Le musée de niche. Nouvel exploit dans la muséographie

In all the complexity of the museum study, there is a slight border that deserves all the attention of the researchers: the one of the niche museums. This work starts from the idea according to which the museum becomes a symbol of cultural practice in the contemporary era. In addition to the successful museums that are being built and built in the city, there is a new tendency to transform some spaces into small museums. These, in full process of heritage building, can highlight a series of features and characteristics of a society. The research of the niche museum starts from Ulf Hannerz, who says in his study that anthropology must renew its limits, it must take into account urban life. Researchers should not focus only on rural areas, in small, homogeneous communities, especially as they are outside Western societies Urban anthropology must be based on a range of social and cultural phenomena that will rarely be found in rural areas and which must be analyzed in the light of the diversity of human societies in general, says Ulf Hannerz, like the diversity of museums. From the chocolate museum, the lace museum, the cake museum, the cheese museum or the flower museum, all these culturally-rendered spaces are meant to anonymously remove some objects or crafts that are characteristic of a particular group and which subsequently become part of the immaterial cultural heritage. The Dictionary of Ethnology and Anthropology defines the study of anthropology regarding museography as a necessity inherent in the advancement of ethnography. Researchers such as Robert Park, Ulf Hannerz, Clifford Geertz, André Malraux or Chiara Bortolotto have studied the relationship of the museum with the city, thus implicitly with society. The conclusions they draw have the following aspect in common: the museum has the intrinsic ability to model and structure the immediate society.

Reading The Museum Angkut: Cultural Space and Exhibition Narrative

This paper is a museum study from an anthropological perspective. Generally, the museum is an institution that stores and preserves particular material cultures. On the other side, a museum can also be critically seen as a space for the production of cultural discourse that narrates a particular ideology through exhibition strategies and display systems. The cultural ideology discourse always develops over time following the existing regime. During Indonesia New Order, the museum was used to be a political tool to shape the national identity. In the reformation era, within the escalation of global culture, many museums are no longer monopolized by the state. There are various private-based museums that exhibit specific themes by implementing edutainment and amusement park concepts. Thus, this paper proposes a case study of the Museum Angkut in Batu, East Java, one of the most popular private museums in Indonesia that exhibits transportation system and world civilization themes assembled by implementing amusement park concepts. This paper would like to address the issue of the production of cultural discourse. The research questions are what kind of cultural discourse production is narrated in the Museum Angkut, and how has it been materialized through the display strategy? This paper uses a hermeneutic approach, and Michael Foucault's heterotopia to examine how cultural imagination with its ideology is represented in museum bodies. As a result, we argue that the Museum Angkut can reflect the character of society, as a post-colonial nation in the sense of seeing self and other cultures.

Oh, The Things You Don’t Know: Awe Promotes Awareness of Knowledge Gaps and Science Interest

Awe is described as an a “epistemic emotion” because it is hypothesized to make gaps in one’s knowledge salient. However, no empirical evidence for this yet exists. Awe is also hypothesized to be an antecedent to interest in science because science is one way to fill those knowledge gaps. Results from four pre-registered studies (N = 1,518) indicate that manipulating awe through online (Studies 1a, 1b, and 1c) and virtual reality (Study 2) videos, led to greater awareness of knowledge gaps. Awareness of knowledge gaps was consistently associated with greater science interest and to choosing tickets to a science museum over tickets to an art museum (Study 1b). These effects were not consistently observed on, nor moderated by, other measures related to cognition, religion, and spirituality. However, exploratory analyses showed that science interest was better predicted by positive emotions than by awe. Still, these results provide the first empirical evidence of awe as an “epistemic emotion” by demonstrating its effects on awareness of knowledge gaps. These findings are also extended to the effects of awe on science interest as one possible outcome of awareness of knowledge gaps.

Smartphones distract parents from cultivating feelings of connection when spending time with their children

In the U.S., 95% of smartphone users admit to having used their smartphones during their latest social gathering. Although smartphones are designed to connect us with others, such smartphone use may create a source of distraction that disconnects us from the people in our immediate social environment. Focusing on one fundamental social relationship—between parents and their children—we examined whether smartphones made parents feel distracted, thereby undermining key benefits parents reap when spending time with their children. Ina field experiment at a science museum (Study 1), we randomly assigned parents to use their phones frequently or infrequently. Frequent phone use led parents to feel more distracted, which in turn impaired feelings of social connection and the meaning that parents derived when spending time with their children. In an additional weeklong diary study (Study 2), we found further evidence that smartphones can distract parents from reaping a sense of social connection when spending time with their children. These studies suggest that being constantly connected to the Internet may carry subtle costs for the fabric of social life.

Exposer le patrimoine de la Retirade: la pédagogie au croisement des logiques sociales et institutionnelles. Étude de cas à Argelès-sur-Mer

Seventy-five years after the Spanish Civil War, the CIDER (Centre d’interprétation et de documentation sur l’Exil et la Retirade) of Argelès-sur-Mer retraces the history of that traumatic past. Reporting on the confinement of 200,000 Spanish Republicans in a barbed wire camp raises many heritage-related issues. This forced exile of half-a-million refugees is one of the most substantial European exoduses to occur during the last century. Many individuals are still affected and it still resonates today. This article discusses CIDER’s museographical project. If social and institutional logic clash between times of emergence, construction and valorization in the course of patrimonialization, they overlap in the pedagogical aspect of the permanent exhibition. KEYWORDS: Museum study; museology; informal education; immigration; heritage; memorial; monument; Spanish Civil War; citizenship; Résumé: Soixante-quinze ans après la Guerre civile espagnole, le Centre d’interprétation et de documentation sur l’Exil et la Retirade (CIDER) d’Argelès-sur-Mer présente l’histoire de ce passé traumatique. Rendre compte de l’enfermement de plus de 200 000 Républicains espagnols dans un camp de barbelés soulève de nombreux enjeux patrimoniaux. Cet exil forcé d’un demi-million de réfugiés représente l’un des exodes européens les plus importants du siècle dernier. Il touche encore de nombreuses personnes et demeure en résonance avec l’actualité. Le présent article vise à rendre compte du projet muséographique du CIDER. Les logiques sociales et institutionnelles s’affrontent entre les moments d’émergence, de construction et de valorisation dans le processus de patrimonialisation, mais elles se recouvrent dans la perspective pédagogique de l’exposition permanente.MOTS CLES: Muséologie; éducation non formelle; immigration; patrimoine; memorial; Guerre d’Espagne; citoyenneté

A NEWLY DISCOVERED MINOAN FAIENCE PLAQUE FROM THE KNOSSOS TOWN MOSAIC IN THE BRISTOL CITY MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY: A TECHNOLOGICAL INSIGHT

This article presents the curatorial context of a newly discovered fragment of Minoan faience, now in the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery (BCMAG), and the technological study conducted on this piece at the British Museum. It also discusses the British Museum study of comparable fragments, now in the Ashmolean Museum, belonging to the Town Mosaic from Knossos, an important and unique find brought to light during Sir Arthur Evans's excavations of the ‘Palace of Minos’ at the beginning of the twentieth century. Both the stylistic study and the analytical results suggest that the Bristol fragment is genuine, and most likely belonged to the Town Mosaic. The Bristol piece does not possess features that can advance our understanding of Crete in the Bronze Age, but its curious biography adds something to the history of collecting and the history of archaeology.