The shape of things to come: museums in the technological landscape

No abstract

Promoting Value Practice in Museums Creates Impact

This article examines how museological value discussion can offer a tool for museum professionals to engage themselves in the current discourse regarding building sustainable futures. The focus of the article is on collection care and collection development. It describes the latest interview and workshop results regarding museum values in the field of collection development among Finnish museum professionals and students. In addition, it emphasizes the integration of theoretical knowledge and its practical application. Promoting and creating opportunities for value discussion among museum professionals increases the ability of these professionals to further engage in such value-related discourse with various stakeholders. Eventually, the benefits of this kind of value-based discussions are to be seen in the more coherent and focused ones regarding museological values between and among various parties, be they museum professionals, politicians, students or museum visitors. The initial idea for the interviews, and subsequently the workshops as well, emerged from a collection development survey conducted in 2012 among Finnish art museums, which was published in 2016 by the author. Based on the material analyzed at that time, it became clear that the issue of active values in Finnish museums would need further study.Peer reviewe

The Turtle Garden: Tan Kah Kee’s last spiritual world

This paper explores the role of diasporic subjects in China’s heritage-making through a case study of the Turtle Garden built by Tan Kah Kee in Xiamen, China. Tan is the first person with Overseas Chinese background who built museums in the P.R. China and has been regarded as a symbol of Overseas Chinese patriotism. This paper argues that the Turtle Garden, conceptualised as a postcolonial ‘carnivalesque’ space, is more than a civic museum for public education. It reflects the owner’s highly complex and sometimes conflicting museum outlook embedded in his life experience as a migrant, his encounter with (British) colonialism in Malaya, and integrated with his desire and despair about the Chinese Communist Party’s nation-building project in the 1950s. Rather than a sign of devotion to the socialist motherland as simplistically depicted in China’s discourse, the garden symbolises Tan’s last ‘spiritual world’ where he simultaneously engaged with soul-searching as a returned Overseas Chinese and alternative diasporic imagining of Chinese identities and nation. It brings to light the value of heritage-making outside centralised heritage discourses, and offers an invaluable analytical lens to disentangle the contested and ever shifting relationship between diasporic subjects, cultural heritage and nation-(re)building in the Chinese context and beyond

