Programme

A good number of European textile museums were established with a clear regional focus, and many of them specialise in individual aspects of historical textile production: in the extraction and preparation of raw materials, the production of yarns and fabrics, specific materials and techniques or the development of textile goods in the history of fashion. Hardly any museum could hold the sheer wealth of contexts associated with this topic, ranging from socio-economic factors to matters concerning the history of technology and culture. 

Bloggers are today’s critics, passers-by the new correspondents, and ambitious amateurs sought-after actors in professional theatres. Culture and the media are currently undergoing a process of transformation, which is redefining the traditional role of experts.

At the end of the 19th century, the department store and the museum were, in many respects, comparable institutions and mutually influenced one another. Museums played a key role in forming an aesthetic relationship to things and thus in developing a commodity culture. 

There is a whole range of questions that we, as those responsible for museums, must ask ourselves today in order to ensure the existence of the museum tomorrow. With this tomorrow in mind and as the first in a series, we will turn our attention in 2014 to the history of museum collections and collecting today.

A monopoly on the interpretation and communication of history is a thing of the past. Nowadays, a wide range of media and institutions are writing about, reporting on and showing historical content with a variety of means and ends. 

Open data refers to the free and unlimited access and use of data, with the goal of increasing transparency, (for example, in public institutions); facilitating networking; and inspiring new research. Based on specific projects and together with experts, we would like to discuss the consequences of this highly topical idea for both large and small museums. 

The remembrance of the First World War is ubiquitous. We are interested in the museological dimension of this topic and together with the historian Jay Winter we are going to embark on a journey that takes us to former battlefields, cemeteries, memorials and museums from Brussels to Paris. 

Nowadays, contemporary witnesses and their accounts play a key role in communicating past events and are a natural part of exhibitions on contemporary history and recent cultural history. 

Nature museums have always been underrepresented in museological debates. And yet, the bulk of museum objects worldwide are natural objects and the traditional significance of this type of museum for both research and society is enormous. We would like to focus on the latter and, taking the wide variety of nature museums into consideration, examine the applicability of the social roles associated with museums in general to museums of natural history.

The museum has never been static. Those responsible for it have always faced the challenge of making its holdings relevant to the particular age and further developing collections in accordance with the changing times. 

Museums have always been a mirror of their times. Collections are established or new issues are raised about existing ones in connection with social developments. One issue that has been the subject of public debate for several years is migration. Migrant experiences and the history of migration have hardly become an integral part of historical narratives in Austria, and they are a glaring gap within the memory culture of museums. 

A large part of the museums in the German-speaking world are regional and local museums. Many countries in Europe have strategy papers and plans for the best possible future development of these institutions. We would like to take the virtual lack of such plans in Austria as an opportunity to explore the question of what the cultural policy on regional museums such as these is like in Austria. 

Despite repeated attempts over the last 100 years as well as a now 10-year debate, Austria still does not have a national museum of Austrian history. Additionally, only a limited number of provincial museums, which are traditionally multi-disciplinary in nature, offer displays on regional and contemporary history.

The history of the museum is a history of displaying, arranging, and assembling objects and design elements in space for the purpose of mediation. Regardless of whether they are arranged as total works of art (Gesamtkunstwerk) that you can stroll through like the cabinets of curiosities, or spacious museum halls using labels to provide information on encyclopaedic collections; or whether they are realised as environments, or prepared according to didactic principles; or whether they are staged using atmospheric media, or designed for interaction – every form of presentation is an expression of its time.

Thanks to Switzerland’s cantonal structure, there is a great museum every couple of kilometres. We would love to visit them all, but since this isn’t possible on a three-day trip, we have selected a number of interesting museums covering a wide range of types, sizes and sponsors.

In 2008, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research (bmwf) started the forMuse – Research in Museums programme and thus, for the first time, created a funding instrument for museum research projects. We would like to take this programme, which is currently in its final phase, as an opportunity to take a closer look at the overall picture of research in Austrian museums. 

The privatisation of the Universal Museum Joanneum in 2003 was probably the museum’s biggest organisational change in its 200-year history. 

In the course of its history, Istanbul has been the centre of power of three empires and is today a cosmopolitan city on two continents with around 13 million inhabitants and more than 50 museums. On account of its historical significance and location, Istanbul has been shaped by two cultural spheres, which overlap and mix in the structure, appearance, and everyday life of the city. 

Museums primarily define themselves through their collections. The public is often told that one of the reasons for the expensive conversation of such collections is that the viewing of art works, for instance, is a joy and a pleasure, or that new knowledge can continually be gained from collections, which, when presented in the form of exhibitions, promises the public new potential insights. 

The American anthropologist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has stated that museum objects and in situ presentations are not given as such, but only come about through specific meta-cultural operations and museum practices. These always involve an interpretation of remains, which is inseparable from current world views and didactic concepts.