Dodo by Jeffrey Carpenter et al.

In their First Word essay, “Listening as a Radical Act,” Erica de Greef, Shayna Goncalves, and Angela Jansen (2021) argue for the importance of listening as a means to overcome our legacies of colonization. Without listening, it is too easy to assume that “fashion” is inherently capitalist and modern, created by genius designers (artists) in Western fashion capitals (Paris, London, New York) and that everything else is just a pale imitation. The way I have stated this might seem like an exaggeration—surely it can't be that bad in fashion studies—but as the authors have pointed out from their own diverse perspectives, it really is that bad. Too many people have experienced the study and curation of fashion as a devaluing gauntlet.The first book I can think of that explicitly questioned the colonial underpinnings of fashion studies, Re-Orienting Fashion (2003), was published less than two decades ago. In 2016, the book's primary coeditor and member of the Research Collective for Decoloniality & Fashion (RCDF), Sandra Niessen, reappraised the state of the discipline:As a historian of fashion, dress, and the body with expertise on African dress and fashion (Akou 2011), contemporary Islamic fashion, and working-class histories of dress in the United States, I agree with Niessen: We have made some progress, but fashion studies as a discipline has hardly been transformed. This is disheartening, especially when I think about the cultural importance and tremendous creativity of sartorial expression in many African and African diaspora cultures. As a graduate student, I never had to justify the value of studying African fashion because my advisor was Joanne Eicher (2022). Most beginning scholars are not that lucky.Listening is critical for decolonizing fashion studies, but it is not enough. Like art history, the study of fashion is about material culture; it cannot be fully understood through images alone. Fashion studies is also about people and places that support fashion practices— photographers, bloggers, designers, makers, fashion magazines, models, retail stores, etc…. Scholars can (and do) study contemporary practices, but what about the histories behind them? How do we know that African fashion changes? What is happening now that is different from ten or fifty years ago? As explored in Creating African Fashion Histories: Politics, Museums, and Sartorial Practices (McGregor, Akou, and Stylianou 2022), one of the reasons that fashion studies is so mired in Eurocentrism is because fashion collections in museums so rarely include examples of fashion from Africa or from other non-Western cultures. Instead, traces are scattered in other kinds of collections—categorized as art, trade goods, and “ethnographic” artifacts. For example, in my own study on the history of Somali dress, I did not find a single artifact in a fashion collection; everything was held by museums of art and natural history. Similarly, collections of African art in museums often include elements of dress such as textiles, jewelry, and masks, but rarely do curators attempt to include contemporary fashion or to represent individual fashion designers in their permanent collections.Transforming museums—whether by pulling these traces of fashion histories back together or by making fashion collections more inclusive—will not be easy. It is not easy for museums in Europe and North America to build trust among potential donors in Africa and the African diaspora, especially when so few curators are people of color. It is not easy for museums (anywhere) to justify their budgets when governments and nonprofit organizations have so many other pressing needs to address. Wealthy funders can have interests that are sharply different from scholars and museum visitors; sometimes they resist the most basic reforms.Just like African scholars and makers of fashion deserve to be heard, African fashion deserves to be seen in museums. True, systemic transformation of fashion studies and fashion collections will be a tremendous challenge. Listening is essential, but change is going to be limited until we change how we curate and access collections.

Museum of Contemporary Art by Artists

Argentina's National Museum of History and the National Museum of Fine Arts were created almost at the same time in Buenos Aires, towards the end of the nineteenth century. Many of the artefacts collected in both museums are of the same kind: oil paintings, drawings, engravings, and sculptures, depicting battles, portraits, landscapes, and costumbrista scenes. However, the artefacts in each institution were understood differently: those in the Museum of Fine Arts were considered as ‘art’, while those in the other museum were seen as historical documents. This differentiation between the material of art history and that of history deserves critical examination. The creation of each museum may explain this distinction, as well as offering a point of departure for further reflections about the way in which those artefacts have been exhibited, studied, and preserved.

