Universe every single "thing", every phenomenon-be it material or immaterial-had its given place. Science-and scientists-had "only" to discover it all, reveal things and lay them bare. Discovery gained control over the discovered. Objects from newly discovered parts of the world where brought together as representations of the wonders created by God. In the Age of discoveries, objects were gathered and shown in collections of naturalia and artificicalia in the Cabinets of Curiosities or the 'Kunstkammern' of the time (Wagner 1994, p. 24). By showing and studying the material, you could-so they thought-also learn about its origins and contexts. This was the core idea with collections. This early development of museums was intimately associated with the development of the sciences and the arts, since many of the sixteenth and seventeenth century cabinets of Naturalia, Artificialia and Curiosities were assembled by scholars linked to libraries and universities and were used for research and educational purposes. These early cabinets and museumsthat is: exhibitions-were usually arranged according to rational, "prescientific" systems of comparison and resemblance: convenientia, analogia, sympathia, imitatio and aemulatio (Foucault 1991, p. 18-26). Thus objects which had the same colour or just resembled one another in form, were put together in a classification system-and consequently also in the display. At the end of the 17th century a collection on display was at times called An Allegory of the Sense of Sight. However, all these classificatory systems-even with Carl von Linné at the 18th century-were based on the firm belief that our world was created and ruled by God. Man's efforts of exploring, understanding and ordering were only due to "revealing" it all. Beginning with the early Modern era in the 17th century, science was a world of observation and experimentation. It was based on "a system of looks", based on the Cartesian principle of a subject-the observer-being separated from the object-the observed-that is, from nature and the material world. That which was observed, "objectively" and "neutrally", had then to be named, otherwise it could not be interpreted, nor controlled, nor classified or communicated. The separation between 'subject' and 'object' encompassed the problem of objectivity, of seeing and naming. What came first: the thing in itself, or the knowledge/idea of it? One of the philosophical conclutions was that the "thing" (object) doesn't actually exist without its name; the object, with all 51 52 its connotations to human life, was "born" only at the very moment we gave it a name and interpreted it's function. Another result of this process was that the physical "world" around us became separated from "us". Nature, or the "world", was going on out there, and reachable/understandable for us only by naming it in our language, with the aid of which it would be represented. The theory of analogies, resemblances and sympathies between things was gradually replaced by the theory of serial structures...
Some reflections on «the museologicalproject» Firstly, this article provides a very brief survey of the discussion about museology as a «field of research and study», a debate which has been going on among ICOFOM-members for the last twenty to thirty years. ICOFOM was founded in 1976 in answer to demands from the field of museum practice, which changed radically in the 1970s. Since that time the crucial question has been: Is museology a discipline or is it not? What is the object of knowledge and the subject of research in museology?
Museologi är ett ämne som befattar sig med begreppet Förlust i vår kultur, som existentiellt, filosofiskt och praktiskt problem, kopplat till tiden och främst till den materiella verkligheten. Museologin, liksom också museet, ägnar sig åt studium och analys av människans säregna och fåfänga kamp mot nedbrytningen, förgängelsen, förfallet, förruttnelsen, döden. Museologi är en ”kulturarvsvetenskap”, detta tämligen nya begrepp, som numera täcker också andra ”gamla” vetenskaper, eller delar av dem, såsom kulturhistoria, historia, etnologi och arkeologi. Precis som man om historieskrivningen för drygt 100 år sedan frågade sig om det var vetenskap eller konst, och till slut motvilligt erkände den som vetenskap, är det många som idag frågar sig om museologin överhuvudtaget är vetenskap. Och vad skall den vara bra för.
Danse macabre on the museum scene – notes on the decline and fall of the museum idea The museum idea in Europe is closely linked to the concept of the nation state. Now that this concept is losing its dominant role, the role of the museum and its public funding is also being questioned. The crisis in societal credibility is foreshadowed by the real or imminent bankruptcy of museums (specific Danish and Swedish instances are quoted in the text). The battle to regain public confidence and approval is well under way. The scene is set for the danse macabre. Different methods are being chosen. Many museums cling to their traditional functions of preservation and education – and their pedagogical work is most easily accepted, encouraged and subsidized when the space for history teaching in compulsory school is continuously shrinking. Others concentrate on acquiring sponsoring from trade and industry and of course seek support from various foundations. A regrouping of Swedish national collections was suggested as early as 1920 by Gregor Paulsson to better adapt the museum institution to the needs of contemporary society – into a quality museum (for the general public), a study museum (for researchers) and a museum of the present (to serve the need of future orientation). This was a proposal that pointed the way forward and is still relevant.The crisis in the museums is principally political and financial resulting in an institutional lack of resoluteness and uncertainty about purpose and societal legitimacy. To survive it will be necessary to acknowledge the end of the national saga and the reality of cybernations and the Dream World, Museums could find their raison d’être serving as dynamic houses of culture, as Kenneth Hudson suggested in the 1980s. The institutions should accept the museum as medium and think of themselves as process-oriented entities whose job it is to support and inspire their communities and visitors/users. They should obviously adapt to the virtual reality produced in a dynamic digital process where the content is similar to an open oral tradition. The museum should be the cultural storyteller and commentator in its community and tradi- tional museum education should be given up in favour of these new roles. According to Kenneth Hudson the museum should become a club, or perhaps – as Bernard Déloche suggests – a café philosophique. Another possible way forward is such cooperation as that pro- moted in the ABM project where archive, library and museum are amalgamated into a historical workshop. For the e-topia imagined by William Mitchell the paper concludes with conceiving a museum of the future consisting of a physical building supplemented and expanded to a virtual museum.
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