Note: This set of weekly topics/readings is provisional and may change. You are responsible for checking the online syllabus weekly for updated reading assignments, as well as off site experiences (be sure to refresh your browser to see the most recent version). Readings will be selected from those listed by the instructor through discussion with participants. Readings are due before the class each week and participants are required to post responses to discussion prompts to WEBCT by Tuesday at noon.

week: 1  |  2  |  3  |  4  | 5  |  6  |  7  |  8  |  9  |  10

Week One (Sept 28, in MCC 133):  Introduction

• Course overview
• Research and Exhibtion Development Project
  

Week Two (Oct 5, in MCC 133): Technologies of Representation and the Visualization of Modern Nations

• Arjun Appadurai "The Right to Research," Globalisation, Societies and Education Volume 4, 2006 - Issue 2 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14767720600750696
• Benedict Anderson, "Census, Map, Museum" Chapter 10 in Imagined Communities

additional readings:

• Walter Benjamin, "A Small History of Photography"
• Robert Smithson "Some Void Thoughts on Museums"
• Bella Dicks, Culture on Display, "Ch 1: A Culture of Display," p16-40 (Digital copy linked to library catalog--not e-reserves)
  
  

Week Three (Oct 12): Transparency and Access                

• Simi Linton, "Introduction" and Ch 2 "Reassigning Meaning" in Claiming Disability, Knowledge and Identity.
• Richard Sandell, "Displaying Difference: Revealing and Interpreting the Hidden History of Disability" in

  Museums, Prejudice and The Reframing of Difference

• Georger Marcus, "Making Transparency Visible: Centre William Prappad, Headquarters of the World Trade Orgnaization, Geneva," in Curatorial Dreams, eds, Butler and Lehrer

Optional Reading:

• Wendy Constantine, "Museums and the ‘Digital Curb Cut’" http://www.museotech.com/?page_id=28
• Seeing beyond Sight: Photos by Blind Teenagers http://www.seeingbeyondsight.org/links/index.htm
• Geoffrey Swan, Teresa Meade, J. Douglass Klein,  and David Serlin, "Licking Disability: Reflections on the Politics of Postage Stamps"
• David Serlin, "Making Disability Public: An Interview with Katherine Ott"
• Blind at the Museum (Exhibition notes)   
• "Rethinking Disability Representation in Museums and Galleries" Jocelyn Dodd, Richard Sandell, Debbie Jolly and Ceri Jones
• Diane F. Britton, Barbara Floyd, and Patricia A. Murphy, "Overcoming Another Obstacle: Archiving a Community’s Disabled History"
• Amanda Kyser Bryan, "New Museum Theory In Practice: A Case Study Of The American Visionary Art Museum And The Representation Of Disability"
• Rosemarie Garland Thomson, "Dares to Stares: Disable Women Performance Artists & the Dynamics of Staring," Bodies in Commotion, Eds, Carrie Sandall and Philip Auslander (30-41)
• David Hevey, "Ch3: Into the Grotto of Charity Advertising," (pp 18-29), and "Ch4: Out of the Grotto," (pp 30-52), The Creatures Time Forgot "

 

Week Four (Oct 19): Display and Struggles Over Space and for Community
(proposal: Meet at Chicano Park)

• Chicano Park:
  • Read Mark Simon Rodriguez, "Art and the Movement: Chicano Murals and Community Space" Chapter 5 in Rethinking the Chicano Movement available on TritonEd and through UCSD library
  • Find further background on the murals that might help you understand the images and context at:
    • The Chicano Park website which offers
    • images and descriptions of each mural: http://www.chicanoparksandiego.com/murals/
    • history of the park: http://www.chicanoparksandiego.com/history/index.html
• Tyree Guyton, "The Heidelberg Project" (Detroit, 1986-present) read and watch video(s) about it at:
  • http://www.heidelberg.org/who_we_are/artist.html
• Rick Lowe, "Project Rowe Houses" (Houston, 1993-present) read and watch video(s) about it at:
  • Creative Time article
  • Project website
  • MacArthur video interview
  • Houston Chronicle Article
• Paul Chan, "Waiting for Godot in New Orleans" (2006-7) read and watch video(s) about it at:
  • Video Interview with Chan about the project
  • Creative Time's descriptive website
  • NPR video story on the project
  • NYTimes article
  • Chan's Artist Statement

