Riassunto esame Museum studies, Prof. Carrara Eliana, libro consigliato Key concept of museology, Marines e Desvaless

Museum studies corso 6 CFU

Eliana Carrara
Anno accademico 2023-2024
Appunti di Ilaria Emma Chindamo
Conservazione dei Beni Culturali, indirizzo Storico-Artistico

Prima parte: storie dei musei

19/09/2023 Nordisk Museum
Eva Silvén is a museologist, independent scholar. She was curator of the Nordic Museum in Stockholm for many years. And also a specialist researcher of Museology and collections of museums. She gave the definition of museum: “The museum is not the end of the biography of things, it’s the beginning of their second life.”

She would like to tell us that museums are a new way of keeping and looking at the same objects seen before. Is true also that this object is kept, not in the rooms where the audience came to see, but this new life starts when this object is kept in this store-age room (depositi).

Secret sleepers in the stores of the Nordic Museum in Stockholm, waiting to be explored by curators and museologists.” Eva calls these objects “secret sleepers.” Objects which, in the protection of the store's age-room, are waiting for some researchers to propose to study them.

What was the first museum in the world?

The Capitoline museums of Rome, 1471. Created by pope Sisto IV della Rovere, it is the first museum in the world. We are sure about the date because the pope on 14 December donated to Roman people some works of art. What works of art? Antichitis, in particular ancient bronze statues of the wolf (lupa). Probably little babies are a modern addition. The donation of the pope was comprehensive of the “spinario” (Boy pulling a thorn from his foot), the camillus, the colossal statue of Constantine (this work was made with several pieces, we can now see the hand and the globe).

How the concept of museum is today seen, and what is the role of it in our society?

What is the importance? We have to consider what happens in the United States during covid time. Museums were closed, we were all in lockdown. On 18 September 2020, the Brooklyn museum was obliged to sell works of art to pay its costs. It’s incredible that a museum has to sell works of art to pay his costs. This is a peculiarity of American museums: the costs are greater than the pounds, they have to sell works to save the museum. It’s strange for the European concept of a museum.

Museum

The word museum comes from the Latin Museum, in Greek Mouseóon, word which comes from the Mûsa, muse, that is one of the nine patron deities of the arts and music. The muses were the nine daughters of Zeus (the king of gods) and Mnemosyne (the goodness of the memory). The muses were protectors of art. For example, the fresco of Raphael: we can see Apollo and, around him, the muses.

Mouseion was the name of a building in ancient Alexandria in Egypt, built by Ptolemy I Soter (322-283 b.C.). He was a defender of Alexander the Great. This building was intended to be many buildings (astronomical observatory, the botanical and zoological garden, the anatomical institute as well as the famous Library, which was severely damaged during the war between Emperor Aurelian (270-275 A.D.) and Queen Zenobia of Palmyra, and was finally destroyed after the Arab conquest in 642 A.D.).

You have a rich collection, but also spaces rooms where the researcher can discuss and also keep words of art. REMEMBER: from this museum comes what you now consider a museum, that is a building where your collecting are keeping objects like books, animals, word of art, objects of natural works (esotical birds).

When here in Europe the word “museum” begins to be in use? Too late. In 1522 when a great scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam, in his Convivium religiosum, talked about the small studios (studiolo) where Italian humanists were studying and doing research. Erasmus speaks about these places as if “a small but elegant museum is added to the library.” Why? Objects like little statues or little manuscripts.

Paolo Giovio, first museum

The FIRST MUSEUM in our history (Italy) is the museum built by Paolo Giovo, who was another cleric (insider catholic hierarchy). Built near the lake of Como, in a villa. This villa kept the portraits of illustrious men of the renaissance age. A beautiful assay Franco Minonzio “Il museo di Giovio e la galleria degli illustri”.

Giovan Pietro Bellori

You can find in the artistic literature of renaissance time, the book “the name museum”. Because Bellori (an important member of the pope’s court). In 1664 he wrote “Nota delli musei, librerie, galerie et ornamenti di statue e pitture ne’ palazzi, nelle case e nei giardini di Roma”. “Galerie”: collection of painting creating by the novel family in Rome. Term that comes from French.

Museografia

In 1727 a German merchant, Caspar Friedrich Neickel, wrote the first book about museografia. It’s the science of museums, a guide to the right idea and useful display of museums. Why this book is so important? It is the first guide to create by yourself, new all museums and collections, and how to put these works on display. How to organize the museum. Museum works when people come to see works, and Caspar explains how to create the space in order to permit the visitor to have a look at all the collections.

