Museums and Galleries History Group Inaugural Symposium

Call for papers

The Museums and Galleries History Group will hold an inaugural one-day
symposium in London in summer 2003. The group is intended to provide a
platform for debate and contact among all those who seek to understand
museums and galleries from historical and theoretical perspectives. It is
hoped that the interests represented will be wide-ranging,
interdisciplinary and international, and that the group will also act as a
forum for considerations of the place of museum history within academic
discourse and its importance for current museum practice. The inaugural
symposium is intended to pave the way for the development of these
interests, to engage with new research and allow interested people to meet.

The day’s proceedings will be divided into four chaired sessions, each of
which will involve three 30-minute talks and 15-20 minutes of discussion.
The sessions are:

1. Museum makers

This session will include themes such as collecting, curatorship and the
roles of individuals, governments and other bodies in the formation and
development of museums.

2. Conserving the past

This session will look at the museum as an agent of conservation, including
themes such as the development of conservation as a museum practice,
historical approaches to conservation and the politics of conservation in
the museum.

3. Constructing museums and histories

This session will look at the construction of museums both in literal and
figurative senses, covering issues such as architecture, interior
decoration and the development of identities for museums. The theme of this
session will also cover questions of documentation, classification, display
and interpretation and their agency in the ‘construction’ of the past (or
pasts) and social identities.

4. Museums and their audiences

This session will look at themes such as audience development, museum
attitudes to audiences, exclusion, visitor behaviour and practices of
visiting.



One-page abstracts are invited for papers, which should involve new
research. Please include a brief personal statement, with full contact
information and a tentative assessment of audiovisual requirements for your
presentation. The deadline for abstract submission is Friday 14 February,
2003.

Abstracts should be sent by post or as e-mail attachments to Dr Chris
Whitehead, International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies,
University of Newcastle, Bruce Building, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE3 7RU
tel. 0191 2225985
e-mail [log in to unmask]

Please note that the symposium proceedings may be published.