Jade products that imitate ancient Chinese art samples are a special kind of objects that, in their form and decor, are close to or likened to more ancient works of arts and crafts. The article explores the artistic form and characteristic features of imitations of ancient jade products of the Qing era, presented in the collections of Russian museums and the Palace Museum of China. The object of the study are objects of Chinese art of jade carving, which (...) are in the collection of the Palace Museum (Beijing), the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Peter the Great (Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg) and the State Museum of Oriental Art (Moscow), where the use of imitations of ancient objects was discovered. Artistic analysis of jade imitations allows us to conclude that the works of the Qing era were more complex and diverse in form, decor and carving techniques compared to Han products, while the craftsmen, although they managed to preserve the classical sophistication of objects, lost the severity and solemnity of Han jade. As well as the art history analysis of the works, one can see that the forms and decors of jade objects are the product of aesthetic consciousness. The novelty of this study lies in the fact that the varieties and features of imitations of ancient jade during the Qing Dynasty are summarized, and the huohuan technique in jade processing is confirmed. This may be of interest to researchers in related scientific fields. (shrink)

Focused on the material practices of making insect specimens, I explore how shifting concepts of potential are intricately crafted on the lab bench. Different types of time—from personal histories to imagined futures—are created and entangled as butterflies are made into specimens. Transforming a butterfly into a scientific tool does not merely transform the butterfly, I suggest, but also reciprocally folds back to transform the scientist who makes it. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with scientists in the labs and workrooms at the (...) Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, California, I follow butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) as they are collected, euthanized, pinned, genetically sampled for rewilding projects, such as reviving a Californian sand dune ecology, and frozen in biobanks for as-yet-unknown future uses. Through a comparative study of practices at these two sites, I examine how a butterfly can contain multiple types of potential: manifesting its inherent potential as it transforms from caterpillar to butterfly, the plasticity of the butterfly body as it is crafted into a scientific specimen, and the potential of that specimen to be used as a site for extracting genomic data. Perceptions of time, salvation, loss, and care emerge as specimens are prepared, sampled, and reimagined as solutions for recreating lost ecologies. (shrink)

This paper explores the process from museumization to decolonization through an examination of a Haida eagle mask currently on display in the Exploring Medicine gallery at the Science Museum in London. While elements of this discussion are well developed in some disciplines, such as Indigenous studies, anthropology and museum and heritage studies, this paper approaches the topic through the history of science, where decolonization and global perspectives are still gaining momentum. The aim therefore is to offer some opening perspectives and (...) methods on how historians of science can use the ideas and approaches relating to decolonization in other fields, and apply them constructively to the history of science, particularly in museum settings. Decolonization is a complicated process and the focus of this paper is squarely on the preliminary steps of its implementation. To understand this process fully, the paper will recontextualize the Indigenous history of the Haida eagle mask at the Science Museum through a careful reconstruction of its provenance record. Through this process it will expose the politics of erasure and hidden voices in museum collections. (shrink)

How can we rethink anthropology beyond itself? In this book, twenty-one artists, anthropologists, and curators grapple with how anthropology has been formulated, thought, and practised 'elsewhere' and 'otherwise'. They do so by unfolding ethnographic case studies from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland - and through conversations that expand these geographies and genealogies of contemporary exhibition making. This collection considers where and how anthropology is troubled, mobilised, and rendered meaningful. 'Across Anthropology' charts new ground by analysing the convergences (...) of museums, curatorial practice, and Europe's reckoning with its colonial legacies. Situated amid resurgent debates on nationalism and identity politics, this book addresses scholars and practitioners in fields spanning the arts, social sciences, humanities, and curatorial studies."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This article analyses how samples of pathological anatomies were transformed into collectible objects in 19th-century Mexico, revealing a process that involved multiple locations and the mixture of the practices of physicians, anthropologists, and amateur collectors. Historiography has focused on the Museo de Anatomía Patológica (Museum of Pathological Anatomy), an institution devoted to the training of medical students created in 1853 at the Escuela Nacional de Medicina (National School of Medicine) in Mexico City. Archival evidence shows that medical collections existed (...) far beyond this space; namely, in private collections and museums organized in the provinces by local physicians whose existence was overshadowed by the metropolitan institutions. As this article discusses, anatomical specimens connected these two circles around the question of how to define “Mexican pathologies.” Through an examination of the collections held at the Museum of Pathological Anatomy and the Museo Michoacano in Morelia in western Mexico, this article analyses those debates in a context where this evidence was also used to highlight the differences between Mexicans, Europeans, and people of indigenous ancestry. Whereas this conceptualization embodied the way in which diseases differentially affected the indigenous, mestizo, and Mexican peoples, for doctors in the provinces, “Mexican pathologies” also referred to anatomical signs of abnormalities or primitiveness in the indigenous population. Tracing the professional career of Dr. Nicolás León (1859–1929), a well-known collector and physical anthropologist, the paper describes the geography of the exchanges of anatomical specimens and the complex relationships that emerged among actors in the Mexican provinces and the capital as they sought to identify pathologies associated mainly with the local native population. In addition, it shows that the production and circulation of specimens of pathological anatomy were connected to a wider circle of providers that extended far beyond medical museums and experts in medicine, and who exhibited these Mexican pathologies as part of the—almost always unfinished—forging of the national. (shrink)

The outburst of antiracist protests in the USA in 2020 demonstrates how deeply this society’s present-day problems are rooted in its past. From this perspective, a study of the cultural memory of the time of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, the key moment in the contemporary American nation formation, is especially relevant and important. The cultural frontier between the North and the South that had appeared as an outcome of differences in US history has not disappeared up (...) to now. By example of the complexity and inconsistency of the historical memory of the Civil War, slavery, and its abolition in the USA manifested in their visual representations, the article documents how through collective memory, history does not just invade modernity but is present in it, particularly in the form of memorials, monuments, museum expositions, and therefore determines the nation’s modernity to a large degree. (shrink)

