Does the Museum Just Preserve the Museum?

Description

ConvenersLiz Hide (University of Cambridge Museums)Tim Knox (Fitzwilliam Museum)Robin Osborne (Museum of Classical Archaeology)Liba Taub (Whipple Museum)Caroline Vout (Classics)SummaryThis conference is the culmination of a series of events during 2014 in which the University of Cambridge Museums have explored the art and science of museum curation. It brings together a wide range of speakers to take a long hard look at what museums do, what they should do, and what they might do. We will explore the ways in which what museums do is enabled and limited by their history and the history of collecting, asking whether and how museums can use their collections to transcend time. We will explore the constraints placed on museums by national history and how they contest natural history. We will think about museums as installations and museums as laboratories. And we will ask how healthy is the pressure to make visitors love their experiences in museums. Have museums failed or succee