Museography is the description of a museum. Neickel used a Latin word, but it was written in old German. He created a new word or a new science: the description and organization of museums. But Neickel uses other words to describe the museum. Words used in nations, you can find in the time of course of Neickel “museum”. You find in Germany “Kunstkammer” (that is chamber of wonders). In France you have the words “cabinet” and “galerie”. In Italy “studiolo” and “galeria”. Nickel knows the terms that were used in every single nation.

Neickel also distinguishes objects belonging to collections into two large classes: Naturalia (a large stone or rare shell come from the Pacific Ocean) and Artificialia (made by Hands of man) - Latin words.

The word museum is mentioned in Latin and appears together with the word used in German, on which we refer to Schlosser’s seminar text “Art and curiosity cabinet in the late Renaissance).

Example of naturalia: the collection kept by a professor of Bologna Ferdinando Cospi, an important man living in Bologna in the seventeenth century. He collected an extraordinary museum, where you find objects arriving from the Pacific Ocean, and also by naturalia and artificialia. Because he collects works made by people from the south of America. Today some little pieces are in palazzo Poggi in Bologna.

Wunderkammer

“Wunderkammer” (camera della meraviglia or cabinet of curiosities) is the German term. An example of this was the natural history museum collection by Ferrante imperator. He was a naturalist living in Naples, he collected many animals, also esotical animals like crocodile (from the Nile, river in Egypt). The collection was described by Ferrante Imperato in 1599, he collected many works. People come to see his collections.

Wunderkammer is a room where you can find many works and works of many times. We can see a detail of a painting of Frans Francken, where we can see a typical collection that we can name Wunderkammer. Because you have esotical shells, medals (why did people in renaissance time collect them? Because the medals kept the portrait of an important man like imperato, king, duce etc. Also the medals of the ancient room have the portrait of Roman emperors). So people wanted to know what to know about the people of Roman emperors, recognize them with the collection of medals. In the painting we can see the preparatory drawing of Raphael’s Madonna della perla, and the paintings of still life. Samuel Quiccheberg was the first to use this term.

Encyclopédie de Diderot e d'Alembert

Here we can find another definition of museum. It’s a dictionary of words used in the science, arts. The French language also uses the word Cabinet to describe a Museum.

Dictionary

For a modern dictionary, a museum is a building in which objects of historical, scientific, artistical, or cultural interest are stored and exhibited. The word museum came across Europe, in particular in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. In 1753 the British Museum was born. Museum is a building housing cultural material. Our definition of museum is concerning not only works of art (Fidia, Raphael), but also works created by artists (testimony of the ordinary life of many people, like technological museums or naturalia).

New museum definition (Esame)

ICOM: is the international counseling of museum. The last year gave another museum definition: a museum in a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Enjoyment is intrattenimento. Reflection to think about it.

I.C.O.M - Organization of non-governmental institutions, you can find in the UNESCO. The ICOM was founded in 1946, why in this age? After the second world war, and after the destruction made by the world all around Europe, not only Europe (remember what happened in Japan).

The first general meeting happened only two years after (1948) in Paris, it promotes and coordinates museum activities worldwide. Is the central nucleus of an organization of many representation all around the world (Italian ICOM, Greek ICOM). UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, was created after the second world war. You can find here the decoters from ICOM too.

What is UNESCO? (esame)

It is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. It contributes to peace and security by promoting international cooperation in educational, sciences, culture, communication and information. It tries to share knowledge all around the world. It tries to keep the word human likes and the word life all around the world.

It was created in 1942, during the second world war, but the first meeting was in London after the war on 16 November 1945. On 16 November 1972 UNESCO arrived to create the important convention about the protection of the Word Cultural and Natural Heritage. You find here the same concept you have to keep the work which came from the work of man, and the life of our planet: naturalia and artificialia.

General conference of ICOM

Paris 1946, Copenhagen 1974 and Vienna 2007 (in which museum is defined for the purpose of education, study and enjoyment). You can see how conferences are organized all around Europe.

New proposal of museum definition

ICOM was present at Kyoto in 2019, where the General conference arrived to make a new proposal of a museum definition. A proposal completed last year in August. You can see the differences between the 2 definitions.

Characteristics of a museum:

• The museum must be non-profit making: museum activities must not follow the logic of market profit, and its income must always be aimed at the institutional activities pursued by the museum.
• The museum is a permanent institution: is conceived like a space which has to pass his collection to the future. If I sell its works, the museum is no longer a permanent institution. Because it is losing its works. To become permanent, it had not to sell his works.
• The museum must be at the service of society: the purpose must be universal.

