there were around 300 made by other professors of medicine, including some by Giovanni Battista Morgagni, preserved either in liquid or dry. These conservation methods did not satisfy Brunetti, as they drastically altered the shape of the anatomical pieces (reduced by mummification and dilated in liquid); thus, he decided to create a new method called “tannization,” for the use of tannic acid. Brunetti's new method was based on dissection and injection techniques, and it had the substantial advantage of maintaining unchanged the shape and texture of the anatomical specimens, even microscopically, as well as being not so expensive. Another important advantage consisted in the fact that the different stages of the preparation could be put into practice even at different times and at a considerable distance from each other. His specimens seemed to be mummified, but they maintained a remarkable elasticity and softness, as well as almost completely unaltered proportions. Today, the Morgagni Museum of the University of Padua still preserves several tannized preparations attributable to Brunetti and his successors. The current study aims to show the educational value of this method showing the results of Brunetti's tannization nowadays.

This paper examines social media activity by UK museums during the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a general perception that as museums closed their doors for extended periods, their digital presence increased to maintain connections with their audiences. However, much of the research conducted in this area is based on small-scale studies and examples of best practice from large, well-resourced museums. By contrast, this study utilizes a comprehensive database of over 3300 active UK museums to understand the use of Facebook and Twitter across the sector. Specifically, the paper examines the frequency with which museums posted to these digital platforms as they attempted to engage with their audiences. Our findings indicate that there was no substantial increase in social media use and activity across the UK museum sector during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research has implications for museologists studying the impact of the pandemic on museums' digital activity, for museum social media professionals, and policymakers responsible for museum digital transformation strategies.

We have been learning about the learning of children and youth, teachers, and visitors over the course of 7 years as we developed and deepened a research agenda in education in our natural history museum. In 2016 in this journal, we detailed how we began this effort and the development and initial steps of an educational research agenda. Focusing on our work since then, our team of educational researchers describes how our research has revealed the considerable impact of out-of-school learning with youth, educators, and visitors and how we incorporate a focus upon equity across all areas of inquiry. We share main findings emerging from our research, early roadblocks and current challenges, and lessons about engaging in research on learning in a cultural institution with implications for both large and small settings.