IntroductionIn regional Australia and New Zealand, museums and art galleries are increasingly becoming primary sites of cultural engagement. They are one of the key tourist attractions for regional towns and expected to generate much needed tourism revenue. In 2017 in New South Wales alone, there were three million visitors to regional galleries and museums (MGNSW 13). However, apart from those (partially) funded by local councils, they are often run on donations, good will, and the enthusiasm of volunteers. Regional museums and galleries provide some paid, and more unpaid, employment for ageing populations. While two-thirds of Australia’s population lives in capital cities, the remainder who live in regional towns are likely to be in the 60+ age cohort because people are choosing to retire away from the bustling, growing cities (ABS). At last count, there were about 3000 museums and galleries in Australia with about 80% of them located in regional areas (Scott). Over the last 40 years, this figure has tripled from the 1000 regional and provincial museums estimated by Peter Piggott in his 1975 report (24). According to a 2014 survey (Shaw and Davidson), New Zealand has about 470 museums and galleries and about 70% are located outside capital cities. The vast majority, 85%, have less than five, full-time paid staff, and more than half of these were run entirely by ageing volunteers. They are entrusted with managing the vast majority of the history and heritage collections of Australia and New Zealand. These ageing volunteers need a diverse range of skills and experience to care for and interpret collections. How do you find the time and budget for professional development for both paid staff and volunteers? Many professional development events are held in capital cities, which are often a significant distance from the regional museum—this adds substantially to the costs of attending and the time commitment required to get there. In addition, it is not uncommon for people working in regional museums to be responsible for everything—from security, collection management, conservation, research, interpretation and public programs to changing the light bulbs. While there are a large number of resources available online, following a manual is often more difficult than learning from other colleagues or learning in a more formal educational or vocational environment where you can receive timely feedback on your work. Further, a foundational level of prior knowledge and experience is often required to follow written instructions. This article will suggest some strategies for low cost professional development and networking. It involves planning, thinking strategically and forming partnerships with others in the region. It is time to harness the power of modern communications technology and use it as a tool for professional development. Some models of professional development in regional areas that have been implemented in the past will also be reviewed. The focus for this article is on training and professional development for workers in regional museums, heritage sites and keeping places. Regional art galleries have not been included because they tend to have separate regional networks and training opportunities. For example, there are professional development opportunities provided through the Art Galleries Association of Australia and their state branches. Regional galleries are also far more likely to have one or more paid staff members (Winkworth, “Fixing the Slums” 2). Regional Museums, Volunteers, and Social CapitalIt is widely accepted that regional museums and galleries enhance social capital and reduce social isolation (Kelly 32; Burton and Griffin 328). However, while working in a regional museum or gallery can help to build friendship networks, it can also be professionally isolating. How do you benchmark what you do against other places if you are two or more hours drive from those places? How do you learn from other colleagues if all your colleagues are also isolated by the ‘tyranny of distance’ and struggling with the same lack of access to training? In 2017 in New South Wales alone, there were 8,629 active volunteers working in regional museums and galleries giving almost five million hours, which Museums and Galleries NSW calculated was worth over $150 million per annum in unpaid labour (MGNSW 1). Providing training and professional development to this group is an investment in Australia’s social and cultural capital.Unlike other community-run groups, the museums and heritage places which have emerged in regional Australia and New Zealand are not part of a national or state branch network. Volunteers who work for the Red Cross, Scouts or Landcare benefit from being part of a national organisation which provides funding, support workers, a website, governance structure, marketing, political advocacy and training (Winkworth, “Let a Thousand Flowers” 11). In Australia and New Zealand, this role is undertaken by the Australian