New Horizons for Asian Museums and Museology

Cultural Heritage; Achaeolog

Whose Community Museum Is It? Collaboration Strategies and Identity Affirmation in the Amache Museum

The Amache Museum is a preservation project that has multiple communities involved in preserving Amache history. It represents Japanese American as well as American history and is owned and maintained by the Amache Preservation Society (APS), which is comprised of local Granada High School students. By approaching the Amache Museum as a community museum and noticing its distinct collaborative strategy, this thesis investigates the community collaborations and the identity affirmations within the museum, and addresses the question of whose community museum the Amache Museum represents. My research explores the overlapping conceptual models of the Amache Museum: community museum and ecomuseum, and utilizes the realities of a difficult heritage to discuss identity affirmation through the use of individual and collective memories. Through participant observations, archival research, semi-structured interviews, and a questionnaire survey, this thesis identifies three community collaborations, as well as community members\u27 thoughts of the importance of the museum for the Japanese Americans and Granada community. Recognizing that the museum and Amache site may be incorporated in the U.S. National Park Service in the future, this thesis also presents a glance at the potential positive and negative aspects if the governing agency is involved, and provides recommendations for future management

Representing Korean Buddhist art and architecture - a 3D animated documentary installation

This practice-led research 'One Mind' - seeks to represent Korean Buddhist architectural aesthetics and Buddhist spiritual ideas using the animated documentary genre as a form of creative representation. It is intended that the piece be shown either as an installation in a gallery, or within a museum or cultural exhibition context. The key goal is to offer this digital artwork to European audiences, in a spirit of engendering the same feeling state as when present in the real monastery, encouraging an understanding of the sacred, and experiencing a form of transcendence. My art work in some ways functions as a digital restoration of sacred architecture outside its real environment and context, and seeks to document cultural heritage and knowledge. One Mind is different from a classic form of documentary, though, because it does not echo the idea of documentary based on live-action footage as a mode of non-fiction record and expression. I have particularly stressed the suggestiveness of the architectural aesthetics and the philosophic principles embedded in the environment. I have sought to bring my own subjective artistic interpretation to Korean Buddhism accordingly, resisting typical character animation and classical narrative, seeking instead, to encourage the viewer to be part of the environment. I focus on the meaning in Buddhist buildings and the landscape they are part of, and dramatise the environment, using the poetic tone of the voice over performance, the sound track of Buddhist chanting, and the visual effects and perspectives of computer generated imagery. This digital visualisation of the Buddhist s spiritual world is informed by a Buddhist s traditional way of life, but, most importantly, by my own past experience, feelings and memory of the Buddhist monastery compound, as a practising artist. My thesis is categorised into eight chapters. Chapter One offers an overview of the aims and objectives of my project. Chapter Two identifies my research questions and my intended methodology. Chapter Three focuses on important background knowledge about Korea s natural and cultural aspects and conditions. Chapter Four offers an analysis of the issue of the Korean cultural identity, suggesting that a more authentic image of Korea and Korean-ness is available in the philosophy and spiritual agenda of Buddhism. Chapter Five addresses the practical ways in which digital restoration of architecture has taken place, identifying three previous cases which both resemble and differ from my own project. Chapter Six looks at the specific characteristics of Korean Seon Buddhism and architecture, and engages with three theoretical approaches about the spatial composition of the monastery, and the ways it may help in constructing the monastery in a digital environment. Chapter Seven offers an evaluation and validation of my artwork, having adopted the approach of creating an animated spiritual documentary to reveal Buddhist philosophy and experience as a model of Korean cultural identity. Chapter Eight offers some conclusions about my intention, process and outcomes

Assessment of plastics in the National Trust: a case study at Mr Straw's House

The National Trust is a charity that cares for over 300 publically accessible historic buildings and their contents across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. There have been few previous studies on preservation of plastics within National Trust collections, which form a significant part of the more modern collections of objects. This paper describes the design of an assessment system which was successfully trialled at Mr Straws House, a National Trust property in Worksop, UK. This system can now be used for future plastic surveys at other National Trust properties. In addition, the survey gave valuable information about the state of the collection, demonstrating that the plastics that are deteriorating are those that are known to be vulnerable, namely cellulose nitrate/acetate, PVC and rubber. Verifying this knowledge of the most vulnerable plastics enables us to recommend to properties across National Trust that these types should be seen as a priority for correct storage and in-depth recording

Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and Money: Technology-Based Art and the Dynamics of Sustainability

Proposes innovative new approaches and models for art and technology institutions, and provides details for an "Arts Lab," a unique hybrid art center and research lab

The London Creative Industries

This lecture draws from the Creative Industries Observatory research on the London creative industries and in particular provides some initial insights into the networks and relationships which exist including organisational structure, size, and location. Consideration has been given to clustering and markets. In particular attention has been paid to the levels of creativity found in the London creative industries and the possible implications for public policy intervention. These findings are based on a shared definitional framework, and can be compared with other cities