Walter Mignolo Museum

In December 2002, the directors of 18 museums located throughout Europe and the United States issued the Declaration of the Importance and Value of Universal Museums. The declaration is an attempt, by the directors of major Western museums, to defend against demands for restitution of museum objects by defining themselves as “universal museums” which are of value to all of humanity. This document fails as a convincing defence against restitution claims for several reasons. First, it dismisses circumstances of older acquisitions without considering the ethics or legality of surrounding the acquisition. Second, while it pronounces these museums “universal,” it approaches this from a distinctly Western perspective and perpetuates colonial and imperialist ideas. Finally, it ignores important debates that are occurring between and within scholarly, professional, and activist communities.

Memorial museums, in contrast to the “generic history museum which provides a container for a wide variety of topics” [Williams, 221], usually entwines intimately with its events

The museum believes in a pastiche and populist pathway, in which the history of all people is displayed. Its interactive viewpoint allows this museum to convey history in a way that would be more accessible to its audience. For example, patrons are given the opportunity to record their own history. However, academics, such as Keith Windschuttle, assert that the NMA is a “profound intellectual waste”. He argues that although it displays accurate history, it’s purpose of entertaining its audience detracts from its value, thus creating “waste”. Although Windschuttle’s view may be extreme, it demonstrates the considerable extent to which the tension between academic and popular historians exist.

Museum/Gallery Critique: A museum, gallery, or private collection visit followed by a written critique, two-page minimum, typed and double-spaced are required for this course. Detailed instructions will be distributed and

However, as Amy Lonetree mentions in Decolonizing Museums, audience reception is not always the primary concern (103). The subjects of our readings have also separated out issues like history, representation, and collections practice; education is often mentioned, but not always featured. The readings from his week made me consider the educational perspective.

After arriving and going through the security screenings, I proceeded to go down the stairs, entering the exhibit itself. Before even observing anything specific, it was immediately realized that this was no typical museum. Most people know that upon arrival, but only when you first enter the exhibit do you realize that this museum is not one that inspects the past, but one that reminds us of it.

The Dallas Museum is a renowned art museum established in 1903 and is located in Dallas, Texas (Neumann et al. 19). The Dallas Museum of art is one of the largest art museums in the United States of America containing more than 24,000 collections of art ranging from the ancient to the modern ones (MacDonald & Brettell 112). There are numerous things inside the museum, such as the pieces of art, museum visitors, and the architecture, that relate to the understanding of the world outside the museum in terms of the day to day life and the human society. My goal in this essay is to think outside the box and describe the observations I made inside the museum and explain how they relate to my everyday life, the wider world, or the human society.

In the Robyn Autry article, it mainly focuses on the national conflict of museums mainly focusing towards African American. The author travel to 15 museums around the United States that focuses towards African American. She mainly talks about how the African American were facing numerous hardships in the U.S and how the museum represents those issues to the general public. She believes the way to tell the hardship of African Americans is by exhibiting through a museum. When traveling through these museums she focused towards “centered on three traumatic episodes: capture and displacement from Africa, enslavement, and racial segregation” (Autry 64). The author of the articles wants to show that over time that museums meanings has changed over

In Steven Lubar’s book, Inside the Lost Museum: Curating, Past and Present, the recurring idea that museums are “more than the sum of their parts” plays a critical role in the overall argument (329). Lubar notes many aspects that make up a museum, the collection, for example is an essential part of any museum, but the community, as well as the experiences of the patrons create a lasting museum experience. Additionally, Lubar aptly utilizes real-world examples, contemporary and historical, highlighting the work of individuals in museums and establishing a connection between past and current events. Central to this narrative is the example of the lost Jenks Museum. Lubar uses this museum to argue that museums of the past can educate museum goers

The interpretation and appropriation of culture within museums came under attack starting in the 1960’s. Native American groups raised questions about the biases and agendas of curators and museums and demanded that their voices be heard in the political arena. Many Native American organizations argued that if Whites are the ones interpreting and appropriating other cultures, then it is actually their culture on exhibition.(King 1998: 96, Stocking Jr. 1985: 88, Patterson 2014: 52). Deidre Sklar, a researcher of Native American artifacts, stated that: “Time and space in a museum, are defined in terms of the confines of the collection, not of the context from which [the collection is] drawn. Visiting hours from ten to five and the glass exhibit case define EuroAmerican, not Native American time and space” (Weil 2004:3). In response to this outcry, the Museums of the American Indian Act was created and signed on November 28, 1989, enabling the creation of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). The NMAI is arguably the most famous native-run institution and acts as a living memorial to Native Americans and their traditions (King 1998: 106).

While some may view museums as homes of the dusty, decrypt, and decaying, I think back fondly to the memories I've made in them. When I was four and living in a small apartment in Shaker Heights, Ohio, my father would take me to the Cleveland Museum of Rock and Roll on the weekends when he wasn’t busy working on his MBA at Case Western Reserve University. Every time we visited, I would tell my father that I would grow up to be just like Elvis, to which he would laugh and scoff affectionately. When we moved to Glen Allen, Virginia when I was six, we would occasionally drive up to Washington, D.C. to the Smithsonian Museums. On some Saturdays, we would walk for hours through the halls of art I didn't understand (and still don’t really understand) at the Museum of American Art. On other Saturdays, we would go to the Library of Congress, where I would press my forehead against the glass of the observation deck—much to the dismay of security guards. But perhaps the most significant "museum" I've been in is just a short three-minute drive or seven-minute walk from my suburban home: the Twin Hickory Public Library.

Brian Wimer, a local filmmaker, proposed the idea of transforming an industrial site of a closed Frank Ix and Sons factory into a “communal cultural space for art,

Suffrage (An Analysis of Three Messages from Musee des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden) Are museums a happy place? A place of memory? Or a place of mourning and sadness? There are many different types of museums around the world, some hold the greatest works of art known to man. Others, maybe more mediocre, but still have value within the stories that can be told through its pieces.

“How do you make a building for contemporary art that stays contemporary in the future without stooping to a neutral language? And how do you attract a big public without compromising the selfish, private, exclusive time we all want to have in a museum?” These questions, put forward by Elizabeth Diller of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, represent the urbanistic motivation supporting the construction of Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA). In such a manner Boston’s ICA engages, not only with the urban citizen, but also the urban landscape in which the site is located. The ICA conveys the idea of architecture as art in itself. As a presenter of art to the urban citizen and because of its open design, the inside allows the citizens to not only appreciate the art within the building but also see the art of the building’s natural environment and setting.

In Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities, the traveler Marco Polo tells Kublai Khan fiction of the various cities of his empire, which the Khan himself will never visit. In this paper I will describe such model from Calvino’s novel to explore those aspects of museum experience that are almost invisible to people. Sketching on critical research and state that, museum is no single but a multiplicity of deeply personal and largely invisible utopian spaces. At the end of Invisible Cities, Polo talks of the infernal city, the exact opposite of utopia. Escaping this city is a matter of giving space to things that are not of the inferno to invisible utopias that they might endure. The purpose of the