Curating the Great War
Curating the Great War

Author: Paul Cornish

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-08-31

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 1000631206

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Curating the Great War explores the inception and subsequent development of museums of the Great War and the animating spirit which lay behind them. The book approaches museums of the Great War as political entities, some more overtly than others, but all unable to escape from the politics of the war, its profound legacies and its enduring memory. Their changing configurations and content are explored as reflections of the social and political context in which they exist. Curating of the Great War has expanded beyond the walls of museum buildings, seeking public engagement, both direct and digital, and taking in whole landscapes. Recognizing this fact, the book examines these museums as standing at the nexus of historiography, museology, anthropology, archaeology, sociology and politics as well as being a lieux de mémoire. Their multi-vocal nature makes them a compelling subject for research and above all the book highlights that it is in these museums that we see the most complete fusion of the material culture of conflict with its historical, political and experiential context. This book is an essential read for researchers of the reception of the Great War through material culture and museums.

Curating and Re-Curating the American Wars in Vietnam and Iraq
Curating and Re-Curating the American Wars in Vietnam and Iraq

Author: Christine Sylvester

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-03-04

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 0190840560

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We have long saved--and curated--objects from wars to commemorate the war experience. These objects appear at national museums and memorials and are often mentioned in war novels and memoirs. Through them we institutionalize narratives and memories of national identity, as well as international power and purpose. While people interpret war in different ways, and there is no ultimate authority on the experiences of any war, curators of war objects make different choices about what to display or write about, none of which are entirely problematic, good, or accurate. This book asks whose vantage points on war are made available, and where, for public consumption; it also questions whose war experiences are not represented, are minimized, or ignored in ways that advantage contemporary militarism. Christine Sylvester looks at four sites of war memory-the National Museum of American History, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, and selected novels and memoirs of the American wars in Vietnam and Iraq-to consider the way war knowledge is embedded in differing sites of memory and display. While the museum shows war aircraft and a laptop computer used by a journalist covering the American war in Iraq, visitors to the Vietnam Memorial or Arlington Cemetery find more prosaic and civilian items on view, such as baby pictures, slices of birthday cake, or even car keys. In addition, memoirs and novels of these wars tend to curate ghastly horrors of wars as experienced by soldiers or civilians. For Sylvester, these sites of war memory and curation provide ways to understand dispersed war authority and interpretation and to consider which sites invite viewers to revere a war and which reflect personal experiences that show the undersides of these wars. Sylvester shows that scholars, policymakers, and other citizens need to consider different types of situated memory and knowledge in order to fully grasp war, rather than idealize it.

Curating Empire
Curating Empire

Author: Sarah Longair

Publisher: Studies in Imperialism

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9781784993467

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Curating empire explores the diverse roles played by museums and their curators in moulding and representing the British imperial experience. The establishment of museums throughout the British Empire is increasingly recognised as part of the context of imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, both practically and symbolically. Focusing on a range of curators and museums, this collection demonstrates how individuals, their curatorial practices, and intellectual and political agendas influenced the direction of their institutions, the interpretation of material, and the experiences of audiences in a variety of museums across the globe. Taken together, these contributions suggest that museums are not just sites for accessing history but need to be considered as historical sites of significance in themselves. Individual essays examine the work of curators in museums in Britain and the colonies, the historical display and interpretation of empire in Britain, and the establishment of 'museum networks' in the British imperial context. Important themes emerge across the collection, including museums and their meanings in the colonial context; the role of objects and display in the formation of British and colonial identities; museum networks and the movement of objects and ideas in the British Empire. Curating empire sheds new light on the relationship between museums, as repositories for objects and cultural institutions for conveying knowledge, and the politics of culture and the formation of identities throughout the British Empire. Curating empire will be essential reading for scholars and students interested in British history, the history of empire, art history, and the history of museums and collecting.

Art of Memories
Art of Memories

Author: Vincent Antonin Lépinay

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2019-05-14

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0231549563

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Once the home of Catherine the Great’s private art collection, Russia’s State Hermitage Museum became the largest museum in the Soviet Union and, since the collapse of the USSR, one of the most active museums in the world. The Hermitage is a global model for the collection and preservation of fine art, deeply shaped by its need to protect itself and its holdings from the world beyond its gates. In Art of Memories, Vincent Antonin Lépinay documents the Hermitage’s curatorial practices in an innovative consideration of the museum as a cultural laboratory. Lépinay analyzes the tensions between the museum as a space of exploration of the collections and as a culture heavily invested in self-protection from the outside world. During a time when traveling abroad was rare, a generation of art historians produced a culture of confined scholarship premised on their proximity to the holdings of a museum enclave. As the Hermitage has become increasingly present on the world museum scene, its culture of secrecy and orality has endured. Lépinay analyzes the ethos of Hermitage curators and scholars over the transition from Soviet to post-Soviet museum cultures, considering the mobility of art, documentation of the collection, and the transformation of expertise. Based on Lépinay’s extraordinary access to the Hermitage and the scholars who work there, Art of Memories opens the door of one of the world’s great museums to reveal how art history is made. It is an essential study for readers interested in the role that outside forces play in culture, organizations, and the production of knowledge.

