Changing Values in the Art Museum: rethinking communication and learning

The implementation of object-centred learning through the visual arts: Engaging students in creative, problem-based learning

“…Nevertheless, while this a has been about using objects of art in a way which generates thoughtful engagement, enhances skills, and fosters the construction of understandings (and the limits of understandings) in university students, we believe the general approach can have application amongst learners of any age. Museums now often place less emphasis on an authoritative transmission of information and allow more opportunity for the audience's interaction with and interpretation of its artefacts (Alexander & Alexander, 2008;Hooper-Greenhill, 2000). The Do-Not-Touch rule is less strict and children and young students are encouraged to explore, mentally and physically, all the museum and its artefacts have to offer, They are allowed to touch, handle, interpret and evaluate robust artefacts and replicas and consider their contextual meaning (Anderson et al, 2002;Clarke et al, 2002).…”

Instrumental policies: causes, consequences, museums and galleries

“…Such activity has been identified as taking place within the museums sector as a whole (Hooper-Greenhill, 2000;Harrison, 2005) The results of an instrumentalisation of policy are, likewise, dependent upon how the implementation stage is managed within the organisations that are concerned. If instrumentalisation has been consciously adopted through attachment strategies then there is a possibility that the entire focus of the policy sector can become skewed away from the core concerns of the sector itself.…”

The Museum as Information Space: Metadata and Documentation

“…Until recently, museums have worked with taxonomies and classification systems reflecting differences between museum types and academic disciplines, without being fully aware of what such systems excluded (Legêne 2008 The polysemic nature of the object as information carrier has been limited by knowledge documentation systems based on 'flat files' and other systems, linking information to an object but isolating it from other objects and other object files at the same time. The desire to create structured vocabularies through thesauri, taxonomies and classification systems developed in academic disciplines, further limited the possible information value of objects (Bearman 2008;Hooper-Greenhill 2007). As museum professionals gained awareness of the polysemic nature of objects in relation to their own organizational structure and work processes, documentation systems evolved in systems capturing information related to the history of the objects in museum spaces.…”

“…That is, the information carried by an object is diverse and changes over time due to such things as reclassification, becoming part of a temporary exhibition, or changing collections because of object repatriation, war, deaccessioning (disposal, exchange or sale), or other forms of organizational change (Hooper-Greenhill 2007;McClellan 2008). But how deliberate are the choices that museums make about the meaning of their objects; and how did they construct their information system to order and classify their objects as collections grew?…”