Open house: Rethinking the ‘public’ museum

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Public ◽  
Public Museum

scholarly journals Legislative regulation of museums activity in the Second Rzechpospolita Polska

2020 ◽  
pp. 38-41
Author(s):  
Nataliia Zakharchyn
Keyword(s):  
Interwar Period ◽  
State Council ◽  
The Public ◽  
Legislative Proposal ◽  
Catalytic Role ◽  
Public Museums ◽  
Draft Bill ◽  
And Control ◽  
Law Making ◽  
Public Museum

The article considers the creation of the legislative basis regarding the museums’ activity in interwar (1918-1939) Poland. Temporary organization of common government authorities in 1918 suggested subordination of museums of interwar Poland to the Ministry of religion andpopular education. It also describes changes in subordination of the museums and some features of law-making process. In April 1918, the Department of Art of the Ministry processed and offered the first project of temporary law on museums. According to the legislative proposal, state politics in the museum industry had to be implementedusing the special museum abstract within Department of Art. In the draft, there were a few types of museum identified: the main ones (national) and regional, educational and special. It was necessary to legislate on determining andidentifying main directions of the activity, to organizationally form the framework of their functioning, for the sake of museum professional work activization, controlling their activity, help with creation of new collections and support of some old ones. It is stated that his fact was understood by the representatives of the organizations that were either connected to museum industry or played a catalytic role in museum reforms in the interwar period, for instance, The Union of Museums of Poland.It was the Union that the draft law “Onthe trusteeship for the public museums” was prepared by. Apart from the draft law, the project of the implementing regulation to the bill regarding establishment and activity of the Museum State Council was adopted. In the article, the process of establishing the draft law is considered. The article reflects the representation of modified law “On the trusteeship for the public museums” in the Parliament of Second Rzechpospolita Polska. In the parliament, the draft bill was considered as a framework, which determines the concept of a public museum. According to the bill, Minister of religion and education implemented the trusteeship and control of the activity of the public museums and approved theirstatutes. The articlealso reviews the aims and tasks of the adopted law and further implementing regulations, particularly, on the establishment of Museum State Council.

A Norman Pit at Pevensey Castle and its Contents

1958 ◽  
Vol 38 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 205-217
Author(s):  
G. C. Dunning
Keyword(s):  
Research Laboratory ◽  
Forest Products ◽  
Short Account ◽  
North West ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Third ◽  
The North ◽  
Deep Pit ◽  
Public Museum ◽  
Made In

During the excavations conducted by Mr. L. F. Salzman, F.S.A., at Pevensey Castle in the winter of 1907–8, a deep pit was found and its filling dug out. The pit (called site VII) was located in the north-west quarter of the interior of the Saxon Shore fort, about 60 ft. south of the fort wall and nearly opposite the third bastion north of the Roman west gate. A short account of the pit was published in the excavation report, but the nature of the pit and the finds from it deserve more detailed study than they have yet received. The finds were divided between the Sussex Archaeological Society's Museum at Lewes and the Public Museum at Hastings; I am greatly indebted to the respective curators, Mr. N. E. S. Norris, F.S.A., and Mr. J. Manwaring Baines, F.S.A., for facilities to examine and make drawings of the objects, and permission to publish them here. Samples taken from the various wooden objects found in the pit were kindly identified by Mr. G. L. Franklin, of the Forest Products Research Laboratory, Princes Risborough, as noted in the descriptions of these objects. Acknowledgements for technical reports on the wattling are made in the text. Mr. Salzman has kindly supplied information and unpublished prints, valuable as a record of the bottom of the pit, of which the negatives are fortunately preserved at Hastings. Mr. Salzman has also read this report and approved of the interpretation placed on his findings. The following description of the pit and its contents is the result of correlating all the information now available.

scholarly journals Europe, Blurred: Migration, Margins and the Museum

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerstin Poehls
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
The European Union ◽  
City Region ◽  
The Public ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Consequent Effect ◽  
Public Museum

More and more museums all over Europe are discovering migration as a topic for exhibitions. These exhibitions on migration question notions of objectivity or of European universalism. This article looks at a broad range of recent exhibitions and museums that address the topic of migration. Taking into consideration their varying scope and institutional context, this text argues that exhibitions on migration tell several stories at once: Firstly, they present stories of migration in a certain city, region or nation, and within a particular period of time. For this purpose, curators make extensive use of maps – with the peculiar effect that these maps blur what seems to be the clear-cut entity of reference of the museum itself or the exhibition. To a stronger degree than other phenomena that turn into museal topics, ’migration’ unveils the constructed character of geographic or political entities such as the nation or the European Union. It shows how, hidden below the norm of settledness, mobilities are and have always been omnipresent in and fundamental for European societies. Secondly and related to this, exhibitions on migration add a new chapter to the meta-narrative of museums: implicitly, they challenge the relevance of the nation - specifically, of both the historical idea that initiated the invention of the public museum (cf. e.g. Bennett 1999) and the political fundament of European integration today. They provoke questions of settledness, citizenship, or contemporary globalisation phenomena that are equally implicitly put on display. The consequent effect is a blurring of the concept of the nationstate. Finally, migration as a museal topic conveys a view on how the institution of the ’museum’ relates to such a fuzzy thing as mobility, thus provoking questions for further research.

scholarly journals The Repatriation of Human Remains in France: 20 Years of (Mal)practice

2020 ◽  
pp. 313-338
Author(s):  
Sophie Vigneron
Keyword(s):  
New Caledonia ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Institutional Practice ◽  
The Public ◽  
Structural Support ◽  
Saartjie Baartman ◽  
Legal Difficulties ◽  
Public Museums ◽  
Public Museum

This article analyses three cases of repatriation of human remains by French public museums in order to critically examine the difficulties in the changing institutional practice. It critically ssesses the statutory and administrative processes that have been used to repatriate human remains and identifies the difficulties that have been and are mostly still encountered. Firstly, it evaluates the public/private conundrum of ownership of human remains in French law, which explains why Parliament had to intervene to facilitate the repatriation of remains in public museum collections, whereas a private society could repatriate the skulls of chief Ataï and his doctor to New Caledonia without legal difficulties. Secondly, it reviews the need for parliamentary intervention for the repatriation of the remains of Saartjie Baartman to South Africa and several Mokomokai to New Zealand. Finally, it criticizes the administrative deadlock that has prevented the development of a repatriation practice that could have b en established after the successful repatriation of the remains of Vamaica Peru to Uruguay. Unfortunately, the process has remained opaque and ineffective, owing to a variety of factors; in particular the ambiguity regarding the role of the Commission scientifique nationale des collections, which is set to be abolished and whose role will be undertaken by the Haut conseil des Musées de France, and a lack of political, financial, and structural support from the Ministry of Culture. Until these shortcomings are addressed and clear criteria for repatriation are drawn up, it is unlikely that France will develop a coherent, transparent, and effective process for the repatriation of human remains.

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