Museums and Galleries Association AMaGA (formerly Museums Australia) and Museums Aotearoa respectively. However, both of these groups operate at the macro policy level, for example organising annual conferences, publishing a journal and developing Indigenous policy frameworks, rather than the local, practical level. In 1995, due to their advocacy work, Landcare Australia received $500 million over five years from the federal government to fund 5000 Landcare groups, which are run by 120,000 volunteers (Oppenheimer 177). They argued successfully that the sustainable development of land resources started at the local level. What do we need to do to convince government of the need for sustainable development of our local and regional museum and heritage resources?Training for Volunteers Working in Regional Museums: The Current SituationAnother barrier to training for regional museum workers is the assumption that the 70:20:10 model of professional development should apply. That is, 70% of one’s professional development is done ‘on the job’ by completing tasks and problem-solving; 20% is achieved by learning from mentors, coaches and role models and 10% is learnt from attending conferences and symposia and enrolling in formal courses of study. However, this model pre-supposes that there are people in your workplace whom you can learn from and who can show you how to complete a task, and that you are not destroying or damaging a precious, unique object if you happen to make a mistake.Some museum volunteers come with skills in research, marketing, administration, customer service or photography, but very few come with specific museum skills like writing exhibition text, registering an acquisition or conserving artefacts. These skills need to be taught. As Kylie Winkworth has written, museum management now requires a [...] skills set, which is not so readily found in small communities, and which in many ways is less rewarding for the available volunteers, who may have left school at 15. We do not expect volunteer librarians to catalogue books, which are in any case of low intrinsic value, but we still expect volunteers in their 70s and 80s to catalogue irreplaceable heritage collections and meet ever more onerous museum standards. That so many volunteers manage to do this is extraordinary. (“Let a Thousand Flowers” 13)Workers in regional museums are constantly required to step outside their comfort zones and learn new skills with minimal professional support. While these challenging experiences can be very rewarding, they are also potentially damaging for our irreplaceable material cultural heritage.Training for museum professionals has been on the agenda of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) since 1947 (Boylan 62). However, until 1996, their work focused on recommending curricula for new museum professionals and did not include life-long learning and on-going professional development. ICOM’s International Committee for the Training of Personnel (ICTOP) and the ICOM Executive has responded to this in their new curricula—ICOM Curricula Guidelines for Professional Museum Development, but this does not address the difficulties staff or volunteers working in regional areas face in accessing training.In some parts of Australia, there are regional support and professional development programs in place. For example, in Queensland, there is the Museum Development Officer (MDO) network. However, because of the geographic size of the state and the spread of the museums, these five regionally based staff often have 60-80 museums or keeping places in their region needing support and so their time and expertise is spread very thinly. It is also predominantly a fee-for-service arrangement. That is, the museums have to pay for the MDO to come and deliver training. Usually this is done by the MDO working with a local museum to apply for a Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF) grant. In Victoria there is a roving curator program where eligible regional museums can apply to have a professional curator come and work with them for a few days to help the volunteers curate exhibitions. The roving curator can also provide advice on “develop[ing] high quality exhibitions for diverse audiences” via email, telephone and networking events. Tasmania operates a similar scheme but their two roving curators are available for up to 25 days of work each year with eligible museums, provided the local council makes a financial contribution. The New South Wales government supports the museum advisor program through which a museum professional will come to your museum for up to 20 days/year to give advice and hands-on training—provided your local council pays $7000, an amount that is matched by the state government—for this service. In 2010, in response to recommendations in the Dunn Report (2007), the Collections Council of Australia (CCA) established a pilot project with the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder in West

