Academic Sessions: London 1997
The Museum and its Metaphors
Convener:
Michaela Giebelhausen (University of Essex)
The aim of this session is to direct attention to the architecture of the museum and to explore the ways in which it determines the museum's relationship with its collections and visitors and with the built environment. Both the display of the collections and the experience of museum visiting are profoundly influenced by the architectural structure of the museum, which has been described in a wide range of differing metaphors. Treasure house, cathedral, enlightened temple of the arts, panopticon of knowledge or department store: the metaphorical evocations of the museum have been many.
The session seeks to investigate the importance of these metaphors for the function and meaning of the museum as distinct building type as well as in regard to display practices and visiting habits. It also seeks to address the ways in which architecture stages the museum's claim as cultural institution and the different ways in which this claim has been expressed over time. In this context the museum's specific site and the role it plays in a given urban or rural context need to be examined. A discussion of the function and meaning of the museum as architecture is particularly important since the museum is one of the very few public building types that are seen to be of symbolic relevance to contemporary society.
Michaela Giebelhausen (University of Essex)
The aim of this session is to direct attention to the architecture of the museum and to explore the ways in which it determines the museum's relationship with its collections and visitors and with the built environment. Both the display of the collections and the experience of museum visiting are profoundly influenced by the architectural structure of the museum, which has been described in a wide range of differing metaphors. Treasure house, cathedral, enlightened temple of the arts, panopticon of knowledge or department store: the metaphorical evocations of the museum have been many.
The session seeks to investigate the importance of these metaphors for the function and meaning of the museum as distinct building type as well as in regard to display practices and visiting habits. It also seeks to address the ways in which architecture stages the museum's claim as cultural institution and the different ways in which this claim has been expressed over time. In this context the museum's specific site and the role it plays in a given urban or rural context need to be examined. A discussion of the function and meaning of the museum as architecture is particularly important since the museum is one of the very few public building types that are seen to be of symbolic relevance to contemporary society.
- Debora J. Meijers (University of Amsterdam): The 'Kunstkamera' of Tsar Peter the Great (St. Petersburg 1718-1734): King Solomon's House or Repository of the Four Continents?
- Tim Barringer (University of Birmingham): Applying the Arts: Interpreting a Didactic Interior at the South Kensington Museum
- Giles Waterfield: Search for an Identity - The British Municipal Museum 1870-1914
- Volker M Welter (University of Strathclyde):The Return of the Muses - The City as Museion
- Chris Stephens (Tate Gallery): On the Beach: Art, Tourism and the Tate St. Ives
- Hannah Lewi (University of Western Australia): Post Terra Nullius: Inventing a Space to House (Post-)Colonial Memories
- Neil Sharp (University of Sussex): '... the right twigs for an eagle's nest!': Sir Hugh Lane's Schemes for a Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, 1907-1913
- Ian Birksted (School of Architecture, UEL): Metaphor and Rhetoric at La Fondation Maeght
- Peter Wilson (Tate Gallery): Tate Gallery of Modern Art, Bankside: Masterplan, Property Development, Building Project and New Museum of Modern Art
- Lara Perry (University of York): A Changing View: the National Portrait Gallery in London, 1858-1900
- Charles Saumarez Smith (National Portrait Gallery): In a New Light? The Display of Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery
- Peter Funnell and Honor Clerk (National Portrait Gallery): Tour of the New First Floor Displays at the National Portrait Gallery
- The session containing the last three papers, which will take place on Sunday afternoon, will combine with Session 13 British Portraiture: Structures and Practices