The stage-like “exhibitionary space,” which members of the public visit, has received more scholarly scrutiny than the pedagogical and curatorial activities that take place in the back rooms of museums. This essay draws attention to the behind-the-scenes places in university museums as a pedagogic site where students learn through the close examination of artefacts. It addresses the social context of learning through the study of incomplete objects, which may involve handling them. This process of using artefacts to engage (...) with different groups of people (collectors, curators, teaching staff and students) contributes to the physical and intellectual development of academic disciplines. It enhances the museum's institutional mission and survival as an incorporated body that is embedded in a greater whole, the university itself. The Ashmolean Museum, in the University of Oxford, and the Balfourian and Sibbaldian Museums, in the University of Edinburgh, were founded in the seventeenth century. But whereas the Ashmolean survived as an institution, the first Edinburgh collections did not. These historical antecedents serve as a backdrop to a discussion of how one particular example, the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (CUMAA), trains new generations of learners to evaluate empirical evidence and by working with different communities of users—students and the wider public—it ensures its survival. (shrink)

Keywords are essential to the searchability and therefore discoverability of museum and archival collections in the modern world. Without them, the collection management systems (CMS) and online collections these cultural organisations rely on to record, organise, and make their collections accessible, do not operate efficiently. However, generating these keywords manually is time consuming for these already resource strapped organisations. Artificial intelligence (AI), particularly generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs), could hold the key to generating, even automating, (...) this key data and as such be considered a co-creative add-on. This study contributes to the literature by introducing the use of Meta’s open-source LLM, Llama, to generate keywords from curator/archivist written descriptions of museum and archival collection items. Our findings suggest that these technologies add significant value compared to current manual methods for keyword generation. In particular, we find that through using carefully crafted prompts, successful keyword augmentations could be established making museum and archival collections much more accessible to wider and more diverse audiences. However, the results also showed that generative AI has biases (e.g., hallucinations, over generalisations, outdated language), though the frequency of occurrence was not as high as general perception may insist. Hence, we also discuss mitigation strategies to address these and how cultural institutions can recognise the risks and errors while getting the most from the systems. Finally, we discuss options to achieve structured results which allow easier ingestion of data back into CMS. Ultimately, LLMs hold significant potential to enhance accessibility to museum and archival collections, yet they are not without imperfection as we extensively discuss. (shrink)

Centered on the collection of pre-conquest antiquities formed by Miguel Garcés, a Puno landowner and antiquary, this article studies the creole antiquarian landscape of the Southern Andes over the late 1800s and early 1900s. Historians have commonly taken the fact that many of the area's private collections were later sold to museums abroad as a testament to this antiquarian landscape's fragility and precariousness. This article argues that the collections' very volatility, dissolution, and mobility also, somewhat paradoxically, contributed (...) to their centrality. Indeed, many of these collections from “provincial” Peruvian and Bolivian localities would leave a decisive mark on the period's most visible museums of Americana in metropolitan centers—by their sheer scale and number, but also through their composition, prestige, and aesthetic appeal. The article thus contributes to an ongoing rethinking of the histories of anthropology and archaeology more broadly—by making visible Hispanic American contributions and the ways in which they were subsumed by, and constitutive of, the very “core” of these fields. The Southern Andes, the article holds, ought to be seen in many ways as a center, not a periphery, of Americanist learning, collecting, and display. (shrink)

Purpose of the essay is to outline the theoretical roots of Ricci’s museum and publishing policies, inscribed within a visual disclosure plan of our archaeological artistic heritage identified as the pivot on which to build a collective identity of our nation at the dawn of its unification. These policies are closely linked to Ricci’s conception of art, recognized by himself as the formal expression of a – both individual and collective – historical feeling, finding its immediate grip on the public (...) in the optical vividness of its representational form. This conception, however, finds its aesthetic-anthropological foundation in a book belonging to Ricci’s early production: “The art of children”. (shrink)

The Vrolik ethnographical collection consisted of roughly 300 skulls, mummified heads, skeletons, pelvises, wet-preserved preparations, and plaster models, collected by Gerard Vrolik (1775–1859) and his son Willem (1801–1863). Most prominent in this collection were the skulls, of which 177 remain in the collection of present-day Museum Vrolik. These skulls—a troubling heritage of colonialism and scientific racism—are the central subjects of this paper, which considers the changing meanings and values of these skulls for racial science over approximately 160 years, between ± (...) 1800 and 1960. These shifting meanings are analysed using the skulls themselves as primary sources, including the labels, numbers and handwriting present on them or their stands. Central topics addressed will be matters of classification, hierarchy, scientific bias, and disciplinary development of racial anthropology from the study and collection of idealized national types to a quantitative craniometry of populations. This paper demonstrates that during 160 years of study of this same set of crania, the skulls of white European origin gradually lost racial relevance and were increasingly normalized, whereas the skulls of dark-skinned people of African descent continued to be categorized in a typological racial scheme and as such were increasingly othered. (shrink)

The protection of cultural relics has always been an important issue in the field of museums and archaeology. With the development of Internet of Things technology, the security system of the museum is more intelligent and integrated. In order for the museum display system to keep up with the intelligent age, this article mainly studies the research and realization of the museum showcase system based on the Internet of Things technology in a smart environment. Before the start of the (...) experiment, we developed the overall design of the system, including three functional modules: temperature module, illumination module, and monitoring module. The experiment is done mainly for system testing. The performance test of the sensor module needs to sample the temperature and humidity sensor to verify the accuracy of the temperature and humidity signal collected in the instrument circuit. The light information collection test uses the ADC sampling inside the CC2530 to obtain the required data and judges whether these temperature, humidity, and light intensity values exceed the preset values. The serial port needs to be initialized to carry out data communication and transmission normally. After the receiving end finishes receiving, the sending end will clear the data buffer to prepare for the next data transmission. The experimental data show that the error between the predicted value and measured value of the temperature system is about 3°C, which is within the allowable error range of the experiment. The results show that the system has perfect functions, is safe and reliable, meets the expected requirements, and has good practicability. (shrink)