Crop Updates 2005 - Cereals

This session covers thirty six papers from different authors: WHEAT AGRONOMY 1. Optimum sowing time of new wheat varieties in Western Australia, Darshan Sharma, Brenda Shackley, Mohammad Amjad, Christine M. Zaicou-Kunesch and Wal Anderson, Department of Agriculture 2. Wheat varieties updated in ‘Flowering Calculator’: A model predicting flowering time, B. Shackley, D. Tennant, D. Sharma and C.M. Zaicou-Kunesch, Department of Agriculture 3. Plant populations for wheat varieties, Christine M. Zaicou-Kunesch, Wal Anderson, Darshan Sharma, Brenda Shackley and Mohammad Amjad, Department of Agriculture 4. New wheat cultivars response to fertiliser nitrogen in four major agricultural regions of Western Australia, Mohammad Amjad, Wal Anderson, Brenda Shackley, Darshan Sharma and Christine Zaicou-Kunesch, Department of Agriculture 5. Agronomic package for EGA Eagle Rock, Steve Penny, Department of Agriculture 6. Field evaluation of eastern and western wheats in large-scale farmer’s trials, Mohammad Amjad, Ben Curtis and Veronika Reck, Department of Agriculture 7. New wheat varieties for a changing environment, Richard Richards, CSIRO Plant Industry; Canberra 8. Farmers can profitably minimise exposure to frost! Garren Knell, Steve Curtin and David Sermon, ConsultAg 9. National Variety Trials, Alan Bedggood, Australian Crops Accreditation System; Horsham 10. Preharvest-sprouting tolerance of wheat in the field, T.B. Biddulph1, T.L. Setter2, J.A. Plummer1 and D.J. Mares3; 1Plant Biology; FNAS, University of Western Australia; 2Department of Agriculture, 3School of Agriculture and Wine, University of Adelaide 11. Waterlogging induces high concentration of Mn and Al in wheat genotypes in acidic soils, H. Khabaz-Saberi, T. Setter, I. Waters and G. McDonald, Department of Agriculture 12. Agronomic responses of new wheat varieties in the Northern Agricultural Region, Christine M. Zaicou-Kunesch and Wal Anderson, Department of Agriculture 13. Agronomic responses of new wheat varieties in the Central Agricultural Region of WA, Darshan Sharma, Steve Penny and Wal Anderson, Department of Agriculture 14. EGA Eagle Rock tolerance to metribuzin and its mixtures, Harmohinder Dhammu, David Nicholson and Chris Roberts, Department of Agriculture 15. Herbicide tolerance of new bread wheats, Harmohinder Dhammu1 and David Nicholson2, Department of Agriculture NUTRITION 16. The impact of fertiliser placement, timing and rates on nitrogen-use efficiency, Stephen Loss, CSBP Ltd 17. Cereals deficient in potassium are most susceptible to some leaf diseases, Ross Brennan and Kith Jayasena, Department of Agriculture 18. Responses of cereal yields to potassium fertiliser type, placement and timing, Eddy Pol, CSBP Limited 19. Sulphate of Potash, the potash of choice at seeding, Simon Teakle, United Farmers Co-operative 20. Essential disease management for successful barley production, K. Jayasena, R. Loughman, C. Beard, B. Paynter, K. Tanaka, G. Poulish and A. Smith, Department of Agriculture 21. Genotypic differences in potassium efficiency of wheat, Paul Damon and Zed Rengel, Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, University of Western Australia 22. Genotypic differences in potassium efficiency of barley, Paul Damon and Zed Rengel, Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, University of Western Australia 23. Investigating timing of nitrogen application in wheat, Darshan Sharma and Lionel Martin, Department of Agriculture, and Muresk Institute of Agriculture, Curtin University of Technology 24. Nutrient timing requirements for increased crop yields in the high rainfall cropping zone, Narelle Hill, Ron McTaggart, Dr Wal Anderson and Ray Tugwell, Department of Agriculture DISEASES 25. Integrate strategies to manage stripe rust risk, Geoff Thomas, Robert Loughman, Ciara Beard, Kith Jayasena and Manisha Shankar, Department of Agriculture 26. Effect of primary inoculum level of stripe rust on variety response in wheat, Manisha Shankar, John Majewski and Robert Loughman, Department of Agriculture 27. Disease resistance update for wheat varieties in WA, M. Shankar, J.M. Majewski, D. Foster, H. Golzar, J. Piotrowski and R. Loughman, Department of Agriculture 28. Big droplets for wheat fungicides, Rob Grima, Agronomist, Elders 29. On farm research to investigate fungicide applications to minimise leaf disease impacts in wheat, Jeff Russell and Angie Roe, Department of Agriculture, and Farm Focus Consultants PESTS 30. Rotations for nematode management, Vivien A. Vanstone, Sean J. Kelly, Helen F. Hunter and Mena C. Gilchrist, Department of Agriculture 31. Investigation into the adaqyacy of sealed farm silos in Western Australia to control phosphine-resistant Rhyzopertha dominica, C.R. Newman, Department of Agriculture 32.Insect contamination of cereal grain at harvest, Svetlana Micic and Phil Michael, Department of Agriculture 33. Phosure – Extending the life of phosphine, Gabrielle Coupland and Ern Kostas, Co-operative Bulk Handling SOIL 34. Optimum combinations of ripping depth and tine spacing for increasing wheat yield, Mohammed Hamza and Wal Anderson, Department of Agriculture 35. Hardpan penetration ability of wheat roots, Tina Botwright Acuña and Len Wade, School of Plant Biology, University of Western Australia MARKETS 36. Latin America: An emerging agricultural powerhouse, Ingrid Richardson, Food and Agribusiness Research, Rabobank; Sydne

132 The shape of things to come: museums in the technological landscape

Since the mid-1980s, museum directors have understood that the key to their success lies in how well they manage change within their organisations. The large political and economic swings of the final decades of that century demonstrated to museums in many parts of the world that they had no assurance of a future unless they could demonstrate strong and costeffective

The shape of things to come: museums in the technological landscape

Since the mid-1980s, museum directors have understood that the key to their success lies in how well they manage change within their organisations. The large political and economic swings of the final decades of that century demonstrated to museums in many parts of the world that they had no assurance of a future unless they could demonstrate strong and cost effective, socially and politically endorsed, benefit. The history of museums demonstrates that this has always been so: the combination of precarious museum funding and continual change has led to erratic fortunes (Knell 1996; 2000; 2001; 2004). Yet every generation has held optimistic beliefs about the future: ‘We may fairly presume, that the most liberal support will be given to an Institution, so well calculated to promote the credit and advantage of the town, and the intellectual improvement of its inhabitants, not only in the present day but in future ages’ (Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society 1826). In the present age, one such vision comes to us from Europe. It pictures a world altered by technologies, but within which museums have a new and critical role. It is a vision worthy of closer attention as this future is destined to engulf us all, and with its cultural diversity, social complexity, established heritage and not inconsiderable investment in technological research, Europe’s concerns and experiences are likely to be widely shared. It also provides an opportunity to ask questions about how a sector of society formulates a vision of the future, what makes this vision plausible and useful, and then what history tells us about its likelihood of coming to fruition. (This is the introduction to the article

