"Thoughts in Things" by Sally Gregory Kohlstedt
1. What does George Brown Goode say about a "finished museum"? What does he mean?
2. It was felt that the "new museum" should pursue a "tripartite goal" of
a) education, feminist scholarship and postmodern critique
b) architectural distinction, study, and healthy recreation
c) preservation, research, and education
d) eclectic collection, eccentric curation and architectural distinction
3. True or false? ___Until recently historians of science had spent little time on museums.
4. Who in Goode's view defined the meaning of specimens and artifacts?
a) the day labourer, the salesman and the clerk
b) experts and curators
c) the professional man and the man of leisure
d) George Brown Goode
5. Goode uses the phrase "thoughts in things" to refer to what?
6. Goode's generation believed that objects were
a) transparent
b) opaque
c) sort of both of the above (can you explain what this means?)
d) translucent
e) truculent (can you define this?)
7. Postcolonial scholarship sees 19th C museums as
a) mechanisms of authority and exploitation
b) a place where colonial ideology infused museum practices and displays
c) a site where power relationships between the west and elsewhere can be studied
d) all of the above
e) none of the above
8. True or false? ___The "closet" outranked the "field". (And can you explain this?)
9. Taxidermists
a) were always under-valued and unrecognized
b) produced highly dramatic habitat groups
c) never achieved leadership roles
d) are still among the most respected of skilled museum staff
10. How did the "modern public museum" distinguish itself from side shows, wax
museums, circuses, and curiosity shops which also called themselves museums?
11. True or false? ___Sometimes a gorilla is just a gorilla. (Explain?)
"Building the Museum" by Sophie Forgan
1. Alfred Russell Wallace wrote that architects seem to forget what purposes museums
are supposed to fulfill. Instead he says that they build buildings which are reminiscent of
2. Why is it hard to historians to study science museum buildings?
3. Although there are lots of kinds of museums, at its core a museum was and is a
_______________________________
4. Forgan writes that a museum "was not necessarily a single site". It might also overlap
with what else?
5. When a museum is built or refurbished there is a relationship between the architect
and the client which was often fraught. Why?
a) arguments over cost
b) inability of clients to visualize what they were getting
c) architect might be an amateur
d) clients can be a person, a board of trustees, a city council, or any combination of these
e) all of the above
f) a nd d
6. What is the Natural History Museum of London often referred to?
7. True or false? ___The "front" of the museum refers to the neoclassical façade that was
popular in the 19th C.
8. The importance of museums in metropolitan centers
a) declines in the nineteenth century
b) cannot be overstated
c) is not reflected in their placement in the city
d) all of the above
9. What is a personality museum?
10. Museums will die if
a) the buildings are changed or altered
b) their collections are dispersed
c) shrines of industry are metamorphosed into museums
d) museums become marvels of architectural bravura
11. True or false? ___The scientific museum does not seem to have featured often as a
site of romantic assignation.
"Objects and the Museums" by Samuel J. M. M. Alberti
1. The idea of a "cultural biography of things" comes from what academic discipline?
2. True or false? ___The study of object biographies is particularly fruitful in museum
contexts. (why or why not?)
3. True or false? ___Alberti's study of particular objects' "lives" results in attributing too
much power to the things themselves, reducing human agency.
4. What are the three phases in the life of a museum object?
5. Museum objects can be
a) alive, human and representative
b) artificial, inorganic and unique
c) natural, animal, and dead
d) all of the above
e) none of the above
6. What is the "prehistory" of an object?
7. Who were Mr. Arthrobalanus, Zarafa or Maharajah? Why does Alberti write about
them?
8. In studying viewer responses we can chart changes in the "repertoire of prevalent
interpretations." Give an example of this.
9. Alberti writes that "(t)he museum was not a static mausoleum but dynamic, mutable
entity". What might happen to specimens there?
10. Not all objects make their ways to the museum through the exchange of money.
What are some other routes? And what are the results for the people involved?
11. What do you do if you do not see the fish you donated when you visit the museum?