Retrieving the Cultural Biography of a Gun

Abstract

The meanings of objects change as the people with whom they are associated change. Over the course of an artefact’s existence, the sum of these meanings constitutes a cultural biography, a life-story of the item. This is the case with objects associated with conflict, just as with those from other contexts; in this case, cultural biographies can have sharply contrasting phases. However, identifying the object in each of its changing relationships with people can be problematic. In the case of a World War I German 150 mm gun, that is one of the few of its type remaining in the world, this has been achieved by comparison of detailed characteristics, markings, and battle damage with historical photographs and surviving documentation. By these means, its role in the Battle of Amiens on 8 August 1918, and after its capture by the Australian Corps, can be pieced together. The biography of such a gun can include manufacturing technology, a means of destruction, a valued war trophy, a public exhibit, a neglected relic, a source of scrap metal, a museum showpiece, and even a children’s plaything, but the gun investigated here was more fortunate. It is preserved in a museum, although its relationship to people could continue to change.     

The Continuity of Victorian Traces: A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book

Both King Solomon's Mines (1885) and Allan Quatermain (1887) pursue a quest to regenerate the authority of the English gentleman as ‘the highest rank that a man can reach upon this earth’. The present essay focuses upon Haggard's construction of this ideal of masculinity through the combination of the qualities of the gentleman with those of the barbarian. The discussion follows both Laura Chrisman and Bradley Deane in attending to the relationship between the ideological structures of metropole and colony. This article, however, situates Haggard's masculinist ideology in relation to the wider cultural poetics of late-Victorian material culture, particularly as manifested in the imperial souvenir – a complicated category of thing that comprises artefacts, hunting trophies and human relics. Attention to their thingness entails reflection upon the complexity of textual representations of objects and practical encounters with them as constituent elements of late-Victorian material culture. In addition to examining the significance of hunting and battle trophies in Haggard's fiction, close attention is also paid to the keynote spectacle of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition at the South Kensington Museum in 1886, Rowland Ward's habitat diorama, ‘The Jungle’, and to Ward's subsequent forays into ‘animal furniture’. Through reflection on such formations of objects, the thingness of the imperial souvenir illuminates the ideological formations within which hegemonic masculinity and imperialism were articulated at this key moment in the mid-1880s.     

关于博物馆文化衍生产品开发的认识与思考

文化衍生产品的开发工作是博物馆文化产业体系中的核心环节,目前在我国尚处于起步阶段,其理念、体制、资金、政策、模式等均有待思考与探索。只有根据我国博物馆的具体实情,借鉴国外博物馆的成功经验及运作模式,革新理念,遵循正确的开发原则,掌握科学的开发方法,才能形成品种齐全、种类多样、特色鲜明、优势突出、富有竞争力的博物馆文化衍生产品体系。     

首都博物馆老年观众行为与需求调查分析

我国已进入老龄社会,博物馆应根据老年观众的需求和行为特点,完善对老年观众的各项服务。对首都博物馆的相关调研显示:老年观众多在上午与家人、亲属结伴参观,大多对历史和艺术有兴趣,愿意参观博物馆组织的特展,充足的休息座椅、良好舒适的参观环境和干净且位置适宜的卫生间位列老年观众参观需求的前三位。     

论地方博物馆展览学术支撑体系建设

学术研究成果和展品形象资料构成了博物馆展览的学术支撑体系,直接影响着展览的质量和水准。地方博物馆应加强展品形象资料的收集整理与地域文化资源的挖掘研究,以加强展览学术支撑体系的建设,提高展览的建设质量和水平。     

近现代工业遗产保护模式初探

工业遗产的形态多种多样,根据其不同的保护等级、城市发展及环境生态保护的需要,工业遗产的保护模式也有多种,不同模式都有其针对性强、效益明显的保护对象,但也各有利弊。以博物馆模式为例,其对工业遗产的保护与利用都比较到位,也易于建设,但因经济盈利空间有限,往往会造成政府财政的压力。此类问题影响着工业遗产保护的质量与效益,应该引起我们对工业遗产保护与再利用模式的深入思考。     