The ICOM list five purposes of Museums:

• Acquisition: Because the museum is a collection, if I did my collection, I did a museum. The museum had to expand his collection.
• Conservation: The museum has to keep, in a better way, the works it is collecting.
• Research: The museum has to study the works it collects, because sharing knowledge is one of the important things that it has to do.
• Communication: Doing research, but also communicating research. It’s important, not only for newspapers, but also for social media. It’s the reason because most museums have an online catalogue. For people that want to go to the museum, and want to know what they are going to see. The museum, by social media, gets the public who don’t visit the museum, especially young people who don’t visit the museum.
• Display: A museum is a building, but inside the people can see the works kept inside. The museum has to show his collection, and not keep it all in the storage room, of course.

Museum's aims

In the Vienna conference, museums are defined as important for study, education and enjoyment. These are important aims for the museum.

• Study: the museum had to study and to do research about the works in the museum.
• Education: because the museum should be the building where young people have to go to learn a part of their own story.
• Enjoyment (diletto): because it is a space open also to people looking not only for education, but who want to look at beautiful objects important for their history. Like “museo della moda in Florence", museum like testimony of the culture (in the large sense of the term).

Example was a natural collection of American people living in the 19th century. Here is an example on the importance of collecting. The aim of collecting is typical of human beings, and it’s a typical behavior of all populations all around the world.

Museum’s constituent elements

• Collection
• Public: if no one visits a museum, it will be closed.
• Staff: there is someone working inside the museum.
• Location: inside the building is kept the collection.

Museum function (esame)

In the museum there are two functions:

• Collection-oriented functions: that is regarding the collection. Like study, documentation, conservation, exhibition.
• Audience-oriented functions: that is concerning the people who are visiting the museum. Like communication, welcoming visitors, educational activities.

Guideline act on technical and scientific criteria and standards for the operation and development of museums

In this, made by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities in 2001, you can read how important is the scientific research of communication, conservation, documentation, acquisition.

A little history of the Italian state is lost about the museum. Documentation in every museum is divided in:

• Inventory: the number the object take when it arrived in museum
• Catalogue: the little writing about this object in order to describe the object itself

The first decree that defined the rules for compiling the catalogue is the Royal Decree, 1889 in 14 June 1923. Again the Royal Decree in 1917, 26th August 1927, we have the regulations for the safekeeping, conservation and accounting of artistic, archeological, bibliographical and scientific material - (what is kept in every collection, library and museum in Italy, and also in archives).

In 1969 in Italy the Central Catalogue Office was born (Quando è nato? Esame). In 1975 the Central Institute for Catalog and Documentation (ICCD) was born.

About Conservation, Documentation and Restauration, the most important date is 1939, when the Central Institute for Restoration (ICR) was born, who changed his name, but from 2019 returned to the ICR. ICR was founded by Cesare Brandi, who was the man who wrote the “Italian Restoration Charter” in 1972. In Italy the first ministry of Cultural Heritage was Giovanni Spadolini, in 1975.

21/09/2023 Museology, museography and museum technology

Three disciplines concerning museums.

Museology (museologia)

Is a name which came from Latin, before from Greek. It is the science of museum. This name means the knowledge of the museums concerning and looking at the museum as a cultural history of the museum. Museums are considered as a cultural institution, and the museums have many tasks towards our society. That means that museology is the most scientific and theoretical science, and is intrepid towards museums is peculiarity concerning the knowledge of museums. It’s the science looking into the history of museums, and how you can imagine about a museum.

Some concepts in museology

The purpose of a museum is its specific raison d’etre in the broader field of cultural and political institutions created by society.

• National identity: A museum has a purpose to give visitors the concept of national identity. The museum has the beauty to transmit to the next generation the characteristics of the town where this museum was born. That means that the Uffizi museum is different from a museum in France. Because every museum is the conclusion (the new life of things - vedi lezione prima) of a long history which defines the stories of the single works of art the museum is keeping. For this reason the museum of every nation is the history of this nation.
• Cultural production (past, modern and present): What the Uffizi are telling us? It is one of the important museums in Italy, telling us the history of the collection of the Medici family, but also the history of the town of Florence, which became the new capital of Italy in the second half of the nineteenth century. And the Uffizi tell us about the great loss of artworks all around Italy, after the arrival of the troops of Napoleon. Because many works of art, kept in churches or in private properties, were taken in Paris, and many of them return to Italy, but not all. In the Louvre in Paris you can see many artworks, already kept in Italian collections. Museology is concerned with the cultural production. Like in the Louvre or National Gallery in London. Cultural production is interesting for museology, because the collection was born in Italy (Mantova), they were sold to Germany and England, and this is interesting for museology.
• The promotion of a territory: Museology has also to promote a territory. Remind what means for Genoa the weeks of the Rolli. In the middle of October, you can see many...