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Micromuseums

Overview

  • Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
  • Convenor and tutor: Prof Fiona Candlin
  • Assessment: a 5000-word essay (100%)

Module description

The late twentieth century saw a massive boom in the number of museums. In the UK, the number of museums more than tripled. These new museums covered a diverse range of subjects from Bakelite to bunkers, lifeboats to local history, and stained glass to Quaker tapestry. By far the majority were independent, they were small in that they attracted less than 10,000 visitors a year, and most were founded by community and special interest groups. Unlike local authority or national museums, they were often located in small towns or in rural areas. In many cases, they actively told the story of those places.

How do our ideas about museums, museum history, heritage and culture change if we study these small museums rather than the large national institutions – if we take the Whale Museum in Newfoundland or a mining museum in Yorkshire as our subject rather than the British Museum or the National Gallery? In this module we will consider display, interpretation and curation from the perspective of small museums, and cover ideas including history from below, community, situated knowledge, neutrality, participation, activism and permanence.

This module is designed to be highly participative – we will organise small group visits and research, and you will also work individually, sharing your images and observations with your peers. Class discussions will then build on your experience and observations of the micromuseums you chose to consider.

Indicative syllabus

  • Classifying and defining museums
  • Grassroots museums and history from below
  • Display, interpretation, curation, security and the problem of professional standards
  • The museum founders: how to open a museum
  • Inclusion and exclusion
  • Points of view: objectivity vs situated knowledge
  • Writing micromuseums
  • A sense of place
  • Activist museums: changing the world
  • Closing museums and after

Learning objectives

By the end of this module, you will have:

  • an expansive conception of museum practice
  • critically reviewed key concepts in museum and heritage studies
  • a nuanced understanding of how and why small museums are established
  • a grasp of 'history from below'
  • a detailed knowledge of specific museums and of changes within the museum sector
  • visited small museums and associated archives.