Many millions of geological specimens are contained in geological museums throughout the world. These collections, some of which date back to the sixteenth century, constitute a rich resource for historians of the geological sciences. The utilization of this resource has been uneven, due to a number of factors, including the background of the researcher, and the state of the collections. In the past two decades major strides have been made in the documentation of collections held in (...) British museums, and compendia, including those for collections in other countries, are now available. Geological collections provide quality primary source material, and can shed light on a range of interesting topics including the nature and scope of geological travels, the often complex relationships between geologists and collectors, and the rationale behind the formulation of geological theories by earlier geologists. (shrink)

The astrolabe is an instrument designed to measure the altitude of celestial bodies in order to tell time by day or by night. An astrolabe in the Royal Ontario Museum’s collections was acquired at auction in 1988. According to the auction catalogue, it was made in Morocco, dated 1845. Years later, in preparation for a university course on the history of science, this writer’s scrutiny of the astrolabe’s inscribed features and physical condition suggested that it was a forgery. The (...) paper explains the reasoning behind the judgement of falsehood. (shrink)

This article examines the question of how can museum professionals and the interested public resolve the competing claims of traditional ownership and continuing scientific research in relation to museum collections.

The actual and potential uses of holograms in museum displays, and the philosophy of knowledge and progress that they represent. Magazine journalists, museum curators, and historians sometimes face similar challenges in making topics or technologies relevant to wider audiences. To varying degrees, they must justify the significance of their subjects of study by identifying a newsworthy slant, a pedagogical role, or an analytical purpose. This chasse au trésor may skew historical story telling itself. In science and technology studies, the problem (...) potentially is worst for those subjects that do not retain an enduring capacity for spectacle or do not readily conform to templates of progress or economic importance. The case of holography is an excellent illustration of these points. An unusually wide-ranging subject, holography has attracted competing interpretations of intellectual novelty, technological application, and cultural significance. This paper examines the history of museum collections and exhibits of holography from the explosion of interest in the technique in 1964 to the end of the twentieth century. I argue that holography presents a particular challenge to museum collections and to popular representations of the history of science and technology. (shrink)

The Deutsches Museum in Munich has an extensive collection of calculating devices. The main collection consists of mechanical slide rules from various manufacturers from the years 1870–1970. This includes a large number of special slide rules from technical fields, which formed the starting point for a research project at the museum. The article explores the professional context of selected objects which were used in scientific management, brewing and shipbuilding. Against this background, technical, economic and social factors promoting or inhibiting the (...) integration of mathematical methods in the respective fields of work are identified. Finally, the examples are used to discuss the role of mathematics in the transformation of technical trades and professions during the period of high industrialization. (shrink)

A development in anthropological theory, characterized as the 'moral turn', is gaining popularity and should be carefully considered. In examining the context, arguments, and discourse that surrounds this trend, this volume reconceptualizes the discipline of anthropology in a radical way. Contributions from anthropologists from around the world from different theoretical traditions and with expertise in a multiplicity of ethnographic areas makes this collection a provocative contribution to larger discussions not only in anthropology but the social sciences more broadly.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Museums in Transition:Thoughts from an EmpiricistSean UlmerIn March 2005 Daniel Siedell, curator of the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, approached me with an invitation to participate in a symposium for the Journal of Aesthetic Education that he was guest editing. He said that the symposium would be dedicated to curatorial and educational issues and suggested that each of the (...) contributors could use David Carrier's forthcoming book as a starting point for their essays. At that time, I did not know of Carrier's thoughts but had a number of thoughts myself on issues related to curatorial and educational strategies within the museum setting. My experience in a variety of positions in three—now four—institutions had provided me with a number of perspectives about different facets of the museum and its curatorial and educational missions.In Carrier's book, Museum Skepticism, released in May 2006, the author posits a number of thought-provoking observations regarding the birth, evolution, and decline of the museum. Tracing this development from the French Revolution and the opening of the Louvre, through the Isabel Stewart Gardner Museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Albert Barnes's collection and foundation/museum, and finally the J. Paul Getty Museum, Carrier looks at specific examples to support claims he makes in his intriguing opening and concluding chapters. While there are too many worthwhile observations to explore in great detail here, I will address some of the issues that piqued my interest, coming at the question from a different point of view, that of a working museum professional.Let me begin by stating that I am no theorist. Instead, I am an unapologetic pragmatist.1 My entire career has been shaped by actual work within a museum, seeing the institution—or "organism" as I usually refer to it—from a number of different vantage points.2 These varied experiences have given me the opportunity to see the museum—at least a Kunsthalle, two university museums, and a public museum—from several different vantage points. [End Page 4]In his introductory chapter, Carrier asks his primary question: "What is it like to lead the life of a work of art?"3 This is a very interesting question, and one with which many of us rarely consider in our day-to-day work within the museum's walls. In order to answer the question fully, Carrier suggests that "we need to understand museums."4 Indeed. In actuality, museums (and there are many different types) are just one component that must be considered. For a full consideration of the life of the work of art, one must start with the artist. What were his or her motivations? What was he or she trying to accomplish with the work? How was it first shown? In a gallery? In a museum show? How did the artist intend the work to be shown? What was the role of the patron or commissioner, if there was one? We know that the Catholic Church was an important originator of a number of great works of art and many were destined for church interiors, and some still are in situ. One cannot deny, however, that many of the world's great works of art ("great" simply deemed so by consensus) have found their way into museums. Museums are much more complex beasts than Carrier—or anyone for that matter—can cover within the confines of a single, publishable book. So many factors must be considered, especially when considering today's museums, as they continue to evolve and grow: the role of the collector, the patron, the board, the director, the curator, the education staff, the guards, and the public, to name just a few individuals who require consideration when analyzing museums. Such an interesting mixture of different individuals, each with a unique perspective (and agenda), coming together in one place makes for this complexity. And while the author uses this question of the life of a work of art as a starting point, he finds in the progress of the text a number of other stimulating and thoughtful observations. There is much more contained within... (shrink)