Museum records can enhance distribution maps of deep-sea corals (DSC), but museum data usually acquired from online internet catalogues may be of uncertain quality. Also, many museum records are unavailable through online sources. Holdings of four structure-forming DSC species (Lophelia pertusa, Madrepora oculata, Enallopsammia profunda, Enallopsammia rostrata) collected from off the southeastern US were evaluated from the US National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ), University of Miami's Marine Invertebrate Museum, and Yale University's Peabody Museum of Natural History. Data were gathered from online sources, selected publications, and personal visits to the MCZ and NMNH. Each record was located, if possible, specimens were photographed and additional data obtained, including whether the specimen was collected alive or dead. The resulting database was imported into ArcGIS to examine coral distributions. Museums yielded 304 records: 126 L. pertusa, 62 M. oculata, 113 E. profunda, 3 E. rostrata. Most (87%) records occurred between 400 and 900 m depths; some were <300 m (46–248 m) and >900 m (965–2195 m). Museum records confirmed geographic and bathymetric ranges of these corals and suggested areas for further exploration. Problems encountered in the museum data were varied but generally minor. Museum collections are useful for investigating DSC distributions; however, these data require more scrutiny than they usually receive. Visits to museums and/or interaction with museum staff are recommended to improve museum data utility.

Women have always played a large part in the visual arts throughout Africa. In Botswana at the present time this is illustrated most immediately by the woven baskets, seen everywhere, in galleries, shops and at roadside stalls, that have come to represent the country and its arts and crafts; and with the odd exception they are all made by women in the most rural areas. However, women in Botswana currently practice other arts, including house decoration and pottery, although, for a variety of reasons, these are less immediately obvious. In contrast to these practices, representing traditions inherited from the past, there are others of relatively recent inception. Since the 1980s Botswana has seen the emergence of a small number of women 'Fine' artists, some of whom are Botswana nationals while others are expatriates settled in the country. In contrast to arts made for immediate local use, or sold in roadside stalls, the work of these artists is exhibited in the few art galleries that now exist. During the same period, art education has also been gradually introduced into the school and university system in Botswana. Art galleries both private and public are another recent development, beginning with the National Museums and Monuments Art Gallery, which opened in 1978, and which began to facilitate local exhibitions of Botswana art, while also encouraging exhibitions of this material in other countries. In addition to local tradition and an emerging Fine Art practice, art education, museums and galleries, a series of workshops has also been developed. Some of these were set up by expatriates on a more-or-less permanent basis with the aim of training women in various art forms, while others are temporary and artist-led, giving selected groups of artists the chance to meet, work and exchange ideas. I begin this thesis, therefore, with a survey of all the arts inherited from the past, and currently practised by women in Botswana, and then, in a series of chapters I look at each of the developments, including art education, museums and galleries, and workshops; and their histories, their aims, and their achievements with particular regard to the overall development of the arts in Botswana. This thesis thereby provides a comprehensive study of all the arts practised by women in Botswana through the last thirty years.

In the great age of museum institutionalization between 1875 and 1925, museums competed to form collections in newly defined object categories. Yet museums were uncertain about what to collect, as the boundaries between art and anthropology and between art and craft were fluid and contested. As a case study, this article traces the tortured fate of a large collection of folk pottery assembled by New York art patron Emily de Forest (1851–1942). After assembling her private collection, Mrs. de Forest encountered difficulties in donating it to the American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After becoming part of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, it finally found a home at the Pennsylvania State Museum of Anthropology. Emily de Forest represents an initial movement in the estheticization of ethnic and folk crafts, an appropriation that has since led to the establishment of specifically defined museums of folk art and craft.

Cutting Edge of the Contemporary: KNUST, Accra, and the Ghanaian Contemporary Art Movement

The history of art museums is commonly considered to be a history of collections intertwining institutional history and the biographies of diverse museum actors. In China, museums of art and history followed a historical trajectory from the former Soviet model to the current one dedicated to ancient art and cultural relics. This art museum model, in practice, adopts several derivatives, varying between the disciplines of archaeology, anthropology, art history, and history. Rather than foregrounding the historical-archaeological significance of artefacts or reinforcing state-centric nationalist narratives, this article presents a comprehensive perspective that elucidates the evolving exhibitionary culture in China’s official museums since the end of 1980s, and illustrates how museum narratives are generally devoted to the renewing of traditional local culture in a global-local dialectic. The work, of a qualitative nature, examines the Suzhou Museum (Suzhou), one of the most iconic Chinese museums of art and history where the traditional and the cosmopolitan coexist, as an empirical case study. The article argues that the transforming museum narratives of the Suzhou Museum over time carries trifold connotations: abstract aesthetics remain important through ideological shifts; shifts in political power are embodied in the exhibitionary complex; and visitors form a continuous point of engagement.

Embodied interpretation: Gesture, social interaction, and meaning making in a national art museum

If the 65 educators, scientists, and media specialists who gathered at the “Bridging the Poles” workshop in Washington, D.C. last June have their way a semitrailer truck labeled “Got Snow?” would traverse the country during the International Polar Year (IPY) of 2007–2009 loaded with polar gear, interactive activities, and a snowmaker.We would significantly increase the number of Arctic residents—especially indigenous Alaskans—with Ph.D.s. We would build exchange programs between inner city youths and polar residents. Polar exhibitions would open at natural history and art museums and zoos. And polar postage stamps, interactive polar computer games, national polar book‐of‐the‐month recommendations, made‐for‐TV polar documentaries, and a polar youth forum would bring the poles front and center to the public's attention.

The National Library, Kolkata, is the largest single library that serves as the depository as well as the repository of all the published material of India. It also has built up a large collection of foreign publications. Besides, there are two other national libraries, namely, National Science Library, New Delhi and National Medical Library, New Delhi. There are a large number of academic, research, public and special libraries. Steps are being undertaken to modernize the libraries to meet the increasing demands of users. The National Archives of India (NAI), New Delhi, is the premier records repository of India. It has set up four regional archival repositories in Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Jaipur, and Pondicherry. Each State has its own archives. There are a large number of college and university archives, corporate archives, religious archives, manuscript repositories, etc. India is a country that is rich in culture, heritage, science, and artifacts. Its museums and art galleries house a great cultural heritage. The National Museum, New Delhi, is the apex museum in the country. In addition to State museums and art galleries, there are a large number of art museums and galleries (noncommercial) that display India's rich heritage. India is also rich in biodiversity. The National Zoological Park, Delhi, is one of the finest zoological parks in India. Some of the best jewels of Indian wilderness include the Great Himalayan National Park, Dachigam National Park, Corbett National Park, Ranthambore National Park, Sundarbans National Park, and Kaziranga National Park

