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Title: | Grassroots museums : how curators of micro museums interpret and present their community : Mediterranean historical imaginary |
Authors: | Vella, John (2020) |
Keywords: | Museum curators -- Mediterranean Region -- Attitudes Museums and community -- Mediterranean Region Group identity -- Mediterranean Region |
Issue Date: | 2020 |
Citation: | Vella, J. (2020). Grassroots museums: how curators of micro museums interpret and present their community: Mediterranean historical imaginary (Doctoral dissertation). |
Abstract: | This thesis discusses ways curators of grassroots micro museums interpret and present their communities and the Mediterranean historical imaginary in their roles as curators, something which emerges from the constant re-negotiation of identity with the communities they speak from, for and to. Twenty-three micro museums were studied to find out the practices, approaches and methods curators used to represent communities located in Mediterranean islands. The micro museums studied were situated in the Maltese Islands, Sicily (Italy), Mallorca (Spain), Corfu and Crete (Greece), and Brač and Murter (Croatia). The focus was on micro museums in the Mediterranean because the objective was to find out how this context impacts on the museum model and philosophy adopted by curators. Comparisons were focused between Maltese and Sicilian micro museums owing to historic connections and geographic proximity. An ethnographic approach incorporating visual methodology was used to study curatorial practices connected to the interpretation and presentation of the represented communities. An initial approach was adopted to find out which micro museums represented which community, how the community was presented to the public, which facet of its identity was given importance, and why and how it was interpreted to the public through the information and narratives used. The researcher paid attention to the narratives and information provided, assessed whether this changed according to the audience involved. He also considered with whom negotiation practices were adopted, which sources were referred to and relied upon for the construction of information and narratives presented alongside exhibits, displays and media relaying information about the represented community. Curators were asked to identify practices which they adopted to meet their museum’s objectives and satisfy community-oriented objectives, and whether they participated and acted in matters concerning community debates and issues. Participants were asked whether grassroots micro museums and state/institutional micro museums adopted the same or different techniques, and why if this occurred. This thesis investigated the symbiotic impact different types of museums have on each other, and whether or not grassroots micro museums add to, or investigate subject matters which other bigger museums do not. This means that curators of museums might in one way or another be responding to what other museums might not be doing, underlining an implicit networking between museums, even when this is not acknowledged. Another set of questions concerned the significance, interpretation and presentation of the Mediterranean to represented communities and the Mediterranean historical imaginary held by the community made manifest through the museum’s collection and representations. As underlined above, identities are negotiated and re-interpreted on a collective basis, and hence are never static. A critical social theory approach was adopted in conjunction with ethnography. Critical social theory proved useful in this research because it incorporates some of the issues embraced by Sociomuseology, which is a reflexive type of museology. Different methods tend to be adopted in ethnographies. The study was divided into two phases. In phase one, semi-structured, on site, face-to-face interviews were conducted with curators of the nine participant micro museums on the Maltese Islands and nine in the Ragusan Province (Sicily). In phase two, visual observations at the same Maltese and Sicilian museums were also conducted. This enabled the researcher to collect data on display layouts and how they were linked to community representation. Semiology and ethnographic discourse analysis were used to analyse these layouts. The main issues which emerged from the data gathered from these intensive interviews were guided by a questionnaire which was also sent to five museum curators found on other Mediterranean islands, so that the data could be compared with the data collected from the Maltese and Ragusan museums. In this study two types of grassroots micro museums emerged - independent and private micro museums. On the whole, curators envisioned the micro museum as an effective place for pedagogy, socialising, information dissemination, entertainment, and also as a means of expressing an identity and a way of safeguarding heritage and the knowledge of the community. Above all, curators of independent grassroots micro museums adopted practices which promoted the needs and interests of the community they represented and tended to voice the concerns of their communities both inside and outside the museum with the objective of bringing about social change. Grassroots micro museum curators tended to adopt a bottom-up approach, engaging community members through various activities, giving them the space and voice to re-negotiate representation of the community in which they were embedded. Curatorial roles and practices found at grassroots micro museums tended to be wider than those of the traditional museum curator and carried with them many more responsibilities. This was because the issue were not mainly the artefacts and pedagogy, but the need to bring about the necessary social change within the community the museums speak for, with and from. Curators of micro museums care about presenting ‘authenticity’ and about being consistent. They however found it hard to describe the Mediterranean through their museology. A Mediterranean model and philosophy of museology and curatorial practices however did emerge. The curators of grassroots micro museums tended to adopt a social activist role since their sole aim for the setting up of the museum tended to be the promotion of the welfare of the communities represented by the micro museum. It might have started from the need to safeguard community heritage, but with time it became linked with other issues. Further research needs to be carried out in order to find out whether this museology is adopted by other micro museums across the world. This research also found that curators of grassroots micro museums have more leeway when it came to experimenting with different approaches to museology since a number were self-taught and were not hindered by curatorial traditions deriving from academia. This was evident from the heritage they chose to safeguard, and the imaginaries and images which they adopted. They all departed from traditional types. The final chapter of this thesis discusses a number of recommendations which emerged from this study. Some of the recommendations were generic and others were applicable to individual participant museums. |
Description: | PH.D. |
URI: | https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/74555 |
Appears in Collections: | Dissertations - InsMI - 2020 |
Files in This Item:
File | Description | Size | Format | |
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John Vella Ph.D.pdf | 8.35 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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