History in times of crisis is practical: future action depends on historical framing. Moving beyond “human scales” to include the evolutionary and the geological, and beyond humans to include other species, demands different approaches and new “archives” like ice-cores. This paper considers history in the Long Now, and particularly how museums and big public arts institutions develop new sorts of history through practical story-telling, taking seriously the notion that “the central role of museums [is] both an expression of (...) cultural identity and … a powerful force for human development and education.” The museum has a particular value as “slow media”, deepening news stories in times of rapid change. The new epoch of Earth, the Anthropocene, where humans have become a geological force, poses challenges for exhibitions, but also reshapes museums themselves. Crucial to managing stories, collections and objects in Anthropocene times is the capacity to change course, to remain open to new developments, using performances, events and “pop-up” exhibitions alongside traditional museum offerings. New Museology regards stories as the fundamental unit of museums. Thus, the curation of stories is central work. No longer are museums defined solely by objects: the artistic and the ephemeral are all part of story-telling. (shrink)

The technological singularity is popularly envisioned as a point in time when (a) an explosion of growth in artificial intelligence (AI) leads to machines becoming smarter than humans in every capacity, even gaining consciousness in the process; or (b) humans become so integrated with AI that we could no longer be called human in the traditional sense. This article argues that the technological singularity does not represent a point in time but a process in the ongoing construction of a collective (...) consciousness. Innovations from the earliest graphic representations to the present reduced the time it took to transmit information, reducing the cognitive space between individuals. The steady pace of innovations ultimately led to the communications satellite, fast-tracking this collective consciousness. The development of AI in the late 1960s has been the latest innovation in this process, increasing the speed of information while allowing individuals to shape events as they happen. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.1 (2003) 107-119 [Access article in PDF] Museum as Process Carol S. Jeffers Introduction Today's art museums are committed to completing major expansion and renovation projects, and vigorously carrying out their stated missions. 1 These missions typically are concerned with processes of acquisition, preservation, exhibition, and education. The National Gallery of Art, for example, is dedicated to "preserving, collecting, exhibiting, and fostering the (...) understanding of works of art." 2 Similarly, the Getty Museum at the J. Paul Getty Center seeks to "delight, inspire, and educate the public by acquiring, conserving, studying, exhibiting, and interpreting works of art." 3 Such processes are strategic, of course, and give direction and purpose to the range of programs and services offered by these institutions. Ensuring that visitors are surrounded by works of art, "at the highest quality," these processes also give rise to a particular view of the museum as an "object of reflection, contemplation, and discussion." 4Although unstated, I shall argue that art museums typically have other missions that are actively, if insidiously implemented through processes of representation (re-presentation), socialization, institutionalization, and commodification.The museum functions as a "socializing institution," that both represents and presents cultural assumptions, as well as social and aesthetic values to young and old alike. 5 These processes succeed in establishing an "ideology of aesthetic autonomy — the compartmental conception of fine art that segregates it to the separate realm of the museum." 6 Simultaneously, they present "ideology in material form." 7 The museum itself is a representation that tends to take on an independent and ultimately self-reflecting existence. In a Debordian view, "it is a spectacle, which, in its generality, is a concrete inversion of life, and as such, the autonomous movement of 8 [End Page 107] non-life." Through processes of representation and commodification, the spectacular museum is constructed as a frame that influences the public perception of art and society. Moreover, this ideological frame influences how the public experiences constructs of time and place, and how it comes to know about art in relation to the real world.Today's thriving art museums — and the various processes that deliver both their overt and covert missions — are likely to have a greater impact on society than ever before. With such potential, it seems especially important at this juncture to examine critically the art museum as process; to deconstruct that which has been "constructed as a symbol in Western society since the Renaissance." 9 In undertaking such an examination, then, the first task is to describe current museum impact on the public. Of special concern are questions about what the museum represents to its visitors, particularly to young students and teachers, and how these representations shape constructions of knowledge, conceptions of art, and roles for visitors and artists. Contemporary representations themselves raise questions about the historical context in which they originated, developed, and were carried forward. As a second task, then, this essay will present a historical-critical analysis that integrates several theoretical perspectives on the origins, development, and implications of the Western museum and its various processes. Next, I will consider the possibility and implications of visitor impact on museum processes. This last section includes examples of alternative museum approaches whose mission is implemented through active visitor participation in processes of conversation and community. Collecting and Exhibiting: The Museum as Sacred Grove The museum as a symbol in Western society is apparently recognized and understood as such, even by its youngest members. Children in the United States, Canada, and France, for example, can offer definitions of an art or other museum, and know how to "act and react" within one, even though they may have had extremely limited ornoprior museum experiences. 10 To these children, a museum is a venerable, quiet place, "like the library." 11 When asked, "what is a museum?" children typically respond with: "a place to collect things," or "a big place where lots of people go" to see "old stuff" and "lots of pictures." 12 In general, children seem to view museums as sites for exposition, and as repositories for... (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

