Does the Museum Just Preserve the Museum?

Description

Register online via the link at the top right hand side of this page
Conference fee: £50 (full), £25 (students) – includes lunch, tea/coffee
Deadline: Monday 8 December 2014

Twitter Hashtag: #ArtSciCuration

Conveners

Liz Hide (University of Cambridge Museums)
Tim Knox (Fitzwilliam Museum)
Robin Osborne (Museum of Classical Archaeology)
Liba Taub (Whipple Museum)
Caroline Vout (Classics)

Summary

This conference is the culmination of a series of events during 2014 in which the University of Cambridge Museums have explored the art and science of museum curation. It brings together a wide range of speakers to take a long hard look at what museums do, what they should do, and what they might do. We will explore the ways in which what museums do is enabled and limited by their history and the history of collecting, asking whether and how museums can use their collections to transcend time. We will explore the constraints placed on museums by national history and how they contest natural history. We will think about museums as installations and museums as laboratories. And we will ask how healthy is the pressure to make visitors love their experiences in museums. Have museums failed or succeeded if some people hate them?

This is a conference designed both to celebrate and to question what we do in museums and what museums do to us, and to ask what the future should hold for the museum and what the museum should hold for the future.

Confirmed speakers include: Sam Alberti (Royal College of Surgeons of. England/ Hunterian Museum), Maurice Davis (Former Head of Policy at the Museums Association), Paul Greenhalgh (Sainsbury Centre, UEA), Henry McGhie (Manchester Museum), Paul Smith (Oxford University Museum of Natural History), Martin Roth (V & A), and Mark Wallinger.

In preparation for this conference there will be a series of seminars organised by University of Cambridge Museums on Wednesdays at 5.15 p.m. in Room G 21, Faculty of Classics, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge on November 12, 19, 26th and December 3rd; speakers include Penelope Curtis (Tate Britain), Richard Evans (Beamish Museum), Stephen Feeke (New Art Centre), Jane Munro (Fitzwilliam Museum) and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill (Herculaneum Conservation Project). All are welcome.

Sponsors

    

Supported by the Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CRASSH), the University of Cambridge Museums and the Arts Council England.

Accommodation for speakers selected through the call for papers and non-paper giving delegates

We are unable to arrange or book accommodation, however, the following websites may be of help.

Visit Cambridge
Cambridge Rooms
University of Cambridge accommodation webpage

Administrative assistance: events@crassh.cam.ac.uk