博物馆的社会责任与城市文化

博物馆文化是城市文化的重要组成部分。博物馆不仅具有文物收藏、保护管理、科学研究、陈列展示等方面功能,而且具有引领城市文化、弘扬城市精神、搭建城市多元文化交流平台等方面的特殊作用。今天,博物馆事业发展的总体规模、管理水平和服务质量已成为衡量一个国家、一个民族、一个城市文化发展程度的重要标尺,应以新的视角阐释博物馆的功能。博物馆应成为精神的家园、文化的绿洲、知识的殿堂、城市的客厅、文明的窗口,承担更多的社会责任,更加自觉地关心城市文化的进步,以推动社会发展为己任,注重自身业务活动与人居环境改善的内在联系,塑造公平、公正、民主、法治的价值观,鼓励人们创造更加和睦与和平的生存环境,从而使民族文化薪火相传,人类文明赓续绵延。     

Contemporary visual art and the construction of identity: maintenance and revision processes in older adults

This article explores how older visitors use meanings created through encounters with contemporary visual art in art galleries for identity maintenance and revision processes. The analysis is based on the results of a 28-month study of the responses of older people to contemporary visual art in art galleries in north-east England, UK. The identity processes used in this study are those defined as maintenance and revision as understood by Kroger (2002) Identity processes and contents through the years of late adulthood. Identity, 2, (1), 81-99, Kroger and Adair (2008) Symbolic meanings of valued personal objects in identity transitions of late adulthood. Identity, 8, (1), 5-24. and Marcia (2002) Identity and psychosocial development in adulthood. Identity, 2, (1), 7-28. Respondents who did not have an existing identity-defining commitment towards art and who had less ability to decode the art works used the art to make symbolic links to aspects of their identity. The meanings created were then used to help satisfy current identity needs. In contrast, those with an existing commitment to art used the experience of the visits to deepen their current knowledge. Engaging with contemporary visual art facilitated identity processes that contributed to participants’ well-being. This study contributes to studies on identity by exploring how content and identity processes interact and provides new perspectives on the role of art in identity formation for older people. It also has significance for museum, gallery and heritage policy and practice.     

Engaging with the future of ‘critical heritage studies’: looking back in order to look forward

This article engages with the Association for Critical Heritage Studies Manifesto which argues that heritage studies is in need of a complete renovation. We do so by looking back to two earlier moments. The first when museum studies also called for a renovation, drawing on those experiences as potentially instructive for the immediate future of heritage studies. The second a debate within cultural studies on the value of engagement with the world outside of academia to achieve the discipline’s political aims. Thus, while agreeing with the questions posed by the Manifesto, we argue that rather than casting the terms of the debate in a way that positions the professional field as needing renovation from without, we might do better by fostering a more ‘organic’ sense of intellectual work, one that values engagement and collaboration rather than critique for its own sake. Our conclusion points to the importance of the teaching of heritage studies as a potential site for such a practice as well as more collaborative models of research practice.     

The Management of the Maritime Archaeological Heritage in the Bailiwick of Guernsey: a Case Study

Guernsey and the other islands in its Bailiwick have been visited and settled by people arriving by sea for thousands of years. Guernsey Museum manages the display and interpretation of this maritime heritage and, in conjunction with the Receiver of Wreck, administers the legal protection of historic wreck. Over the last 25 years a considerable amount of research has been undertaken on many aspects of the islands' maritime past. Museum displays and media presentations have been made to disseminate information about the islands' maritime archaeology to the wider world. This paper will highlight the various aspects of maritime archaeology in Guernsey and illustrate how Guernsey Museum manages this rich archaeological resource.
© 2004 The Nautical Archaeology Society