The sound of music heritage: curating popular music in music museums and exhibitions

A significant amount of previous academic research into popular music museums centres on critiques of the content, design and layout of predominantly authorised institutions. Throughout much of this research, authors consistently criticise the use, or rather, the perceived misuse, of music played within music museums, arguing that the music itself, rather than artefacts, constitutes the most significant part of popular music exhibition. This article seeks to counter this trend by exploring the challenges of incorporating recorded sound into popular music exhibits as understood by curators and exhibit designers. Utilising interviews conducted within 14 authorised and DIY museums devoted to popular music, the researchers demonstrate a distinct contrast between current academic critiques of music use in these museums and the attitudes of the people who create them. The result is a varied discussion surrounding sound in the museal space, including issues of sound bleed, technology and the creation of balance between artefacts and sound. This account draws attention to curators’ intentions of telling the story of popular music history by engaging with both the visual and aural memories of museum patrons, and suggests a new understanding of the purpose underpinning popular music museums in modern contexts.     

Cultural brownfields in European cities: a new mainstream object for cultural and urban policies

This paper develops the concept of ‘cultural brownfields’ and discusses how organic cultural projects developed in derelict sites have been progressively included in mainstream cultural and urban planning strategies and policies over the last 10?years. To do so the paper assesses the transformation of three mature cultural brownfields in Berlin, Marseille and Lausanne and their distinctive internal and external dynamics. It develops a typology of cultural brownfields which stresses the diverse nature of these spaces and their differential role in cultural and urban planning policies. The paper concludes by highlighting a series of policy lessons for urban planning and cultural strategies.     

Dwelling Brothers,Oozing Oil,and Descending Dew: Reading Psalm 133 Through the Lens of Yehudite Social Memory

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the ways in which Psalm 133 contributes to and is shaped by social memory in Yehud. By reading this psalm as a voice within a larger discourse of cultural memories, the images of brothers dwell-ing together, flowing oil, and dew can be understood to fit within a standard narrative structure according to which the Yehudite community fashioned its stories, highlighting a sense of continuity between Israel’s perceived golden age and its anticipated utopian future. In this paper, I argue that through the collective reliving of shared memories, the community was able to virtually participate in the glorious existence that it perceived to be due to it as YHWH’s chosen people, contributing to a sense of collective identity.     

Recollections of a Part-Time Amateur Neurohistorian

William Thornton, MD, was a polymath who designed the Capitol of the U.S. Capital and the Octagon House, present home of the American Institute of Architecture. He was the founding director of the U.S. Patent Office. His collected papers, which are now preserved at the U.S. Library of Congress, though pruned by the wife who lived almost 40 years after him, are extensive and include comments on science, education, slavery, and politics. His views on sleep and dreaming and his concepts of resuscitation are reviewed as the opinions of an educated man early in the nineteenth century.     

Who Makes Weapons Procurement Decisions?

Despite the absence of scientific support for a tripartite alliance in defense policymaking, political scientists and the general public continue to subscribe to a sub government explanation. This article addresses the sub government dilemma as it applies to the area of weapons procurement. More precisely, it asks whether the sub government model accurately describes and adequately explains the decisions to develop and build major weapons systems. In answering this question, the critical assumptions or propositions that comprise the model are tested, relying upon published research and original data drawn from 19 cases of military hardware decisions. The findings do lend some qualified support for a military subgovernment.