Module HIST46030: An Exhibitionary Complex: Museums, Collecting, and the Historical Imagination

Department: History

HIST46030: An Exhibitionary Complex: Museums, Collecting, and the Historical Imagination

Prerequisites

• None

Corequisites

• None

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None

Aims

• To help students develop an understanding of how and why museums grew as institutions over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, and how they intersect with modes of collecting, categorizing, and experiencing objects in the modern era
• To help students develop a deep engagement with the ways in which museums have contributed to a sense of historical time and the creation of cultural difference, and to what extent that maps onto the history of institutions in Durham and the Northeast, as well as further afield.

Content

• This module takes Tony Bennett’s concept of ‘the exhibitionary complex’ as the starting point for considering the development of museums over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. It will equip students with an understanding of the earlier history of museums and some of the key debates and methodologies in museum studies. The module focuses on British, North American or continental European institutions through a global lens, by considering how collecting, curating, and visiting practices were tied to colonial and imperial spheres of influence. Colonial ways of being, seeing, and thinking were thus integral to creating a historical imagination of recent and distant pasts.
• The module introduces students to the kinds of historiographic resources museums and their own institutional archives offer, as well as other kinds of primary sources - such as annual reports, catalogues, media coverage, publications by professional bodies - that can form the basis of research on the history of museums and collecting. Students will also develop a critical awareness of the role museums continue to play as mediators of public history and other forms of knowledge, and of how decolonisation is (or isn’t) shaping contemporary practices.
• Different kinds of museums and collecting activities provide the focus for fortnightly seminars, with examples drawn from a range of institutional and national contexts. Students will also have the opportunity to investigate the history of museums in Durham and the Northeast, and to weigh up how — and whether — museums today are using their own histories to address contemporary challenges.

Learning Outcomes

• To acquire a broad knowledge of the history of the museum as a public institution, from its roots in the early modern era to its period of expansion in the long 19th century and beyond.
• To relate the growth of museums to concurrent socioeconomic and political trends, in particular industrialization, colonialism and imperialism, and the gradual establishment of disciplinary specialisms.
• To explain the public role envisioned for museums by their founders and curators, and compare it to the impact of museums on their visitors from the 19th century to today.
• To understand the theoretical literature which has grown up around museums and the creation of knowledge, including postcolonial and decolonial perspectives.

• To recognize and historicize the different kinds of museums that developed over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries.
• To synthesize theoretical literature in museum studies with historical research on specific museums and collecting practices.
• To link developments in the museum field in Britain, North America or continental Europe with a global context, specifically the colonial and imperial networks through which collections were formed and knowledge created.

• To acquire the confidence to undertake their own research into the history of collecting and museums;
• To develop appropriate skills of analysis and interpretation for a range of primary sources, including museum architecture and display, archives, and collections;
• To evaluate the implications of the different methodologies scholars have used to interrogate the history of museums;
• To interrogate the link between museum and collecting histories and contemporary debates, such as the ownership of objects and the representation (or under-representation) of different groups, identities, and historical themes.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Classes will be taught through a mix of short lectures, seminar discussion and student presentations.
• Where resource and timetabling considerations allow, the module may include a field trip to a relevant collection in lieu of (and as an extension to) one of the Michaelmas term seminars. This activity will not be centrally timetabled and will be organised by the department at the start of Term 1.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

20 minute oral presentation in Term 1 or 2.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University