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Shall I do this MOOC? Leicester Museum Studies

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Edited by Steve Bamlett, Tuesday, 2 Jan 2018, 15:12

Three words on Museums:

1.     Challenging

2.     Open

3.     Facilitating

When you have posted your three words, consider the following:

  • Do they refer to museums as buildings, exhibition spaces, or to museum objects/artefacts? All of these? Something else?

They refer to a wishful notion of the experience a museum might offer but they also carry with them a secondary expectation that, in my own past, museums could be experienced as having quite the opposite effect in every way – as spaces that might be too self-contained, forbidding and closed (mentally & emotionally). In fact, the three words are the obverse of the words that I FIRST thought in response to the exercise. My final words were the result of forcing myself to be more positive.

  • Do they best describe your view of museums of the past, museums of today, or the possibilities of museums in the future?

In the light of the above, very much the future. But that future is predicated on interesting and diverse experiences in places like Yorkshire Sculpture Park, the Hepworth Gallery or even the Bishop Auckland Mining Art Gallery.

  • Can you identify a time in your life when you may have formed those associations?

As for the positives, only recently and as a result of becoming interested again through positive experiences that have excited me. My thoughts about the worst experience of museums would be in buildings and organisation and exhibition spaces that remain locked in with symbols of exclusion – the key example being the Bowes Musuem (although I see that even here changes are beginning to be made).


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