May

Inaugural Lecture Series - Professor Fiona Candlin

by Birkbeck, University of London

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Date and time

Tue, 28 May 2019

18:00 – 20:00 BST

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Location

B01, Clore Management Centre

Torrington Square

London

WC1E

United Kingdom

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Event description

Description

What is a Museum? (And how would we know?)

The Mapping Museums project aims at analysing development and change within the UK museum sector from 1960 until the present day. In order to achieve that ambition, the research team has had to compile a dataset of all the museums open during that period. Doing so led us to ask what kinds of organisations should be included and how we should make that decision. Should we include heritage and visitor centres, historic houses and other buildings, or the exhibitions in hospitals, town halls, and corporate headquarters? What about galleries without collections or museums that are only open for five days per year? Should we draw the line between private collections and private museums, and if so, where and how? In her inaugural lecture Professor Fiona Candlin, Principal Investigator on the Mapping Museum project, outlines the various approaches that the team adopted (and mainly abandoned) in their pursuit of a coherent selection strategy.

The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception and visitors are welcome to bring guests with them.

Fiona Candlin is Professor of Museology within the History of Art department at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is the Principal Investigator on a large scale research project entitled ‘Mapping Museums: The history and geography of the UK independent sector 1960-2020’. In this capacity she collaborates with Alex Poulovassilis, Professor of Computer Science at Birkbeck. They lead an interdisciplinary research team that is collectively documenting, visualising, and analysing the recent development of the UK museum sector.

Candlin also collaborates with the Bishopsgate Institute on the ‘Micromuseums Archive’, and has published widely on various aspects of museums, particularly on the history, curation, and architecture of small independent museums. She co-edited The Object Reader (Routledge 2009) with Raiford Guins, and is the author of Art, Museums, and Touch (Manchester 2010) and Micromuseology: An analysis of small independent museums (Bloomsbury 2015). Her current writing retains an emphasis on grass roots venues and additionally focuses on definitions of museums and data collection within the museum sector.

This lecture is part of our upcoming inaugaral lecture series, make sure to check the Birkbeck events page for details about future events that you may be interested in. You can see an example of a previous lecture, given by Professor Almuth McDowell, here.

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