Slides from the first session of the course "The Recurated Museum" by Sytze Van Herck & Christopher Morse at the University of Luxembourg (Summer Semester, 2020).

1. The Recurated Museum:
Museums as Producers of Meaning
Sytze Van Herck & Christopher Morse

2. SYTZE VAN HERCK
sytze.vanherck@uni.lu | Centre for Contemporary & Digital History (C2DH)
CHRISTOPHER MORSE
christopher.morse@uni.lu | Centre for Contemporary & Digital History (C2DH)
& Human-Computer Interaction Research Group

3. ?INTRODUCE YOURSELF
moodle.uni.lu
1. What is your background?
2. What interests you about this course, and
museums in general?
3. What do you expect to learn in this class?

4. User
Experience
Design
Human-
Computer
Interaction
Museum
Studies
(Digital)
History
Art
History

5. 04/03/2020
Digital Collections, Exhibits,
& Education
11/03/2020
Collections Management &
Sustainability
18/03/2020
Collections Communication
& Storytelling
25/03/2020
Brainstorm
01/04/2020
Museum Exhibition Design
through UX
08/04/2020
Copyright & Fair Use
22/04/2020
Lab Session
29/04/2020
Jeff Steward (Harvard Art
Museums)
06/05/2020
Wouter van der Horst (We
Share Culture)
13/05/2020
Lab Session
20/05/2020
Blandine Landau (University
of Luxembourg)
27/05/2020
Exhibition
19/02/2020
Museums as Producers
of Meaning
26/02/2020
Museums, Identity,
Community
COURSE SCHEDULE
F
e
b
M
a
r
A
p
r
M
a
y
Guest Lecturer

6. Hypothes.is
Some of your assignments will require you to read articles online and
annotate them using the hypothes.is platform. The software is free, and
you can sign up for an account at the following address:
https://web.hypothes.is/

7. highlight any text within
a web document or pdf
annotate freely using the
hypothesis interface1
2

8. Hypothesis Tutorial

9. Announcements
Rijksstudio Award

10. If you compared a museum to anything else,
anything at all, what would it be?
www.menti.com code: XXXXXX

11. The majority take it as axiomatic that
museums are full of holy relics which
refer to a mystery which excludes them
(Berger, 1972).

12. Of the places listed below which does a
museum remind you of most?
Church
Library
Lecture Hall
Department Store
Church & Library
Church and Lecture hall
Library and Lecture hall
None of these
No reply
66 45 30.5
9 34 28
- 4 4.5
- 7 2
9 2 4.5
4 2 -
- - -
4 2 19.5
8 4 9
Manual
Workers
White Collar
Workers
Professional
and upper
managerial
Source: Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Darbel, L’Amour de l’Art, Editions de Minuit, Paris 1969, Appendix 5, table 4

13. What is a …
?

14. Are these museums?

15. Are these museums?

16. Are these museums?

17. What is a museum?
“Museums include, but are not limited to, aquariums, arboretums,
art museums, botanical gardens, children's/youth museums,
general museums (...), historic houses/sites, history museums,
natural history/anthropology museums, nature centers,
planetariums, science/technology centers, specialized museums
(...), and zoological parks.”
(IMLS Eligibility Criteria)

18. But we’ve come to think of museums as
the flagship vessels of our collective
desire for self-improvement. Ideally,
they are benevolent purveyors of
education: open, accessible places for
communal self-definition.

19. What is a museum?
“Museums are considered the most trustworthy source
of information in America, rated higher than local
papers, nonprofits researchers, the U.S. government,
or academic researchers (...)”
(Kennicott, 2018)

20. What is a museum?
Knowledge generation is complex, socially situated,
learner-centered and requires interaction, conversation,
and reflection.
(McLean, 2011)

21. What is the role of a curator?

22. "Curators are highly knowledgeable, experienced, or educated
in a discipline relevant to the museum's purpose or mission."
- (AAM, 2009)

23. What is the role of a curator?
up-to-date, original research,
contribute to field or profession
recommendations for acquiring
and deaccessioning objects in
collections
identify and document history of
materials in the collection
develop and organise exhibitions
contribute to programs and
educational materials
provide public use of the collection
develop or contribute to research
(AAM, 2009)

24. What is the role of a curator?
Research, scholarship, and integrity
Interpretation
Acquisition, care, and disposal
Collection access and use
(AAM, 2009)

25. One time specialists need to become multi-tasking
generalists. Instead of a fount of knowledge, the
curator needs to direct inquiries to make
discoveries themselves. The relevance of a curator
lies in their knowledge and expertise.
(Nielsen, 2017)

26. What is the role of a curator?
research into collections
promoting visitor and community involvement
marketing responsibilities
(Nielsen, 2017)

27. What is the role of a curator?
Novice-expert polarity
Assumption that expertise inherently confers authority and power
renders conversation and exploration impossible.
(McLean, 2011)

28. What is the role of a curator?
Preserve
safeguarding the heritage of art
Selector
Connect to Art History
Displaying or arranging
the work
Preservation
acquisition, selection, allocation of budget
Communication
Decide what’s displayed, shape viewing
experience
Study
(Neuendoft, 2016)

29. What is the role of a curator?
The dual capacity of acting as a tastemaker and validator has
resulted in a small group of prominent “star curators” gaining
influential positions.
(Neuendoft, 2016)
What are the ethical implications of the increasing influence of curators?
Consider who is included in exhibitions (and therefore who is excluded), as well as what visitors get
access to and what remains hidden.

