Nature museums: what’s the point?

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: What role does the nature museum play as an archive of things and a site of comparison? How important is it currently as a centre of research and education? Do nature museums play a role as a national/regional storehouse of memories and in the negotiation of identities? Many relevant questions of the present touch on the environmental and natural sciences: Is the nature museum suited as a site of the critical public and a place for exchanging new ideas? We will try to get an idea of the current situation against the background of the history of the institution.

Conception and design
Bettina Habsburg-Lothringen Museum Academy Joanneum, Graz (AT) 

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Location
Graz (AT) 

Cost 
€ 180, reduced price € 150

Languages of the event
German and English

Registration and info
Museumsakademie Joanneum
T +43 (0) 316/8017-9805, Fax -9808
museumsakademie@museum-joanneum.at

Please register via e-mail or fax.