museum and knowledge politics

I thought of sending this abstract to the Artefacts meeting in the Museum Boerhaave, Leiden, 25-27 September (this year’s theme is ‘Conceptualizing, Collecting and Presenting Recent Science and Technology’): COLLECTION IMPOSSIBLE: Distributed curatorship as an alternative to centralised acquisitioning Centralised collecting of the artefacts from contemporary science, technology and medical (STM) visual and material culture […]

My impression of the first and only Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST) conference I’ve attended (Malmö in 2008) was quite mixed. The academic quality wasn’t particularly high, there were pretty few theoretically interesting talks, not much surprising stuff, almost no nerds around, no sudden bursts of creativity — and new media were (with […]

The programme for this year’s Universeum meeting (in Padua, 26-29 May) is available here. Universeum has rapidly become a vital organisation for the revival of European university museums. The annual meetings have an important role to play to raise the awareness among university administrations that their museums are not only worth preserving but, even better, worth expanding. Last […]

Last week we put up a computer in the staff kitchen with Twitter as the only application and main page. I call it a Tweet Machine. Over the computer I hung a small sign, urging all staff members to write about everything from philosophical reflections to descriptions of what their packed lunch contained that day: The computer […]

Alain de Botton is an object of dismay to many philosophers because he doesn’t comply with the ritual behaviours of professional philosophy. But for all of us who don’t consider the publication of peer reviewed articles in academic journals as the fundamental purpose of philosophy, his comments on current human affairs are often refreshing and thought provoking. A while ago he suggested, in his […]

I’ve always been pretty tired of identity museums, like the politically correct and historically incorrect National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC. As Edward Rothstein ends his critical analysis of identity museums in The New York Times the other day: The Enlightenment had its limitations, of course. But it also shaped the great […]

A great museum is a laboratory where ideas get tested, not a mausoleum full of dead thoughts and bromides. (Blake Gopnik, “National Portrait Gallery bows to censors, withdraws Wojnarowicz video on gay love”, Washington Post, 30 November 30, 2010; thanks to Judy Chelnick for the link)

A month ago, the Director of the Polish National Museum in Warsaw, Piotr Piotrowski, resigned after the museum’s Board of Trustees had rejected his strategy for the development of the museum. The resignation took place only two years after the Board of Trustees had offered Piotrowski the position on the basis of his proposal for […]

In four earlier posts (# 1 here, #2 here, #3 here, and #4 here), I’ve argued for a more proactive practice with respect to the preservation of the contemporary medical scientific and technological heritage. The posts were provoked by Christian Sichau’s negative attitude (quoted here). There is no space for the new acquisitions, he claimed, and the exhibition curators receive all the museum money anyway. So […]

In three earlier posts (here, here and here), I’ve argued in favour of a more proactive acquisition practice with respect to the contemporary medical scientific and technological heritage. Against some curators who believe we need to restrict acquisitioning (for economic, space etc. reasons), I suggest that we should rather open up the sluice gates for collecting as […]