30. Other museum responsibilities
Marketing/Communication
understanding audiences, motivating visitation, reaching potential visitors,
i.e. through social media.
Education
inspiring people around your mission, proving that education is entertaining.
Visitor Operations
creating a satisfying experience increases returning visitors and endorsements.
(Dillenschneider, 2019)

31. Other museum responsibilities
Program or Community Engagement
reaching new audiences, change the type of person to visit, cultivating a culture of
diversity and inclusion in the entire organisation.
Membership
cultivating a community of supporters, members and donors are motivated by the
visitation cycle, they renew when they visit again, members are also the most
satisfied visitors.
(Dillenschneider, 2019)

32. The Attention Economy

33. In the main currents of psychological
research, attention is treated as a resource
— a person has only so much of it...
Attention is the thing that is most one’s
own: in the normal course of things, we
choose what to pay attention to, and in a
very real sense this determines what is real
for us; what is actually present to our
consciousness. Appropriations of our
attention are then an especially intimate
matter.

34. The Experience Economy

35. From now on, leading-edge
companies — whether they sell to
consumers or businesses — will
find that the next competitive
battleground lies in staging
experiences.

36. Generally, we find that the richest experiences —
such as going to Disney World or gambling in a
Las Vegas casino — encompass aspects of all
four realms, forming a “sweet spot” around the
area where the spectra meet. But still, the
universe of possible experiences is vast.
Eventually, the most significant question
managers can ask themselves is “What specific
experience will my company offer?” That
experience will come to define their business.
(Pine & Gilmore, 1998)

37. As we move from the experience
economy to the attention
economy toward a distraction
economy, how will museums of
the future keep our attention? Or,
will there be different museums
for distinct states of mind: the
museum for focused people, the
museum for distracted people,
and so on and so forth?
(Decter, 2018)

38. HYPER-REALITY (Matsuda Keiichi)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs

39. 1) Presents a variety of materials and experiences catered to different interests,
ages, technical levels, and educational backgrounds.
1) Ability to connect personally with objects, ideas, and experiences provided.
1) For those visiting in groups, the sense of having a shared experience.
(Falk & Dierking, 2008)
Visitor Expectations

40. 4) There is an inherent sense of integrity to museum objects.
5) The visit is a free-choice learning experience, personalizable to one’s own
particular interests.
(Falk & Dierking, 2008)
Visitor Expectations

41. Learning is a continuous process that begins before the visitor arrives at the
museum door and continues long after. The extent to which a museum facilitates
connections between prior and subsequent experiences and encourages utilization
of other learning resources in the community is the extent to which the museum
experience will be a totally successful learning experience.
(Falk & Dierking, 2000)
Visitor Expectations

42. What is a recurated museum?
As established museums struggle to be less traditional, more user-
friendly, more about experience and less about education, a whole
new crop of pop-ups, themed spaces and commercial ventures
embraces the word “museum” and all the supposed dignity it entails.
- (Kennicott, 2018)
How would you define a “recurated museum”?
Think of this definition as the mission statement of this course.

43. Assignments
DEADLINE
20.02 Start the discussion
21.02 Introduce yourself
26.02 Read & Annotate
7 Reasons Why Museums Should Share More Experiences, Less Information
What, if anything, is a museum?

44. Bibliography
American Association of Museums Curators Committee. 2009. A Code of Ethics for Curators.
Beatty, “Running the Numbers on Attendance at History Museums in the US,” Hyperallergic, March 1, 2018.
Crawford, M. 2015. The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction. New York: Princeton University Press.
Decter, J. “Will There Still Be a Future When the Museum of the Future Arrives?” In Gerald Bast, Elias G. Carayannis, David F. J. Campbell
(Eds.), The Future of Museums (pp. 15-36). Springer, Cham.
Dilenschneider, Colleen. 2019. “Stepping Out of Silos: 5 Things That Are Everyone’s Job in Cultural Organizations,” Know Your Own Bone.
Falk, J. & Dierking, L. 2000. Learning from Museums: Visitor Experiences and the Making of Meaning. Oxford: AltaMira Press.
Falk, J. & Dierking, L. 2008. “Enhancing Visitor Interaction and Learning with Mobile Technologies”. In Loïc Tallon & Kevin Walker (Eds.),
Digital Technologies and The Museum Experience, (pp. 19-34). Plymouth: AltaMira Press.

45. Bibliography
Kennicott, “Is it a museum or not? The question is worth asking,” Washington Post, October 12, 2018.
Jane K. Nielsen. 2017. “Museum communication and storytelling: articulating understandings within the museum structure.” Museum
Management and Curatorship, 32:5, 440-455.
McLean, Kathleen. 2011. “Whose Questions, Whose Conversations,” in Letting Go? Sharing Historical Authority in a User-Generated World, 70-
79.
Mekler, E. D., & Hornbæk, K. 2019. A Framework for the Experience of Meaning in Human-Computer Interaction. Proceedings of the 2019 CHI
Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’19, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300455
Neuendoft. 2016. “Art Demystified: What Do Curators Actually Do?,” ArtNet News.
Pine II, J., & Gilmore, J. 1998. “The Experience Economy”. Harvard Business Review, July-August 1998.

46. Photo by Lizzie George on Unsplash
Photo by shota James on Unsplash
Photo by Vjapratama on Pexels Photo by Ivy Son on Pexels
Photo by Valeriia Miller on PexelsPhoto by Daniel Frese on Pexels

47. Photo by Tristan Colangelo on Pexels
Photo by Nien Tran Dinh on Pexels
Photo by Riccardo Bresciani on Pexels
Photo by Scheier
hr. on Unsplash
Photo by Philip David on Unsplash
Photo by John Jackson on Unsplach
Photo by Alex Motoc on Unsplash

48. Painting by Nils Schilmarkl on Europeana
Photo by Geordanna Cordero on
Unsplash