Although museums of all kinds continue to proliferate, they have lost the capacity to generate big ideas that characterize epistemic shifts, such as evolution, the labour theory of value, or relativity. They have become mere echo chambers for ideas proposed elsewhere. How might museums regain their capacity to generate big ideas? The development of a Tangible Turn in scholarly thinking is leading to a reinvigoration of knowledge claims derived from material things. Museums are well placed to participate (...) in such a reinvigoration, and in some instances – notably in the natural sciences – already are. Yet to do so they must overcome the taxonomic and systematic divisions that in the nineteenth century stimulated but now inhibit creative thinking. How can disciplinary ossification associated with collection definition be overcome? Two possible models are artists' interventions and arrangement according to philosophical principles, yet neither is sufficient. Curatorial scholars should acknowledge the physical and cultural instability of tangible things, and work with these properties to combine things in revelatory ways, eschewing stable categories. This can be accomplished most effectively in museums associated with universities through collaboration among the scholarly staffs of university collections and with university faculty. (shrink)

The only institution of culture in Ukraine, in which, based on the collected unique materials, the ideological principles and peculiarities of the doctrine and cult of world religions, traditional for the Ukrainian territories of the Christian denominations, and the activities of various religious organizations in our time are reproduced. Since the foundation of the Museum in 1973, its places of worship occupy cult objects, artistic works and religious subjects.

Olfactory heritage is an aspect of cultural heritage concerning the smells that are meaningful to a community due to their connections with significant places, practices, objects or traditions. Knowledge in this field is produced at the intersection of history, heritage science, chemistry, archaeology, anthropology, art history, sensory science, olfactory museology, sensory geography and other domains. Drawing on perspectives from system dynamics, an approach which focuses on how parts of a system and their relationships result in the collective behaviours of the (...) system, we will outline a series of practices relevant to this field and identify the elements, materials and competences involved, as well as the connections and interactions. While research in olfactory heritage is currently growing, much of the knowledge that could advance our understanding of this field is still being developed within disciplinary boundaries, leading to little integration of the knowledge and methods and limited interdisciplinary interpretation of findings. In the first part, we review the methodologies for identifying, researching and preserving olfactory heritage, highlighting methodological opportunities and challenges from diverse perspectives like smellscape research, odour nuisance management or heritage science. In the second part, we review the presentation and communication of olfactory heritage in museums and other heritage spaces, outlining the value of presenting scents to wide audiences for interpretation and engagement purposes. Finally, we discuss challenges associated with historical scent reconstruction, and discuss future directions for the field, such as the potential of mining large digital collections for olfactory data. (shrink)

The advent of new media interactions has not only transformed the way museums curate and present cultural heritage but has also significantly influenced the reconstruction of religious memory and identity. Digital technologies enable immersive engagement with sacred artifacts, texts, and narratives, fostering deeper emotional and intellectual connections between visitors and religious traditions. By integrating interactive media into museum exhibitions, institutions can enhance the spiritual resonance of religious heritage, providing visitors with a participatory experience that strengthens their connection to sacred (...) history, theological concepts, and collective identity. This study explores the theoretical foundations of _collective religious memory_ and _spiritual identity formation_ in the context of digital museum design. By constructing an audience activity model and a hierarchical framework for narrative and interactive design, the research examines how digital storytelling, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) enhance the experiential and educational value of religious exhibitions. Strategies for digital museum design are proposed, including immersive contextual atmospheres that allow visitors to engage with religious narratives in a deeply personal and contemplative manner. The integration of mirrored storytelling and interactive theological discourse fosters a heightened sense of spiritual connection and participation, reinforcing both individual and communal religious identity. Additionally, intelligent digital memory systems facilitate personalized engagement with religious texts, artifacts, and rituals, creating an adaptive learning environment that strengthens both cognitive and emotional understanding of religious traditions. By bridging the gap between traditional religious experience and modern technological advancements, this study highlights how digital museums serve as contemporary spaces for the preservation, reinterpretation, and transmission of sacred memory. It argues that new media interactions not only enhance the accessibility of religious heritage but also provide innovative pathways for engaging with theological discourse, fostering interfaith dialogue, and deepening spiritual reflection. Future research should further explore the role of digital museum spaces in shaping contemporary religious consciousness and their potential for sustaining and revitalizing sacred traditions in an increasingly digitalized world. (shrink)

ArgumentThis text is a reflection on the fate of a special kind of scientific object - anatomy collections - and their place in contemporary times. Though the phenomenon of keeping and displaying such collections is generally dying out, those specimens which survive continue to puzzle and fascinate us. To understand the current status of such collections, and the nostalgia evoked by the specimens within them, I argue, we should approach them as modern ruins. This allows us to (...) think of them as places of absence, pointing to unfinished lives and unfinished scientific projects. The paper begins with the story of a preserved human face from the Francis I. Rainer anatomical-anthropological collection (Bucharest), and continues by discussing the fate of that collection, and of anatomy collections more widely. Ultimately, the paper asks, what is it that we want to preserve: specimens, practices, or research philosophies? (shrink)

The European bison is one of the last remnants of the megafauna that once roamed through Europe. By the early modern period, it had already disappeared from most of its former range and had become a coveted natural curiosity as well as been designated as royal game. In the 18th century, the last population of lowland European bison surviving in the Białowieża Forest became an object of study for naturalists. When the forest became a part of the Russian Empire during (...) the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was the Russian Imperial family's attention to the species that ensured its survival. In the same period, the European bison was of the utmost importance to the scientific community—as a research subject (on the taxonomic position of the species, its relation to extinct Bovidae, etc.) and as a museum exhibit (to attract audiences interested in seeing the largest European mammal). Obtaining such a specimen demanded the scientific community's adept maneuvering through diplomatic and bureaucratic channels and depended on the Russian monarch's goodwill.The tsar's permission was only a start, as naturalists themselves had to organize hunts, process the pelt and bones, and deliver them to museums. Despite the considerable organizational and logistical difficulties, by the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many museums were displaying the European bison, which succeeded in making the species well known to the wider public. In 1919, the last wild Białowieża bison was killed, but the popularity of this species helped the reintroduction of the animal a decade later. Today, the historical specimens are a source of samples for both genetic and molecular research. (shrink)

