MUSEOLOGY

The course forms part of the art-historical core teaching in Arts Management. It is designed for students with a humanistic and/or an arts management education at the B.A. level.
It provides 6 CFU and is the first part of a 12-CFU course ("MUSEOLOGY & PUBLIC SPACES ARCHITECTURE", EM3A08). The second part of the course ("ARCHITECTURE") is taught in the second term.

- Awareness of the relations among museum policies, cultural trends and political agendas in the present and in the past.

- Familiarity with the keywords of the museological debate of the last decades.

- Ability to understand different collection and display strategies concerning the institutions of preservation and historical memory.

No specific requirement for this course

The course consider museums and other institutions devoted to heritage preservation and historical memory from the point of view of cultural history. It complements the courses in art history, aesthetics and sociology through a specific focus on the theoretical discourse concerning practices such as collecting and displaying artifacts.

Its main topics are:
- forms and theories of the accumulation, display and re-interpretation of objects;
- introduction to the discourses concerning museums as institutions, communities and media;
- best-practice examples concerning places, agents and institutions devoted to heritage preservation and historical memory (not only art museums).

A. Assigned Readings

Attending Students
The readings discussed in class and shared through the platform moodle.unive.it

Non-Attending Students
The readings shared through moodle.unive.it and, additionally:
Sharon Macdonald, “A Companion to Museum Studies”, Blackwell, Oxford 2006 (General introduction and parts I and VI with their own introductory essays)


B. Optional Readings
Claire Farago, Donald Preziosi (eds), "Grasping the World: the Idea of the Museum", Ashgate, Aldershot 2004

The evaluation considers the group presentation (see below, Teaching methods) and the results of the final in-class exam. The final in-class exam (lasting 80 minutes) consists of open-answer questions. It verifies the students' understanding of the topics discussed in class, presented on moodle and considered in the assigned readings.
Books, notes and electronic devices are not admitted during the exam.


The final note considers:

70%: in-class exam, questions concerning the issues discussed during the course and in the online materials; non-attending students will be tested on additional readings that shall be agreed with the teacher;
30%: presentations and interventions during the seminar (see below, Teaching methods). Non-attending students will answer an additional question during the in-class exam. This question concerns their visit to a specific museum which shall be chosen together with the teacher.

Lectures and seminar. Further materials (sources, bibliography, links, PowerPoint presentations projected in class) will be shared through the platform moodle (http://moodle.unive.it ).

The participants are expected to visit a selection of Venetian museums outside of the teaching hours. They will be divided into small groups: each group will analyse the narrative proposed by a specific museum according to a common scheme that will be discussed in the first classes. In the final classes the groups will present their work in seminar format.

English

Please note that the timetable of the course was modified at the beginning of September.

written and oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Poverty and inequalities" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development