By adopting new museological functions, surviving artefacts open up the possibility of illuminating complex interrelations between the lifecycle of humans and objects. Imbued with a unique and intimate material memory, historical textiles encapsulate evidence surrounding their conceptualisation, production, and consumption, as well as their…[Read more]

In 2015 the Office of Art and Archives focused on adding more art and archival content to the History, Art & Archives website (http://history.house.gov/). The website is a collaborative effort: curators and archivists in the Office of Art and Archives and Office of the Historian staff work on and contribute content. The Office of Art and Archives…[Read more]

This booklet serves as documentation and manual for the app Creative Museum, the new participatory platform of the Badisches Landesmuseum. The goal of the app is to create a digital space for debate. Museum employees, experts and citizens are invited to get into conversation with each other and share their contributions on equal terms. The topics…[Read more]

An examination of how museums can change how they relate to the public, through engagement opportunities.

Mihalic, Alicia (2020) ‘Principles and Practical Implications of the Reconstruction of Historical Dress Artefacts in Museum Environment’. in Simončič, K. N. (ed.) From Replica of Historical Dress to Costume. Zagreb: University of Zagreb, Faculty of Textile Technology. pp. 42-60.

Barbara Burman and Ariane Fennetaux, The Pocket: A Hidden History of Women’s Lives, 1660-1900, Yale University Press, London, England, 2020, Appendix: Pockets in the Old Bailey, Notes, Archives, Bibliography, Index, Picture Credits, 161 Colour Illustrations, 264 pages, Softback, £19.99.

When engaging in the visual analysis and communication of cultural collections and other types of complex historical data, scholarly or public audiences rarely get to see their multidimensional richness. Commonly, visualization tools require analysts to selectively ‘cut’ into the complexity of the data to highlight and project particular asp…[Read more]

Mit dem Begriff der Kunstvermittlung wird Politik gemacht und er wird mit gegenläufigen Verständnissen verknüpft. Das Buch “Was heißt hier Vermittlung?” arbeitet heraus, dass die Bedeutungskonkurrenz bereits im Streitbegriff der Vermittlung angelegt ist. Der unternommene Gang durch sozialhistorische und philosophische Begriffsgeschichten wird mit…[Read more]

In 1975, at the time of the independence of the last large colonies, the Portuguese government decided to maintain the main public structure of colonial research, as an instrument of cooperation and diplomacy, changing its name to Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical. Disconnected from its primitive mission and with a very heavy and co…[Read more]

Personal and object biographies can be interwoven and reveal much about the transnational connections between Australia and other places. This chapter features two interwoven biographies: Guna Kinne, a Latvian Displaced Person who began making a national dress as a school girl in Latvia and continued to make it as she fled the Soviet army to…[Read more]

The Museum of Chinese Australian History reopened on 29th August 2010 with newly refurbished exhibitions displaying Chinese Australian history and contemporary Chinese Australian identities. This article reviews the new exhibitions in comparison with the Gum San Heritage Centre at Ararat and the Golden Dragon Museum at Bendigo and specifically…[Read more]

SHOWING OFF: QUEENSLAND AT WORLD EXPOSITIONS 1862 TO 1988 BY JUDITH
MCKAY. ROCKHAMPTON AND SOUTH BRISBANE: CENTRAL QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY
PRESS AND THE QUEENSLAND MUSEUM, 2004; 128PP, APPENDIX, NOTES,
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND INDEX; PAPERBOUND, $29.95

Sónia Silva is an Associate Professor of anthropology at Skidmore College. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Zambia, as well as museum work in Europe and the USA, Silva’s research deals with materiality, material religion, the notion of the fetish, ritual and religion, divination, witchcraft, violence, and museums. Silva is the author of Alon…[Read more]