This paper explores the use of new scientific techniques to examine collections of historic scientific apparatus and other technological artefacts. One project under discussion uses interferometry to examine the history of lens development, while another uses X-ray fluorescence to discover the kinds of materials used to make early mathematical and astronomical instruments. These methods lead to surprising findings: instruments turn out to be fake, and lens makers turn out to have been adept at solving the riddle of aperture. Although (...) exciting, in some ways this is neither novel nor particularly unusual. After all, lab techniques have been used in art and archaeological collections for a very long time. In fact, scientific instruments themselves have been examined in this way since at least the 1950s. What, then, is special about the use of new instruments to examine old instruments? We argue that the answer has less to do with measuring historical innovation or establishing priority, and more to do with networks of craft know-how that, typically, have left no other historical traces than those embodied in surviving instruments themselves. We show, in particular, how collections of objects can be mobilised within wider histories of knowledge, placing instruments within a dynamic interplay of craft knowledge, expertise, labour, commerce, and material exchange, over the longue durée. Finally, we suggest that these kinds of lab analyses can be given an extra dimension through the use of computational modelling, and we introduce the “Tools of Knowledge” project, which is designed to bring together XRF with techniques from the digital humanities, in order to tell a new story about the development of scientific instruments from the 16th to the 20th century. (shrink)

This article explores the 2020 Turkish Netflix series Bir Başkadır (Ethos) written and directed by Berkun Oya about contemporary Turkey through its objects. With objects surge memories, which are both personal and collective. From the charged objects that convey private attachments, traumas, and histories to ordinary household trinkets and finally archival audiovisual material, this series assumes the status of museum in its drive to carefully exhibit the material world on screen. As the Turkish title of the series indicates, these objects (...) are “bir başkadır”: one of a kind. Through themes and practices of lost innocence, counter-archives, and archiveology, I sift through the quotidian objects, miniatures, old photos, souvenirs, and analogue film footage re-presented and re-collected in this series with an eye to their new scope and allure. The past and present rest adjacent to one another in the mise-en-scène of this series. In engagement with the philosophical writings of Walter Benjamin on the collector, the archive, and memory, Andreas Huyssen's concept of the “museal gaze,” Jennifer Culbert's “counter-archival sensibility,” and finally Catherine Russell's practice of “archiveology,” this article examines how the objects that fashion the on-screen world acquire depth and meaning and the film as museum comes to form. (shrink)

Women educators played an essential role in transforming public museums that had been focused on collections and research into effective educational and informational sites that engaged broad publics. Three significant innovators were Delia Griffin of St. Johnsbury Museum in Vermont who emphasized hands-on learning, Anna Billings Gallup who shaped a distinctive model museum for children in Brooklyn and Laura Bragg of the Charleston Museum who established strong collaboration with the local public schools. Joining museum curatorial staffs and professional (...) associations that were largely male, these women educators and their peers typically provided pedagogical insights and teaching skills that enabled them to work effectively with school systems, teachers, pupils and parents. Genuinely interested in natural science, they shaped careers which included opportunities to engage with science, provided a considerable degree of autonomy and enabled them to experiment with hands-on learning. They built networks of museum educators and influenced the young American Association of Museums. Women museum educators created a bridge between semi-public natural history establishments for collection, preservation and scientific research and an active audience of teachers, pupils, visitors and patrons. Their efforts transformed museums into sites for education and broad public access to science in the early 20th century. (shrink)

_Purpose._ This article is aimed at identifying the cultural-anthropological limits of the applicability of strong constructivism in social cognition. _Theoretical basis._ The study of epistemic cultures, carried out by the modern German philosopher of science Karin Knorr Cetina, gave reasons to rethink the role of cultural anthropology as a methodological basis of strong constructivism not only for scientific cognition, but also for educational practices, and perhaps also for some other social practices. An important role in identifying less successful versions (...) of strong constructivism was played by the concept of fictionalism of the German philosopher Hans Veihinger, the Chilean biologists Humberto Maturán and Francisco Varela, and the German sociologist and philosopher Niklas Luhmann. _Originality._ Strong constructivism has broad prospects for use within cultural anthropology as an identification of the cultural foundations of human nature. Local research and educational practices are defined as a model for the formation of those social characteristics of their participants, which they themselves change through self-improvement. Strong constructivists involve the individual empirical experience of researchers, and also correct the inherited rules of scientific research as elements of research procedures and practices, thanks to which they achieve the creation of a common epistemic culture and the elimination of myths about the isolation of scientific cognition from the world. _Conclusions._ False ways of interpreting strong constructivism as fictionalism and as realism have been revealed. Fictionalism, as a methodology focused on the study of the contents of consciousness, loses the empirical experience of the world. Philosophical realism as positivism in the philosophy of science reduces the significance of scientific discoveries to confirmation of the laws of nature. Karin Knorr Cetina’s proposal to consider constructivism "on its own terms" appears not as a moderate compromise between these extremes, but as the only possible way to adequately reconcile the work of nature and the conscious activity of man. Such coordination takes place primarily in the creation of local epistemic cultures as a collective activity of researchers. (shrink)

