The focus of this week's blog focuses on several reading related to the reinvention of the museum. The four readings were by Tony Bennett, Tammy Gordon, Andrea Witcomb, and the last by Handler and Gable. All four of the reading focused on the modern vision and organization of the museum. The first book, Civic Seeing: Museums and the Organization of Vision, Tony Bennett examines the "visual grammars" associated with art museums displays as from the early modern period. He mentions how John Cotton Dana, the founder of the Newark Museum, had envisioned a new museum that would escape the model of the European, and American museums, his museum would not be a warehouse nor storage for temples of dead gods. Dana argued that they should be Institutes of Visual Instruction. Bennett research shows that earlier museums were divisions of class and that the modern museum would be visual. He does a good job in contrasting his argument. In Private History in Public, Tammy Gordon investigates the various types of historical display in exhibits, commerce and the community. She explains the different types of exhibits such as; community, entrepreneurial, vernacular and academic exhibit. Tammy looks at the funding, staff and other statistics that enlighten the reader. The book is loaded with pictures and charts analyzing the history and function of these various types of historic exhibitions. She mentions how this exhibits and museums that display them have become smaller in size. She ties all of them together and explains how they impact the global economy. This was a very informative look into public history and modern issues of exhibition display.
After reading Andrea Witcomb, Re-Imagining the Museum: Beyond the Mausoleum, looks at how the museum has changed its approach from earlier museums. She looks at the cultural criticism of past museums and the radical break from the past practices. She uses Carol Duncan analysis of art museums to support her belief that most of the earlier offerings were conveyed through the medium of ideology, which evokes the change from monarchical gallery to the "public museum." Witcomb applies Foucaldian approaches and analysis to her argument. this densely packed essay takes the reader to the modern technological advancement museums had moved toward. Demonstrating how these changes impacted museums displays such as touch screens, which help displacement of objects in the museum setting.
The last article The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg, Richard Handler and Eric Gable investigate the "historical truth" at Colonial Williamsburg. They look at the role that public historians played and how more in more recent decades criticism by a new generation of social historians have dismissed previous assertions of Colonial Williamsburg. They studied how the information influenced the viewer by what they see and hear within this old museum. This book looks in-depth at revisionism, entertainment and education. Handler and Gable do a good job in bringing out the main issues.
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