London & Florence: Arts in Context Collecting the World in London Spring 2018 in London Instructor Dr. Andrew Kennedy
[email protected] Mobile: 07714 380562 Credits Elective course;4 semester credits 2 Course Syllabus Course Description London has dozens of museums, displaying a range of objects from mummies to fans, toys to tropical plants. This course looks at museums not simply as institutions of enlightenment, but as enactments of power – power over the past; over colonised or subjugated peoples; over life, death and disease; over nature. How have museums attempted to classify the world? In doing so, what is the price paid for taking things or living entities out of their original context? We examine questions of repatriation: should museums return objects and human remains in their collections? What is the need to display material artefacts in a digital age? Are there other ways of creating ‘authentic’ experiences? What concession (if any) should museums make to commercialism? Are they for education or entertainment? Is there a middle way between elitism and populism? Course Objectives - To enable students to develop analytical skills which will allow them to explore the meanings of museum displays and architecture. - To enable students to develop a broad knowledge of the historical development of museums and exhibition spaces, and how this has been shaped by social and political forces. - To enable student to begin to form an overview of the development of different categories of museum, and their associated frameworks of interpretation - To enable students to begin to distinguish and evaluate curatorial strategies. - To enable students to develop their research, oral and written skills in order to organise and give expression to museological analysis and reflection.