Steven

Lubar

Museum Histories
AMST1903I and HIST1960P
Spring 2015

Syllabus

Museums collect and display art and artifacts not only to preserve culture heritage,
but also to educate, engage, and entertain. This course examines the history of
museums of art, history, anthropology, natural history, science and technology to
understand their changing goals and their changing place in American society. It
also considers the changes within museums, in the work of curation, conservation,
education, and social engagement. Students will read museum history and theory,
engage with museum archives and other primary sources, and produce a research
paper or a digital or public project.

Each week well all read a secondary source, and one or two student will choose a
related primary source to explore and present, on a class blog and in class.

Project possibilities:
Do an exhibition that is representative of a different era?
Write labels from different eras?
Exhibit reviews based on ideas of era
Collections??

1. Wunderkammer, early roots

Secondary:
Devices and wonder??
Greenblatt, Resonance and Wonder
Primary:
The First Treatise on Museums: Samuel Quiccheberg's Inscriptiones, 1565
visit John Hay library to see these books?

2. The invention of the modern museum

Secondary:
Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics
McCLellan book on Louvre,
Commercial Museum??
Foucault?
Constance Classen, Museum Manners: The Sensory Life of the Early Museum,
Journal of Social History 40, no. 4 (2007): 895-914; and Helen Rees Leahy, Museum
Bodies: The Politics and Practices of Visiting and Viewing (Burlington, VT: Ashgate,
2012).
Primary: ??

3. The first American museums

Secondary:
American Manufactory on Peale?
Salem museum history?
Naval Lyceum?

Les Harrison, The Temple and the Forum: American Museum and Cultural Authority
in Hawthorne, Melville, Stowe, and Whitman
Wendy Bellion, Citizen Spectator: Art, Illusion, and Visual Perception in Early National
America

Primary:
Salem Museum catalog?
Naval Lyceum Catalog?
Peale description?

4. Barnum and Goode

Secondary:
Harris, Humbug
Primary:
Explore Hay for mid-19th century museum publications/broadsides?
George Brown Goode, either Museum-History and Museums of History, The
Museums of the Future, or The Principles of Museum Administration in A
Memorial of George Brown Goode

5. Museums professionalize
Secondary
Steven Conn, Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926
Primary:
Museum News?
Metropolitan Museum of Art online annual reports?

6. Worlds Fairs / Anthopology?

Secondary:
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and
Heritage
Robert Rydell, All the worlds a Fair
George W. Stocking, Jr., Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture
(1988

Primary
Exposition publications

7. Education in Museums
Secondary:
Hein, Progressive Museum Practice
Primary:
John Cotton Dana reader
Dewey?
Barnes Foundation?
Coleman, The Museum in America: A Critical Study (1939)
Thomas Ritchie Adam, The Civic Value of Museums (1937) and The Museum and
Popular Culture (1939).
Grace Fisher Ramsey, Educational Work in Museums of the United States:
Development, Methods, and Trends, 1938
Richards, Industrial museums

8. The Civic Museum

Secondary
Jeffrey Trask. Things American: Art Museums and Civic Culture in the Progressive Era.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.

Chapter from Conn?

Primary:
Museum of Modern Art newsletters?? Annual reports?

9. Natural History Museums
Secondary:
Rader, Karen A., and Victoria EM Cain. Life on Display: Revolutionizing US Museums
of Science and Natural History in the Twentieth Century. University of Chicago Press,
2014.
Primary:

10. History Museums revived

Secondary
Andrea Witcomb, Re-imagining the Museum: Beyond the Mausoleum (2002)

Primary
History Museum interpretation book?
NPS interp guide?

11. Museums and Social Engagement

Secondary
Robert Janes, Museums in a Troubled World
Social Work of Museums
Primary
Excellence and Equity
Museums and Civic Engagement

12. The Experience Revolution

Secondary:
Susan G. Davis, Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience
Primary:
B. Joseph Pine and James H Gilmores The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre &
Every Business a Stage (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999)

Other readings
Chapter of McClellan each week??
Neil Harris Cultural excursions
Gail Anderson, Introduction: Reinventing Museums in Reinventing the Museum:
Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift, ed. Gail Anderson
(Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004),

William S. Walker, A Living Exhibition: The Smithsonian and the Transformation of
the Universal Museum

African American museums book