Curating Contemporary Music Festivals
Curating Contemporary Music Festivals

Author: Brandon Farnsworth

Publisher: Transcript Verlag, Roswitha Gost, Sigrid Nokel u. Dr. Karin Werner

Published: 2020-07

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 9783837652437

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Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in contemporary music and how they could be a solution to the field's diminishing social relevance. He focuses on two case studies, the Munich Biennale for New Music Theatre, and the Maerzmusik Festival at the Berliner Festspiele.

Crimes Unspoken
Crimes Unspoken

Author: Miriam Gebhardt

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2016-12-20

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1509511237

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The soldiers who occupied Germany after the Second World War were not only liberators: they also brought with them a new threat, as women throughout the country became victims of sexual violence. In this disturbing and carefully researched book, the historian Miriam Gebhardt reveals for the first time the scale of this human tragedy, which continued long after the hostilities had ended. Discussion in recent years of the rape of German women committed at the end of the war has focused almost exclusively on the crimes committed by Soviet soldiers, but Gebhardt shows that this picture is misleading. Crimes were committed as much by the Western Allies – American, French and British – as by the members of the Red Army. Nor was the suffering limited to the immediate aftermath of the war. Gebhardt powerfully recounts how raped women continued to be the victims of doctors, who arbitrarily granted or refused abortions, welfare workers, who put pregnant women in homes, and wider society, which even today prefers to ignore these crimes. Crimes Unspoken is the first historical account to expose the true extent of sexual violence in Germany at the end of the war, offering valuable new insight into a key period of 20th century history.

Exhibiting War
Exhibiting War

Author: Jennifer Wellington

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-09-21

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 1107135079

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A comparative study of how museum exhibitions in Britain, Canada and Australia were used to depict the First World War.

Curating empire
Curating empire

Author: Sarah Longair

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2017-02-01

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1526118289

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Curating empire explores the diverse roles played by museums and their curators in moulding and representing the British imperial experience. This collection demonstrates how individuals, their curatorial practices, and intellectual and political agendas influenced the development of a variety of museums across the globe. Taken together, these contributions suggest that museums are not just sites for accessing history but need to be considered as historical sites of significance in themselves. Individual essays examine the work of curators in museums in Britain and the colonies, the historical display and interpretation of empire in Britain, and the establishment of ‘museum networks’ in the British imperial context. Curating empire sheds new light on the relationship between museums, as repositories for objects and cultural institutions for conveying knowledge, and the politics of culture and the formation of identities throughout the British Empire.

Curating the American Past
Curating the American Past

Author: Pete Daniel

Publisher: University of Arkansas Press

Published: 2022-02-04

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1610757645

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“As is well known, Pete is an outstanding storyteller, and this book is no exception." —Claire Strom, Journal of Southern History In addition to chronicling significant exhibit work at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Curating the American Past, captures the excitement inherent in researching and writing history and Pete Daniel’s efforts to prevent diluted celebratory stories from replacing the red meat of the American past. In Curating the American Past, Pete Daniel reveals how curators collect objects, plan exhibits, and bring alive the country’s complex and exciting history. In vivid detail, Daniel recounts the exhilaration of innovative research, the joys of collaboration, and the rewards of mentoring new generations of historians. In a career distinguished by prize-winning publications and pathbreaking exhibitions, Daniel also confronted the challenges of serving as a public historian tasked with protecting a definitive American museum from the erosion of scholarly standards. Curating the American Past offers a wealth of museum wisdom, illuminating the crucial role that dedicated historians and curators serve within our most important repositories of cultural memory.

Ways of Curating
Ways of Curating

Author: Hans Ulrich Obrist

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2014-03-27

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 0718194217

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Drawing on his own experiences and inspirations - from staging his first exhibition in his tiny Zurich kitchen in 1986 to encounters and conversations with artists, exhibition makers and thinkers alive and dead - Hans Ulrich Obrist's Ways of Curating looks to inspire all those engaged in the creation of culture. Moving from meetings with the artists who have inspired him (including Gerhard Richter and Gilbert and George) to the creation of the first public museums in the 18th century, recounting the practice of inspirational figures such as Diaghilev and Walter Hopps, skipping between exhibitions (his own and others), continents and centuries, Ways of Curating argues that curation is far from a static practice. Driven by curiosity, at its best it allows us to create the future.