I address two related questions. First: what value is there in visiting a museum and becoming acquainted with the objects on display? For art museums the answer seems obvious: we go to experience valuable works of art, and experiencing valuable works of art is itself valuable. In this paper I focus on non-art museums, and while these may house aesthetically valuable objects, that is not their primary purpose, and at least some of the objects they house might not (...) be particularly aesthetically valuable at all. Second: to what ontologicaltypeorcategorydo museum objects belong? Whattypeof item should be featured on an inventory of a museum collection? I distinguish betweentypicalobjects andspecialobjects. While these are different types of object, both, I argue, areabstracta, notconcreta. The answer to the second question, concerning the ontological category of special objects, throws new light on various philosophical questions about museums and their collections, including the question about the value of museum experiences. But it also throws light on important questions concerning the preservation and restoration of museum objects. (shrink)

Don Handelman's groundbreaking work in anthropology is showcased in this collection of his most powerful essays, edited by Matan Shapiro and Jackie Feldman. The book looks at the intellectual and spiritual roots of Handelman's initiation into anthropology; his work on ritual and on "bureaucratic logic"; analyses of cosmology; and innovative essays on Anthropology and Deleuzian thinking. Handelman reconsiders his theory of the forming of form and how this relates to a new theory of the dynamics of time. This will be (...) the definitive collection of articles by one of the most important anthropologists of the late 20th Century. (shrink)

This Reader is an essential resource for students and scholars interested in the anthropology of morality. The collection includes classical and more recent material, carefully chosen to provide a critical and historical overview of an important and developing field. The selections are contextualized with lucid editorial material, including a substantial introduction.

The article examines the processes of individualization in relation to the emergence and existence of various forms of collectivity. It analyzes the complexities of this process, which, while a necessary characteristic of modern society, can lead to atomization, frustration, and loss of meaning in life. Particular attention is paid to the nature of individualization: on one hand, it presupposes the uniqueness of each individual; on the other, it is inextricably linked to an individual’s association with certain collectives and the internalization (...) of supra-individual values. The article asserts that new forms of collectivity are emerging in the modern era that, rather than suppressing individuality, foster creative self-realization. The research explores issues of depersonalization and pseudo-collectivity, as well as the interplay between freedom and responsibility in the context of global digitalization. The author elucidates the dangers associated with the virtualization of personality, the erosion of boundaries between private and public spheres, and the potential for total control over individuals. Contemporary forms of virtual individualization, while creating an illusion of freedom, may in fact lead to a loss of personal individuality. The article further explores the impact of digital technologies on the transformation and evolution of both individual and collective memory, as well as their role in shaping identity. It underscores that digitalization not only offers new opportunities but also poses significant anthropological challenges. Dialogue is examined as a means of resolving conflicts and facilitating both individual and collective self-realization. The author contrasts M.M. Bakhtin’s dialogical approach with J.-P. Sartre’s existentialist interpretation of the relationship between the Self and the Other. It is emphasized that genuine dialogue requires mutual recognition and respect among participants, a shared space for communication, and a willingness to reconsider one’s own position. In conclusion, the study posits that addressing many of the problems generated by modern processes of individualization and collectivization in the age of global digitalization necessitates the creation of conditions conducive to interpersonal, intergroup, and intercultural dialogue. (shrink)

Including an edited transcription of a colloquium on Sander's life and work, this title contains plates selected from the J. Paul Getty Museum's collection. Sander's works exemplify the contradictory nature of early 20th century Germany.

With the worldwide spread of the Internet, human activity has become permeated by digital media, which shapes communication and interaction and speeds up the improvement of the experience and diffusion of museum exhibitions. Contemporary museums must understand their audiences, especially with respect to online preferences and surfing involvement experiences. Museums are changing in an effort to attract young netizens to access and use museum resources. Virtual museums are increasingly using digital exhibitions to preserve and apply their (...) class='Hi'>collections and establishing online community platforms to interact with young people. This study investigates the underlying mechanism of online community characteristics that enhance audiences’ emotional resonance and involvement. Results from a questionnaire survey of Taiwan undergraduate students show that perceived relevance and esteem improve their emotional resonance, which can attract new people and maintain existing relationships within their communities. Following flow theory, maintaining community relationship characteristics increases emotional resonance, which, in turn, enhances user involvement, but we found only small significant effects of emotional resonance on involvement. These findings illuminate the mechanism of the attitudinal relationship building and maintenance for online museum communities and advance the practical contributions of online museum community use and effects. (shrink)

How and to what extent do people take into account the intentions of others? Alessandro Duranti sets out to answer this question, showing that the role of intentions in human interaction is variable across cultures and contexts. Through careful analysis of data collected over three decades in US and Pacific societies, Duranti demonstrates that, in some communities, social actors avoid intentional discourse, focusing on the consequences of actions rather than on their alleged original goals. In other cases, he argues, people (...) do speculate about their own intentions or guess the intentions of others, including in some societies where it was previously assumed they avoid doing so. To account for such variation, Duranti proposes an 'intentional continuum', a concept that draws from phenomenology and the detailed analysis of face-to-face interaction. A combination of new essays and classic re-evaluations, the book draws together findings from anthropology, linguistics and philosophy to offer a penetrating account of the role of intentions in defining human action. (shrink)

