A seal in the collections of the National Museum, Bahrain

This article describes a Murghab seal amulet recently identified in the collections of the National Museum of Bahrain and discusses some of the other evidence for contact between Central Asia and the Gulf in the early second millennium.     

可贵的尝试——原中央博物院建筑缘起与历史评价

章通过对原中央博物院建筑策划、方案设计竞赛、施工建造等历史过程的详细描述与分析,指出该作品是徐敬直等第一代中国建筑师尝试将“民族性”与“现代化”相结合的一次可贵的尝试,并取得了成功。正是这种不懈的探索使得他们在专业上走向初步的成熟,原中央博物院(现南京博物院)建筑更成为经典之作。     

Managing the maritime heritage: the National Maritime Archaeological Museum and National Centre for Underwater Research, Cartagena, Spain

The rapid developmental work of the Museum-Centre and its policies within a limited budget are set in the context of world-wide problems of management and preservation of the underwater heritage in the face of accelerating threats to its survival. The impact of engineering projects and lack of official control or supervision of developer-funded maritime archaeological interventions is something of which governments are insufficiently aware. The construction of a marina at Mazarron has resulted in progressive denudation of the bay, exposure of two Phoenician wrecks and thousands of Phoenician potsherds, necessitating the annual resurvey of 70,000 m² of seabed. Among protective measures an iron 'strongbox' has been designed and successfully used on small wreck-sites. © 2000 The Nautical Archaeology Society     

New excavations at the Barbar Temple, Bahrain

In 2004 excavations at the Barbar Temple dating to c. 2000 BC established that the function of the southeastern subterranean channel connected to the temple pool was to supply the pool with water and not to divert water away from the pool. North and west of the temple the oval terrace wall of its third phase was located. In the centre of the Northeast Temple the remains of a shaft-stairway leading down to a well-chamber was uncovered and shown to be furnished with two subterranean channels leading water into the chamber. South of the Northeast Temple a house with late pottery was excavated. Two stamp seals and two seal-impressed tokens were found.     

华彩瓷韵—中国国家博物馆藏瓷器撷英

中国是世界文明古国之一,是最早发明制陶瓷技术的国家,有着瓷国之美誉。从古代开始至今,一直对世界文化有着重要的影响。时至今日,长久不衰,在于她的艺术魅力与实用价值。本文浅析数件中国国家博物馆藏经典瓷器,供人们鉴赏。     

The National Air and Space Museum,Washington, D.C.

Abstract

Space technology is not only one of the major subjects of this spacious and gracious new Museum on Washington's Mall, it also contributed greatly to its record construction programme and it opening ceremony. Above all its designers hope that 85 complex audio-visual exhibits will perform faultlessly thanks to MACS, the Museum Automatic Control System. This central computer control unit, complete with its space-age back-up system, constantly monitors the performance of all moving exhibits, whether puppets, films or slides. Any fault is detected instantly and thus can be repaired quickly.     

Two wooden coffins from the Shakhoura Necropolis, Bahrain

This article presents a detailed analysis of two wooden coffins from the 1^st centuries BC/AD on Bahrain. New C14 dates are published of samples taken from the coffins, and their method of manufacture is reconstructed. The unexpected conservation of wood in a humid environment like Bahrain is explained.     

Negotiating Materiality: International and Local Museum Practices at the Vanuatu Cultural Centre and National Museum

In this paper, we examine the idiosyncratic ways in which the Vanuatu Cultural Centre has incorporated global museum technologies into highly localised systems of object management. The convergence of understandings of subject‐object relations, and indeed of materiality, highlights the effects of museum practices of objectification on local practice as well as the effects of local agenda on museum practice. In constructing a holistic analysis of the current work of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, we examine practices of display and exhibition in the context of the archive and storeroom, and grass‐roots research; moving away from the emphasis on visuality and exhibition found in many museum studies, to an approach that locates display as but one form of objectification within wider social practice. We challenge some analytic models that view Melanesia and Euro‐America as zones that organise subject‐object relations dichotomously, highlighting instead the mutual contingency of relationships between persons and things between cultural contexts and the effects of the international exchanges of museum practice on the development of these relations.     