y most informed estimations, Horace Pippin is one of the most important African American visual artists of the twentieth century. During relatively brief career as an artist, Pippin produced some one hundred paintings and a number of burnt wood panels on themes as varied as war, family and community life, religion, and nature. In their mammoth study, A History of African American Artists, Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson attribute Pippin's success to the fact that his need to organize and express the reality of life visually cut through all impediments so directly and profoundly that he arrived at concepts in painting that were extremely modern (356). Whether it was ability to produce modernist images or exotic style, as others claim, Pippin's work was immediately embraced by art historians and connoisseurs from the moment that it was brought to public attention. Since the late 1930s, when work was first shown, Pippin has been one of the most often exhibited African American visual artists. In addition, works are still avidly sought out by private collectors and museums. Today, works hang in the homes of many prominent Americans and are part of the permanent collections of major museums across the country including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Hirshhorn Museum, Phillips Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and others (Bearden and Henderson 356; S. Wilson 3). From these obvious signs of extraordinary accomplishment in the visual arts as evidenced in embrace by representatives of the elite art world, one might be inclined to conclude that Horace Pippin enjoys a secure place alongside other masters of American visual art. When one

Natural history collections and museums made their appearance in the Ottoman in late 19th century through various attempts to build collections through field excursions, donations and exchanges among researchers, individuals and institutions around the world. Among them, the Imperial Medical School of the Ottoman Empire, schools of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) and other American educational groups and French colleges stand out with their vast collections from various parts of the Ottoman Empire and beyond. While these museums were created and built by eminent curators and researchers, a considerable amount of work was carried out by uncredited staff and the students. The history of these museums was often obscured by catastrophic events such as the great fires in Istanbul, the passing of the curators and other administrators and, particularly, the devastating effects of the First World War. However, long-lasting commercial science objects networks and the establishment of global natural history collections and museums are still operational today, supported by scientific exchange between other countries and the Ottoman Empire during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Drawing an outline of the history of the natural history collections of the Ottoman Empire can shed light on the evolution of both the naturalistic movement within the Ottoman society and an embryonic scientific network around the Middle East and the rest of the world.

The National Museum of Natural History is committed to long-term stewardship of collections and to supporting their use by scientists and the general public. This stewardship role is unique among other US natural history museums. As the nation’s natural history museum, the National Museum of Natural History has a mandated commitment to conserve and protect its collections in a manner that will assure their continued accessibility by future generations and maintain the National Museum of Natural History mission. A significant number of objects from the National Museum of Natural History are permanently stored at the Museum Support Center in Suitland, MD. This space not only includes collections from the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), but also the Museum Conservation Institute (MCI), the National Museum of American History (NMAH), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (HMSG), the Freer Sackler Gallery (FSG) and the National Museum of African Art (AfA) as well as several other museums. In terms of collections access and use, the museum support center has a team, Collections Support Services (CSS), dedicated to collections’ long-term care and preservation. Collections Support Services provides access and support for the 730,000 square feet of collections housed at MSC. CSS staff perform a variety of technical and labor tasks related to the cleaning, preparation, packing, transport, unpacking, and permanent storage of objects and specimens. This includes building custom aluminum pallets for oversized objects and whale skull cradles. Moreover, while the use of palletized storage is not a new concept in museum storage, the construction of Pod 4 at the Museum Support Center in Suitland, MD posed some unique challenges for the permanent storage of oversized collections. Pod 4 provides continuous rows of 2', 4' and 8' deep cantilevered open racking from floor to ceiling (22 feet high), and allows palletized objects to be moved and placed in the racking via forklift. Traditional wooden pallets are unacceptable by archival standards, as they are acidic by nature, bulky, heavy, not fire-retardant, and prone to pest infestation. Collections Support Services circumvented these issues by establishing an innovative system of customized aluminum pallets for collections’ long-term care and preservation. These pallets are durable and lightweight, and must pass several quality control tests that include dropping and jarring. They are also designed with multiple functions in mind for ease of use, storage, transport, and maintenance.