Kant's lectures on anthropology capture him at the height of his intellectual power. They are immensely important for advancing our understanding of Kant's conception of anthropology, its development, and the notoriously difficult relationship between it and the critical philosophy. This 2003 collection of essays by some of the leading commentators on Kant offers a systematic account of the philosophical importance of this material that should nevertheless prove of interest to historians of ideas and political theorists. There are two broad approaches (...) adopted: a number of the essays consider the systematic relations of the anthropology to critical philosophy, especially speculative knowledge and ethics. Other essays focus on the anthropology as a major source for the clarification of both the content and development of Kant's work. The volume also serves as an interpretative complement to the translation of the lectures in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Taking Up Space:Museum Exploration in the Twenty-First CenturyTiffany Sutton (bio)Museums have become a crucible for questions of the role that traditional art and art history should play in contemporary art. Friedrich Nietzsche argued in the nineteenth century that museums can be no more than mausoleums for effete (fine) art.1 Over the course of the twentieth century, however, curators dispelled such blanket pessimism by showing that what keeps (...) historical art museums, both comprehensive and modern, "alive" and relevant in the modern art world are the things that curators do with the artworks in their collections.2 In certain cases, I will argue in this article, the focus on artworks and the relationship between them can be rewardingly shifted onto the spatial aspect of the museum. I will try to show what such a shift of focus entails, show that it involves a gestalt shift (in Wittgenstein's terms, the "dawning of an aspect"), and illustrate the limits within which this can arise.3 The foremost of these limiting factors is museum architecture, and I will discuss this to the extent that it determines the limits of what curators can do. How architects do things with museums, however, lies outside the scope of this article.An Art Historical Heuristic Gets a Curatorial MakeoverNineteenth-century art museums typically were vast, labyrinthine, and built to assume the shape of a comprehensive art historical narrative, so they were easy targets for ideologues drawn to vibrant modern artworks and the controversy surrounding them. At the turn of the twentieth century new commercial galleries developed a distinctively modern mode of display in which individual artworks were showcased with plenty of space around them.4 Had existing museums changed their ways to accommodate these developments, the momentum of a new aesthetic of flatness, surface, [End Page 87] and yet purer forms of conceptualism would have been lost. It was not a time for absorption and deflation: new museums, no less monumental and historical but smaller and with fewer volumes, were commissioned to give modern art the appearance of a fresh start.5 The weightless upward mobility of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, modeled in 1945 and opened to the public in 1959, consummated this trend of the first half of the twentieth century and gave it its purest form. What the building spurt revealed was that as art changes, it demands to be reflected in its surroundings, not merely accommodated. That the response was to build new museums rather than new wings suggests the inner workings of the principle—call it "curatorial heuristic one"—that, whereas art history is fluid and simply flows forward with new developments, museums are not of this nature; they can become effete.The curatorial revision of this heuristic was a century in coming. As often happens when emerging movements are yet underdetermined, modernism suppressed in its beginnings the background factor that would seem to entail the end of modern art when finally brought into focus: the very context of display that had once set it apart. Duchamp's Readymades (1913) gave the initial nod (or wink) to the gallery context; it was, however, ignored, as a suppressed punch line, until art history was ready to concede the importance of the context of display—not in the gallery, but in the museum—to a site-specific artwork by Richard Serra: his Splashing and Prop (1968). With the museum's framing context and, concomitantly, the importance of the curator's work conceded, the barrier that had kept lesser masterpieces in the basement (or out of the museum) were removed. Unearthed, these began to circulate, and attention centered on the relation in which they stood to better-known artworks, either as suppressed alternates or as descendants of an artistic lineage. So postmodern sprawl began, with the display of multiple alternative art histories drawing, as modernism had, on available display conventions for periodizing according to internal principles (period, school, genre, style) such that detection of them devolved upon the viewer.When public uses for the new public museums began to diversify (from an historical/educational focus to aesthetic/educational and cultural/political ones), principles for ordering artworks were... (shrink)

Michael Jackson ’s _Lifeworlds_ is a masterful collection of essays, the culmination of a career aimed at understanding the relationship between anthropology and philosophy. Seeking the truths that are found in the interstices between examiner and examined, world and word, and body and mind, and taking inspiration from James, Dewey, Arendt, Husserl, Sartre, Camus, and, especially, Merleau-Ponty, Jackson creates in these chapters a distinctive anthropological pursuit of existential inquiry. More important, he buttresses this philosophical approach with committed empirical research. (...) Traveling from the Kuranko in Sierra Leone to the Maori in New Zealand to the Warlpiri in Australia, Jackson argues that anthropological subjects continually negotiate—imaginatively, practically, and politically—their relations with the forces surrounding them and the resources they find in themselves or in solidarity with significant others. At the same time that they mirror facets of the larger world, they also help shape it. Stitching the themes, peoples, and locales of these essays into a sustained argument for a philosophical anthropology that focuses on the places between, Jackson offers a pragmatic understanding of how people act to make their lives more viable, to grasp the elusive, to counteract external powers, and to turn abstract possibilities into embodied truths. (shrink)

Throughout the twentieth century calls to modernize natural history motivated a range of responses. It was unclear how research in natural history museums would participate in the significant technological and conceptual changes that were occurring in the life sciences. By the 1960s, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, was among the few university-based natural history museums that were able to maintain their specimen collections and support active research. The MVZ therefore provides a (...) window to the modernization of natural history. This paper concentrates on the directorial transitions that occurred at the MVZ between 1965 and 1971. During this period, the MVZ had four directors: Alden H. Miller (Director 1940–1965), an ornithologist; Aldo Starker Leopold (Acting Director 1965–1966), a conservationist and wildlife biologist; Oliver P. Pearson (Director 1966–1971), a physiologist and mammalogist; and David B. Wake (Director 1971–1998), a morphologist, developmental biologist, and herpetologist. The paper explores how a diversity of overlapping modernization strategies, including hiring new faculty, building infrastructure to study live animals, establishing new kinds of collections, and building modern laboratories combined to maintain collections at the MVZ’s core. The paper examines the tensions between the different modernization strategies to inform an analysis of how and why some changes were institutionalized while others were short-lived. By exploring the modernization of collections-based research, this paper emphasizes the importance of collections in the transformation of the life sciences. (shrink)

In this volume, Bilsel argues that the museum has produced a modern decor, an iconic image, which has replaced the lost antique originals, rather than creating an explicitly hypothetical representation of Antiquity.