The Museum in the Cultural Sciences Collecting, Displaying, and Interpreting Material Culture in the Twentieth Century |
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Editor:
| Miller, Peter N. |
Author:
| Fisher, Annika |
Series title: | Bard Graduate Center - Cultural Histories of the Material World Ser. |
ISBN: | 978-1-941792-16-2 |
Publication Date: | Aug 2021 |
Publisher: | Bard Graduate Center
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Book Format: | Hardback |
List Price: | USD $65.00 |
Book Description:
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In early twentieth-century Berlin, Wilhelm von Bode sparked a controversy with his sweeping proposal to reorganize a group of the city's museums. Debates about the role and structure of museums played out in 1907 and 1910 with two striking series of articles that appeared in the journal
Museumskunde: Journal for the Administration and Technology of Public and Private Collections. The first was a six-part essay by Otto Lauffer on history museums, and the second was a ten-part...
More DescriptionIn early twentieth-century Berlin, Wilhelm von Bode sparked a controversy with his sweeping proposal to reorganize a group of the city's museums. Debates about the role and structure of museums played out in 1907 and 1910 with two striking series of articles that appeared in the journal Museumskunde: Journal for the Administration and Technology of Public and Private Collections. The first was a six-part essay by Otto Lauffer on history museums, and the second was a ten-part piece by Oswald Richter regarding ethnographic museums. Together, they initiated a century of significant dialogue.
The Museum in the Cultural Sciences offers the first full English translations of these articles, which remain influential in conversations about the implications of art, historical, and ethnographic museums. They show how sophisticated the discussion of museums and museum display was in the early twentieth century and how much could be gained from revisiting these reflections today. Accompanied by short commentaries from museum professionals, these articles offer an intervention into and intensification of the current debate about the function and purpose of museums.