In a very broad sense, the issue I have chosen to use this blog to focus on is: the social contract that museums have with the public. That is, I want to explore the relationships museums have with their patrons and how these relationships have evolved over time. I'm interested in the implications of being a government-funded institution and the responsibilities museums have to their audiences.
My interest in this topic was piqued by John Cotton Dana's article, "The Gloom of the Museum." Dana's discussion of the atmosphere and location of museums, the arrangement of objects within, the monetary worth and rarity of a museum artifacts, and the duties museums have to their audiences have caused me to reassess some of the experiences I have had in museums.
I'm still considering subsets of this broad topic, but since my college thesis research was centered heavily around Nazi Germany's exhibition of entartete Kunst, or "degenerate art," "Cultural Gatekeeping" seems like a good place to begin. The issues surrounding the "Hide/Seek" exhibit by David Wojnarowicz come to mind immediately, but I plan on exploring more instances of censorship and propagana within our cultural institutions.
'Till then.
i look forward to seeing how you apply this idea of the social contract to the work you do over the semester. Museums do indeed have a duty to their visitors; I hope you can weave this into your final project (and bring it up at our site visits).
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