Further Reading/Viewing:

• Joshua Decter, "Art and theCultural Contradictions ofUrban Regeneration, Social Justiceand Sustainability: Transforma Projects and Prospect.l in Post-Katrina New Orleans" (Triton Ed)
• Elizabeth S. Hawley, "Art, Activism, and Democracy: Wochenklausur’s Social Interventions" (Triton Ed)

Week Five (Oct 26): Curatorial Impulses

Meet at Geisel Library (in the Seuss Room)

• James Clifford, "On Collecting Art and Culture"
• Charles Wilson Peale: "To the Citizens of the United States"

Further Reading:

• Paula Findlen, "The Museum: It's Clasical Etymology and Renaissance Geneology" (MS 23-50)
• Margaret Lindauer, "Reading the World: Native Histories at the Bosque Redondo Memorial, New Mexico," in ," Curatorial Dreams, eds, Butler and Lehrer

 

Week Six (Nov 2) Trip to LA Museums

Reading: Interpretation and Museum Education |  Difficult Displays and Exhibits

• Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, "Exhibitions and Interpretation: Museum Pedagogy and Cultural Change" (e-reserves)
• Bonnell J. and Simon, R. L. (2007 July). “Difficult” Exhibitions and Intimate Encounters. Museum and Society, 5(2): 65-85.
• Roger Simon, "The Terrible Gift: Difficult Memories for the Twenty First Century," in Curatorial Dreams, eds, Butler and Lehrer

Further Reading:

• Tony Bennet, "Speaking to the Eyes," Ch 2 in The Politics of Display, ed, Sharon MacDonald (e-reserve under MacDonald)
• Gretchen Jennings and Maureen McConnell, "The Unexhibitable: A Conversation" (PDF)
• Matti Bunzl, "But Is It Art?: Not Really," in Curatorial Dreams, eds, Butler and Lehre
• Chandra Bhimull, "The Alchemy of Flight: Race, Mobility, Humanity," in Curatorial Dreams, eds, Butler and Lehrer

Week Seven (Nov 9) Bodies on Display Meet at Geisel Library (Classroom #1 Room)

• Manon Parry, "abNorma: Bodies in Medicine and Culture," in Curatorial Dreaming, eds, Butler and Lehrer.

Week Eight (Nov 16): Globalization and Display

Meet at Geisel Library (in the Seuss Room)

• Gustavo Buntinx, "Communities of Sense/Communities of Sentiment: Globalization and the Museum Void in an Extreme Periphery" (MF 219-241)
• François Lionnet, "The Mirror and the Tomb: Africa, Museums, and Memory" (MS 92-102)
• Webb Keane, "Money is No Object: Materiality, Desire and Modernity in Indonesian Society" (e-reserves)

• Holiday Dmitri, "Barbie’s Taiwanese Homecoming"

Further Reading:

• Franz Boas, "Museums of Ethnology and Their Classifications"
• Curtis M Hinsley, "The World As Marketplace: Commodification of the Exotic at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893"
• Christopher Looby, "The Constitution of Nature: Taxonomy as Politics in Jefferson, Peale and Bartram" (MS 143-157)
• Fabrice Grognet, "Ethnology: Science on Display" (MS 175-180)
• Zora Neale Hurston, "What White publishers Won't Print" (MS 216-219)
• Henrietta Lidchi, "The Poetics and Politics of Exhibiting Other Cultures" Ch 3 and associated readings A-E in Representation Stuart Hall et al,
• Coco Fusco, "The Other History of Intercultural Performance"
• Screening: The couple in the cage [videorecording] : a Guatinaui odyssey

