Museums

The number of museums in the world is increasing every year. Although some museums have existed for a long time and the 19thcentury has been characterized as the Golden Age of Museums, most museums have been established since World War II. In recent decades academic interest in museums has increased rapidly. Museum studies is today a broad and multi–disciplinary field that includes many approaches and subjects, including representational and collecting practices, museum history and policy, the role of museums in identity politics, questions of gender, ethnicity and globalization,  post-colonial perspectives and ethics, relations between museums and their publics, architecture and exhibition design. Today emphasis is put on the heterogeneity and complexity of museums, something that is also reflected in the variety of perspectives and research genres.


The projects regarding cultural heritage and museums that have been funded by The Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) and The Bankof Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond) between 2001 and 2011 have had three
general orientations:

  • The collection of exotic objects during the first half of the 20th century, and the organization of objects, bodies and surrounding world. Current projects within this field are studying eugenic (rasbiologiska) photo collections and canons within art and fashion at museums.
  • The establishment of the social museum and research regarding the mediation of social life and  everyday events. Current projects include research on objects of everyday life and their meaning for identity and stories, methods for collecting stories and objects, and a project on how to document public memories from military service.
  • The ambitions of museums regarding public education and how museums can create meaning, communication and learning processes with young people. This also includes projects on what informationmuseums present to young people and how, and the results of the meetings of these young people with the museums’ representations of history and culture.

Not only in the projects sponsored by The Swedish Research Council  and The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, , but in the research field on the whole (in universities and university colleges), the focus is mainly  on the museums’ role in education. Are  museums  needed to understand history and our present time? What makes museums unique? Is their claim to having a special role reasonable?

Research is also being done within this area regarding how successful the messages from museums are in reaching out, as well as  about the identities of the museums and their traditions of communication and learning, that is, the self-images of museums, their tools, new media and technology, and the response of the visitors.

Ongoing research at the universities and university colleges studies how antiquarian research and collections of objects started in Sweden during the Swedish Age of Greatness (the 1600s),  the creation of patriotic cultural history and the origin of cultural historical museums in Sweden, their purposes, views on history and methods of collecting objects and knowledge.

There are also projects that study how national museums use and have used history, how conflicts are solved regarding the use of history, and what makes these types of museums important.

Several projects focus on material culture. These studies include how material culture  has been dealt with at museums and its use in creating and recreating identity (e.g., heritage of Roma culture).
Material culture in the museum context is also studied in relationship to the concept ”underground”. This term implies a multitude of directions: the processes of archaeological excavations, hidden aspects of the human psyche, resistance movements and secret or alternative organizations that oppose repressive political systems.


 

 To read the full list of research projects in the museum category - click here!