Commercial galleries in Copenhagen, London and Reykjavík : a comparative study of the formations, contexts and interactions of galleries founded between 1985 and 2002

This study situates the commercial gallery operator, or ‘gallerist’, in the context of art world conceptions. Specifically it examines the contexts and activities of gallerists in Copenhagen, London’s East End and in Reykjavik in the era of the Young British Artists and the revitalised art market that phenomenon engendered. Drawing upon interviews with gallerists and studies of urban culture and environments, this thesis reveals that gallerists are driven by creativity and artistic vision, often at the expense of market awareness. The London and Copenhagen gallerists saw themselves as pioneers who through their actions not only established new art businesses but developed new cultural quarters in these cities. The tiny capital city of Reykjavík exposed the significance of scale and position; its new galleries remained within the comfort zone of established art institutions in the city centre. They were small and internationally isolated, and appeared much like those found in provincial cities in larger countries. Copenhagen also lacked the world city status of London and its gallerists sought recognition and buyers through international art fairs. In contrast, London found itself at the heart of an international art world. Galleries were established in such numbers in the East End as to produce an art world momentum of its own. Gallerists in the more cosmopolitan settings of London and Copenhagen possessed a greater sense of community; those in constrained markets of Reykjavik retained a small-town competitiveness. The creative desires of gallerists were also reflected in their proactive pursuit of artists; it was they who decided what to show and who to patronise. While the majority of gallerists favoured art with a conceptual edge, all denied that they were specialising in this work. They emphasised the diversity of the works on sale. The London and Copenhagen markets were mature markets but those in Reykjavík appeared more regulated. Within these cities it was possible by these means to detect distinctive art worlds as products of, and woven into, the cities they inhabited.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Hugh Miller: fossils, landscape and literary geology

KNELL, S. J. & TAYLOR, M. A. 2006. Hugh Miller: fossils, landscape and literary geology. Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, 117, 85–98. The bicentenary of the birth of Hugh Miller (1802–1856) in Cromarty (in northern Scotland) has enabled a reappraisal of this fine spare-time geologist, in turn stonemason and banker, and eventually Edinburgh newspaper editor. In Cromarty he had the usual advantages and limitations of a local collector far from metropolitan centres. But Miller was different from other collectors: he was author of classic books such as The Old Red Sandstone, making famous the Old Red Sandstone fishes and Jurassic marine fossils of the area around Cromarty. Miller’s ironically titled autobiography My Schools and Schoolmasters recommended geology as an improving recreation. His writings are suffused with the thrill of discovery and the wonder and beauty of fossils, inspiring future geologists such as John Muir (1838–1914), pioneer of environmental conservation, and George Jennings Hinde (1839–1918), microfossil researcher. In his often autobiographical writings Miller made geology an integral part of the world as he saw it: he was not ‘just’ a ‘popularizer’, but (as he always wanted) a literary man in the all-encompassing Victorian manner. Geology merged with local history and folklore – all ‘libraries’ of the past. But his writings remain rooted in insightful observation – as scientist and poet – of specimen and scenery, from microscope slide to landscape, and in careful reconstruction, for instance, of fossil animals from fragmentary remains. When Miller dealt with wider issues of God in creation and the truths of geology, he deployed his fossils, as in Footprints of the Creator (1849) which attacked the reheated Lamarckian evolutionism of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844). But, contrary to the common misconception that he was driven to suicide by a conflict between science and religion, Miller simply saw these as different facets of the same truth. Indeed, he notably defended geology against religious literalists. Miller’s fossil collection is now mostly in the National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh, with some specimens in the new Hugh Miller museum, Cromarty, which derives from that founded by his son, also called Hugh (1850–1896), a professional geologist with the Geological Survey. This appraisal reveals further depths to Hugh Miller’s appreciation of geological specimens, and to the significance of his surviving collection. Miller’s relationship with the material world of objects shows remarkable consistency and an unwillingness to compartmentalize: Miller’s fossils exemplify the deep continuity of his world