Week Nine (Alternate meeting day/time TBA): Learning About and From The Canadian Museum for Human Rights: Toward a Pedagogy of Remembering Otherwise

• Angella Failler & Roger Simon R., "Curatorial Practice and learning from difficult knowledge" in The Idea of a Human Rights Museum edited by Busby, Muller, and Woolford, p 165-180
• A. Grzyb, "Curating Action: Comparative genocide exhibits and the call to action at Kigali Memorial Centre, The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Museo y Tolerancia," in The Idea of a Human Rights Museum edited by Busby, Muller, and Woolford, p 262- 280
• Terence Duff "Museums of 'Human Suffering' and the Struggle for Human Rights" (MS 117-122)
• Leslie Witz, "Transforming Museums on Postapartheid Tourist Routes" (MF 107-134)
• Ingrid Muan, "Musings on Museums from Phom Penh" (MF 157-179)
• Di Paolantionio, M. (2010.) A site of struggle, a site of conflicting pedagogical proposal: the debates over suitable commemorative form and content for ESMA. Journal of Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 6, 8, 25-42.

 

Week Ten (Nov 30): Historical Displays and the Politics of Memory

Meet at Geisel Library (in the Seuss Room)

• Thomas Gieryn, "Balancing Acts: Science, Enola Gay, and History Wars at The Smithsonian" Ch 12 in The Politics of Display, ed, Sharon MacDonald (e-reserve under MacDonald)
• Richard Sandell, "Purpose, media and message: The St. Mungo museum of religious life and art and the Anne Frank House"- Chapter 3 from Museums, prejudice and the reframing of difference (e-reserves)

Optional Reading:

• Ciraj Rassol, "Community Museums, Memory Politics, and Social Transformation in South Africa: History Possibilities, and Limits" (MF 286-321)
• Lisa Corrin, "Mining the Museum" (MS 381-397)
• François Lionnet, "The Mirror and the Tomb: Africa, Museums, and Memory" (MS 92-102)

Finals Week (Dec 7): FINAL Project Due

 

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Bibliography:

John H. Falk, Lynn D. Dierking- (2000). Learning from Museums: Visitor Experiences and the Making of Meaning. AltaMira Press

Ian Jared Miller & Harriet Ritvo (2013). The Nature of The Beasts: Empire and Exhibition At The Tokyo Imperial Zoo. University of California Press

Sharon Macdonald (2006). A Companion to Museum Studies. Wiley-Blackwell

Sharon Macdonald (1998). The Politics of Display:Museums, Science, Culture. Routledge

Sharon Macdonald (2002). Behind the Scenes at the Science Museum. Berg Publishers

Balzer, David (2014). Curationism: how curating took over the art world and everything else. Coach House Books

Richard Sandell (2002) Museums, Society, Inequality. Routledge

Suzanne Macleod, Laura Hourston Hanks, Jonathan Hale (2012). Museum Making: Narratives, Architectures, Exhibitions. Routledge

Erica Lehrer, Cynthia E. Milton, Monica Eileen Patterson, eds (2011). Curating Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in Public Places. Palgrave Macmillan UK

Douglas Crimp, (1994). On the Museum's Ruins,

 

 

 

 

Plans for Field Trips and Site Visits will be discussed in class. Some possible destinations:

• Balboa Park Museums: SD Museum of Art, Museum of Man, Mingei Museum, Natural History Museum, Museum of Photographic Art, World Beat Center, El Centro Cultural de la Raza
• San Dieog Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla
• Chicano Murals in Cesar Chavez Park
• A Mall
• The Zoo
• Los Angeles: Museum of Jurassic Technology, The Center for Land Use Interpretation, LA MOCA, LACMA