Do Museums Still Need Objects?

Conn, Steven

doi:10.9783/9780812201659

Cited by 94 publications

(43 citation statements)

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“…Steven Conn notes that though there are more museums doing more things for more people, "the place of objects in museums has shrunk as people have lost faith in the ability of objects alone to tell stories and convey knowledge." 4 Museums have become less about artifacts and more about art. The contemporary museum is a new arcade for the flâneur .…”

Section: Card#4mentioning

confidence: 99%

Future Museums Now — Augmented Reality Musings

Rhodes

2015

Public Art Dialogue

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Section: Card#4mentioning

confidence: 99%

Future Museums Now — Augmented Reality Musings

Rhodes

2015

Public Art Dialogue

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“…Ironically, with classrooms increasingly relying on two-dimensional PowerPoint â images and recent publications questioning the relationship between museums and objects (Conn 2010), the ground for object-centered teaching seems to have eroded at the very moment that museum collections are being rediscovered by academic anthropologists. Yet, even as some have questioned the relevance of objects in museum settings, the recent "material turn" in anthropology has shown that classrooms and exhibition spaces must engage more rigorously and inventively with the fact that humans interact via material things.…”

Section: New Pedagogical Strategies For Experiencing and Learning Fromentioning

confidence: 99%

Back to the Future?: Emergent Visions for Object‐Based Teaching in and beyond the Classroom

Adams

2015

Museum Anthropology

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This article introduces a special issue of Museum Anthropology devoted to innovative strategies for teaching with objects. Although a century ago anthropology, museums, and objects were intimately entwined, trends in many museology and anthropology courses have drifted toward focusing on ideas and people rather than objects. The contributors to this special issue have cultivated new pedagogical approaches that complement or realign literaturefocused classroom canons that can distance students from the very objects under study. In keeping with recent theoretical approaches to objects that highlight the sensory dimensions of material culture, many of the articles in this special issue examine the challenges and potential rewards when educators foster physical engagement with objects in and beyond the classroom. Taken together, the articles also underscore how object-based teaching can yield new theoretical and practical insights, enhance the social relevance of classroom activities, and facilitate meaningful benefits for local communities. [material culture, praxis, pedagogy, embodied practices, object-based teaching]

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“…We suggest that natural history museums potentially have much to contribute to the construction of authentic science learning experiences within the historical science disciplines because of their long-standing commitment to education, to collecting scientific objects and specimens, and to conducting research with these objects and specimens (cf. Conn, 2010;Livingstone, 2003).…”

Section: Final Remarksmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, museums have a privileged relationship with a number of scientific disciplines because the practices and discourses of those disciplines have historically been intertwined with the collections of objects and specimens housed in the museum (Arnold, 1996;Livingstone, 2003). In particular, much practical work in the historical sciences is dependent on the collections of museums (Conn, 2010). Thus, with respect to expertise as well as access to objects and specimens, museums are in an ideal position to offer practical, object-based education programmes to support and complement school science.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%