The A-Bomb Controversy at the National Air and Space Museum

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1947, Linenthal earned his bachelor's degree in religious studies at Western Michigan University, his master's degree in divinity at the Pacific School of Religion, and his Ph.D. in religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is Professor of Religion and American Culture at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. His books include: Symbolic Defense: The Cultural Significance of the Strategic Defense Initiative (1989); Sacred Ground: Americans and their Battlefields (2nd edition, 1993); Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum (1995); American Sacred Space (co-editor, 1995). He is writing a history of the A-Bomb controversy that will appear in a book to be published in 1996. Linenthal has often lectured about controversial historic sites for National Park Service staff. At the USS Arizona Memorial, Linenthal delivered a commemorative address on 7 December 1994, on the 53rd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Linenthal and his wife, with their two sons, reside in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Linenthal was the only historian to testify before the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration about the National Air and Space Museum's ill-fated exhibit, “The Last Act: The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II.” What follows is Linenthal's Senate statement and comments he has written for The Historian.     

The Conservation Department of the National Museum of Chinese History

TheConservationDepartmentofNationalMuseumofChineseHistoryisanorganiza-tionspecializedontheresearchandpracticeofconservationscienceandtechnology.Itcom-prisesthreelaboratoriesofconservation,utensilrestorationandpaintingrestoration,with30scientistsandtechnicians.Thedepartmentwasestablishedin1952.Intheperiodofmorethan40years,thede-partmentcarriedontheworkofconservationscienceandtechnologyinall-roundway,withtheaimofpreservingtheculturalrelicsofhumanbeings,thedispositionoflayingequalstressonbothba…     

中国国家博物馆环境空气质量监测报告

为加强博物馆藏品的预防性保护,需全面掌握博物馆馆舍内外空气质量的现状,对其进行评估,进而采取有效措施治理改善,妥善保护人类文化遗产。本馆采用美国普滤(Purafil)公司研发并提供的检测技术,在馆舍内外选定八个测试点进行了腐蚀试片测试。根据监测数据得知,本馆处于高浓度极具腐蚀性的二氧化硫气态物质的包围中,已造成对金属、纸张等文物的危害,治理改善收藏环境迫在眉睫。创造保存各类藏品的微环境空间,是治理改善博物馆收藏环境的有效手段。     

传统与现代共存的下层文化大殿--参观韩国国立民俗博物馆

如果把一个国家和民族的文化比喻为一棵大树,那么,这棵大树的根系总是深深地扎在民间沃土之中,根扎得越深,枝叶就越挺拔、茂密、向上。“中国民俗学之父”钟敬文先生有感于此,因而提出文化有上层、     

抗战时期的中央博物馆文物西迁

从1937年直至抗战胜利,故宫博物院和中央博物院的大批珍贵文物由南京出发、分三条线进行了万里播迁的惊险历程。国宝们最终平安存放于四川各地,直到抗战胜利再安全返回。在战争状况下任何情况均有可能发生,国宝命系民族文化之根,因此当时高层曾提出政府垮了可以重建,文化之根脉中断则难以为继。这批文物的迁移路线直接由当时高层少数人决定,随时变化,事先并无计划。而三条线路的运送人员互相也不知道彼此的情况。在大批文物转运过程中,中央博物院职员家誊也辗转于西迁途中。最后与中央研究院史语所、中国营造学社,共同落户宜宾李庄,开始了中国历史上一段不凡的学术生涯。     

A Multidisciplinary Study of a Group of Post‐Classical Cameos from the National Museum in Krakow,Poland

A group of 18 cameos dated from the 16th to 19th centuries (bearing motifs of Roman emperors and female members of their families) from the Constantine Schmidt‐Ci??yński collection was investigated with gemmological analyses, supported by non‐destructive mineralogical methods such as X‐ray diffraction (XRD) and micro‐Raman spectroscopy (RS) to ascertain the material used. Although there is no scientific method to date the specimens precisely, the mineralogical data supported by archaeological analyses enabled the estimation of the possible timing of the manufacture of the gems. As a result, the cameos were divided into four basic chronological groups: (1) Renaissance, (2) Baroque, (3) uncertain and (4) Classical and Neoclassical.     

The stone quarry on Jiddah Island,Bahrain

The surface of the small island of Jiddah lying north‐west of Bahrain is covered in traces of stone quarrying, but although the island probably supplied the limestone ashlars for the second‐millennium BC Dilmun temples at Barbar, the sixteenth‐century AD Bahrain Fort and other eminent buildings, no study has ever been made of the ancient quarry. Information from a geological report and a few photographs may, it is hoped, inspire new research.