School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemThe Australian aboriginal collection in the Museum fur Volkerkunde, Berlin and the making of cultural identity( 2002-05)This is an evaluation of the contribution of the Australian Aboriginal collection in the Museum fur Volkerkunde in Berlin to the current public perception of Aboriginal cultural identity both in Berlin and wider afield. It gives an account of the collection including the origins and the nature of the objects and some of the key people who have contributed to its assembly and its presentation since the Museum’s foundation. This provides evidence of significant scientific and cultural links between Australia and Germany from the earliest times of white settlement and exploration in Australia. It also reveals how the period of active collection of Australian Aboriginal material in the Museum coincided with the activities of several key collectors within Australia who have been more widely appreciated in Australia for their other achievements in the sciences or the arts. Assessed within a broad social and an historical context, why and how the collection was assembled, categorised, presented and received by scientists and the public over the years contributes to appreciating its role in the historical construction of a German view of Australian Aboriginal cultural identity. At the same time, the nature of institutional classifications of such cultural material is shown to contribute to the perceived gap in production of authentic Aboriginal art during the twentieth century within the Western account of art history. A comparative analysis of this information relative to other significant museum collections and presentations of Australian Aboriginal material in Germany, the UK, France and Australia contributes to a re-evaluation of the Berlin collection within a contemporary frame of reference involving both science and art. This work leads me to recommended changes to the management and presentation of the collection of Australian material that is cognisant of the traditional scientific status of the Museum while introducing new museological strategies. It includes devising new programs of activity related to the collection that will be appropriate to its historical context while having contemporary relevance both to the institution, its wider institutional context and especially to the contemporary Australian Aboriginal communities who have links to the collection.
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ItemExhibiting visual culture: narrative, perception and the new museum( 2002)This thesis maps a recent emergence or shift in museological discourse. It focuses on the moment where the discourses of narrative, cinema, and museums come together visibly and publically in relation to the built environment which hosts them, and the experience they offer. In Australia, this moment may be identified as emerging in 1995 with the Museum of Sydney, reaching a critical mass in 1998 with the developmental plans for the Melbourne Museum, Federation Square, and National Museum of Australia, and reaching its most satisfactory and effective manifestation in 2001, with the opening of the National Museum of Australia. This thesis considers these (and other) museum projects to look at how and why this emergence or shift came about. It is interested more in the processes of development than with the respective outcomes, which it may as yet be too early to evaluate fully. As such, this thesis evaluates the production and reception of recently developed museums that embody this shift. It is concerned with the ways that these developments present themselves rhetorically, architecturally and through their exhibitions, and with the type of experience that they aim to offer visitors. They tend to represent this experience as unique, immersive, and postmodern, and the thesis argues that these museums share a similarity based on their cross-disciplinary approach to self-representation, and other key factors. Because of this, the thesis presents a close exploration of these signifiers of ‘newness’, asking why these are privileged by the contemporary museum, and looking to see whether this trope of newness itself has a historical chronology, or a predecessor in earlier museums. It also looks at how the effect of newness is conceptualized, designed, and produced. The thesis contends that the ‘new’ museum presents itself as being a primarily interdisciplinary institution that is concerned with replicating and developing connections across disciplinary fields, rather than according to an historical chronology. However, despite this denial of historical relationships, the ‘new’ museum’s attention to a conceptual and thematic acuity can itself be historicized. Although the museum is not produced according to concerns for historical or traditional accuracy, the cross-disciplinary focus that it champions as an innovative signifier of its ‘newness’ itself has roots in earlier examples of museums and other cultural experiences (that include reading and cinema-going). As such, the primary historical allegiance that is shared by the cross-disciplinary impulse, and by the museums which champion this, is with early modernity. Characteristics associated with the new technologies and experiences of modernity (from cinema and other technologies, to the Crystal Palace, to new modes of writing and narrative form) are all valued by ‘new’ twenty first century museum projects, and many of the technologies and approaches to textuality that they also present. Locating the origins of cross-disciplinarity at the moment of an emergent modernity, the thesis deconstructs the concepts, specifically privileged by the ‘new’ museums, in order to look at the ways that these concepts also engage with each other, and to consider how and why they have been incorporated into these museum projects at all. In order to do this, the thesis is divided into three sections, ‘Narrative’, ‘Cinema’, and ‘Museums’, with each Part providing a discussion of each discipline in isolation. Part Three, ‘Museums’, looks at ways in which recent museum projects have attempted to combine these discrete areas, and it also contends that the appropriation efforts have varying degrees of success in this activity. (Part abstract)