VAM4023

Museum practice and research

Leigh Astbury and Anne Marsh

12 points -2.5 hours per week for 4 weeks, and 2 days per week during the 9 week period of internship -Second semester -Clayton

Objectives Upon completion of this subject students should have gained experience of the normal professional activities involved in museum work; developed a conceptual understanding of the aims and modus operandi of museums; and learnt and practised methods of original research undertaken in museums.

Synopsis This subject is based on a practice of internships for students at art galleries, museums or contemporary art spaces. It is designed to provide students with first hand experience of working within the museum/gallery system while introducing them to the types of research customarily undertaken in such institutions. After several preliminary seminars held in the Monash University Gallery, students will be assigned to a museum/gallery in which they will work for two days per week over a period of nine weeks, under the direction of the relevant director, curator or museum person. In consultation with the supervisors in charge of placements and the gallery/museum personnel, students will undertake a research project of specific relevance to the institution in which they serve their internship. They may, for example, be asked to contribute towards research for an exhibition or project in which the institution is currently engaged. In addition to the research project, students will be required to undertake a short catalogue exercise in respect of a work of art/object of material culture in the collection of the gallery/museum.

Assessment Catalogue exercise (1500 words): 25% -Research project (5500 words): 75% -Internship practical work (equivalent 2000 words)

Preliminary reading

Crimp D 'On the museum's ruins' in Foster H (ed.) The anti-aesthetic: Essays on postmodern culture Bay Press, 1985
O'Doherty B Inside the white cube: The ideology of the gallery space Lapis Press, 1986
Smith B The death of the artist as hero OUP, 1988 (section titled 'Art and the museum')

Back to the 1999 Arts Handbook