Museums Matters - Revision history

Lynntastic at 23:43, 8 October 2018

2018-10-08T23:43:46Z

Emeehan at 22:03, 28 February 2017

2017-02-28T22:03:47Z

Lynntastic: /* The Enlightenment Museum to The Cosmopolitan Museum */

2017-02-21T00:23:05Z

‎The Enlightenment Museum to The Cosmopolitan Museum

Lynntastic: /* The Enlightenment Museum to The Cosmopolitan Museum */

2017-02-20T21:31:22Z

‎The Enlightenment Museum to The Cosmopolitan Museum

Lynntastic: /* Museums and Nation Building */

2017-02-20T21:27:13Z

‎Museums and Nation Building

Lynntastic: /* The Enlightenment Museum to The Cosmopolitan Museum */

2017-02-20T21:14:46Z

‎The Enlightenment Museum to The Cosmopolitan Museum

Lynntastic: Created page with "{{Infobox book | name = Museums Matters: In Praise of the Encyclopedic Museum | author = James Cuno | publisher = University of Chicago Press | pub_date =..."

2017-02-20T21:04:43Z

Created page with "{{Infobox book | name = Museums Matters: In Praise of the Encyclopedic Museum | author = James Cuno | publisher = University of Chicago Press | pub_date =..."

New page

{{Infobox book
| name = Museums Matters: In Praise of the Encyclopedic Museum
| author = James Cuno
| publisher = University of Chicago Press
| pub_date = September 3, 2013
| pages = 164
| isbn = 978-0226100913
| image = [[File:Museums Matter.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]
}}
Museums Matters: In Praise of the Encyclopedic Museum (University of Chicago Press, 2013) is a book dedicated to the rise of the encyclopedic museum from its beginnings in the British Museum of History to the subsequent variations of its legacy. Cuno consciously separates his argument in a series of lecture style chapters devoted to styles of public museums and how they serve the purpose of creating an educated and culturally aware public.

Cuno, through this book, hopes to foster an argument in support of the encyclopedic museum as a “truly cosmopolitan institution, promoting tolerance, understanding, and a shared sense of history”.

==Contents==
===The Enlightenment Museum to The Cosmopolitan Museum===

The Encyclopedic Museum arrives during the Age of Enlightenment. At the behest of Sir Hans Sloan, a polymath from Northern Ireland, as per his will, his collection of “natural and artificial curiosities, precious stones, books of dryed [sic] samples of plants, miniatures, drawing, prints, medals, printed and manuscript books” were sold to the British government. Valued at over 5.3 Million USD today, this diverse collection became the basis of the British Museum of History’s holdings in 1753. As a direct result of his will, the Museum Act of 1753 was written and signed into action to govern the museum, its collections and personnel. Cuno, uses this as a clear starting point for the accounting of history through carefully preserved and displayed artifacts.

The following two chapters focus on the evolution of the public museum with diverse collections. The first iteration comes as a direct result of the need to curate the array of objects. The creation of a systematic way in which to both display and produce hierarchy through grouping and assumed interest.

Franz Boaz in 1887, a curator and anthropologist, found the need for a better standard of exhibit. Boaz wished for the movement away from laying objects out in cases as specimens and towards providing cultural context to each object thereby giving each object a prominence it could not have had grouped amongst like items or items from similar places which was the system of display at the time.

===Museums and Nation Building===
In the first chapter of the book Cuno follows his introduction of the birth of the British Museum of History with the subsequent founding of the Louvre in 1792. This museum was built to “demonstrate the nation’s great riches” and show the glory and prowess of the French Republic. Whereas Sir Sloane imparted the term that the collection and its home belong to the nation and not just the King, the Louvre was fashioned to create a very controlled narrative of the nation to which it belonged.

Cuno uses this as an entryway to his later fourth chapter on the Imperial Museum. The use of museums as a political tool by way of communicating a storyline that extols the competency of the government in its

==Miscellaneous==
The book evolved from Cuno’s 2009 Campbell Lectures at Rice University.

[[Category:Theory]]
[[Category:James Cuno]]
[[Category:Wikify]]
[[Category:Book Summaries]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 00:23, 21 February 2017
Line 21:		Line 21:

	Franz Boaz in 1887, a curator and anthropologist, found the need for a better standard of exhibit. Boaz wished for the movement away from laying objects out in cases as specimens and towards providing cultural context to each object thereby giving each object a prominence it could not have had grouped amongst like items or items from similar places which was the system of display at the time. Boaz argument was to “emphasize the object in itself or to present it as part of larger discursive narrative”. This is an argument he shared with the 19th century French poet and essayist, Paul Valery. The case for depth of context and not just pleasurable sights in museums structures modern museum theory.		Franz Boaz in 1887, a curator and anthropologist, found the need for a better standard of exhibit. Boaz wished for the movement away from laying objects out in cases as specimens and towards providing cultural context to each object thereby giving each object a prominence it could not have had grouped amongst like items or items from similar places which was the system of display at the time. Boaz argument was to “emphasize the object in itself or to present it as part of larger discursive narrative”. This is an argument he shared with the 19th century French poet and essayist, Paul Valery. The case for depth of context and not just pleasurable sights in museums structures modern museum theory.
		+
		+	The book then moves into the Cosmopolitan Museum model which he simplifies through the comparison of walking through a museum and traveling. Cuno uses travel (especially world travel) as a means of communicating or "translating" the experience of exploring a museum, encyclopedic or not, where we might encounter objects from
		+	different areas and cultures. This fuels the cosmopolitan idea of a bond between all peoples no matter location, beliefs or ideals and that though there are differences using this as a way to fuel discourse and create meaningful narratives can only strengthen the museum and human experiences. He uses a series of disconnected objects to create a case for acknowledgement of a globalized world and the museum's responsibility of supporting this as the very basis of encyclopedic museum collections is a wild geographic array of objects.

	===Museums and Nation Building===		===Museums and Nation Building===

@@ Line 20: / Line 20: @@
 The following two chapters focus on the evolution of the public museum with diverse collections. The first iteration comes as a direct result of the need to curate the array of objects. The creation of a systematic way in which to both display and produce hierarchy through grouping and assumed interest. The Discursive Museum that emerged in the 19th century extends its theoretical debate to modern museum discourse on the need and/or implications of applying an interpretation or construction onto an object. This even reaches into the layering of personal stories or metaphors unconsciously placed into arrangement and narratives of objects.
-Franz Boaz in 1887, a curator and anthropologist, found the need for a better standard of exhibit. Boaz wished for the movement away from laying objects out in cases as specimens and towards providing cultural context to each object thereby giving each object a prominence it could not have had grouped amongst like items or items from similar places which was the system of display at the time.
+Franz Boaz in 1887, a curator and anthropologist, found the need for a better standard of exhibit. Boaz wished for the movement away from laying objects out in cases as specimens and towards providing cultural context to each object thereby giving each object a prominence it could not have had grouped amongst like items or items from similar places which was the system of display at the time. Boaz argument was to “emphasize the object in itself or to present it as part of larger discursive narrative”. This is an argument he shared with the 19th century French poet and essayist, Paul Valery. The case for depth of context and not just pleasurable sights in museums structures modern museum theory.
 ===Museums and Nation Building===

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 {{Infobox book
-| name		 = Museums Matters: In Praise of the Encyclopedic Museum
+| name		 = Museums Matter: In Praise of the Encyclopedic Museum
 | author         = James Cuno
 | publisher      = University of Chicago Press
@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 | image          = [[File:Museums Matter.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]
 }}
-Museums Matters: In Praise of the Encyclopedic Museum (University of Chicago Press, 2013) is a book dedicated to the rise of the encyclopedic museum from its beginnings in the British Museum of History to the subsequent variations of its legacy. Cuno consciously separates his argument in a series of lecture style chapters devoted to styles of public museums and how they serve the purpose of creating an educated and culturally aware public.
+Museums Matter: In Praise of the Encyclopedic Museum (University of Chicago Press, 2013) is a book dedicated to the rise of the encyclopedic museum from its beginnings in the British Museum of History to the subsequent variations of its legacy. Cuno consciously separates his argument in a series of lecture style chapters devoted to styles of public museums and how they serve the purpose of creating an educated and culturally aware public.
 Cuno, through this book, hopes to foster an argument in support of the encyclopedic museum as a “truly cosmopolitan institution, promoting tolerance, understanding, and a shared sense of history”.

@@ Line 36: / Line 36: @@
-[[Category:Theory]]
+[[Category:Theory and Methodology]]
 [[Category:James Cuno]]
 [[Category:Wikify]]
 [[Category:Book Summaries]]

@@ Line 25: / Line 25: @@
 In the first chapter of the book Cuno follows his introduction of the birth of the British Museum of History with the subsequent founding of the Louvre in 1792. This museum was built to “demonstrate the nation’s great riches” and show the glory and prowess of the French Republic. Whereas Sir Sloane imparted the term that the collection and its home belong to the nation and not just the King, the Louvre was fashioned to create a very controlled narrative of the nation to which it belonged.
-Cuno uses this as an entryway to his later fourth chapter on the Imperial Museum. The use of museums as a political tool by way of communicating a storyline that extols the competency of the government in its
+Cuno uses this as an entryway to his later fourth chapter on the Imperial Museum. The use of museums as a political tool by way of communicating a storyline that extols the competency of the government in all its ways persists to this day as countries like China and Russia and The United States continues imperial stratagems we closely relate with the 19th century and earlier. Cuno argues that the time in which the encyclopedic museum was founded implies an “irrecusably linked” identity with the imperial museum. During much of its history the British Museum of History has been attendant on its colonialist identity which Cuno mentions “the knowledge-producing project of the British Empire” is an “instrument of control”. Using case studies from the Archaeology Survey of India allows the reader to explore this theory.
 ==Miscellaneous==