Museums and their Values

In many societies worldwide, museums of all kinds remain immensely popular. However, museums face an increasing skepticism regarding their roles in society, which, together with anticolonial critiques, and questioning of their claims to authority, has prompted reevaluations of the values they represent. The time is ripe for a fresh, methodical examination of contemporary museum values across the spectrum of museum types worldwide, taking into consideration their collections, staff, governance, and social embeddedness. A selection of students each week will present on one museum value in relation to a museum of their choice. The values we shall discuss include aesthetic value, authenticity value, classification value, collection value, conservation value, display value, epistemological value, ethical value, formal value, historical value, and therapeutic value. We shall focus not so much on what museum staffs and trustees claim their values to be as on what observers—the students—can infer of those values from the traces of the actions of staffs and trustees. Students will be able to choose a different museum for each presentation but can also return more than once to the same museum to explore different values. The final paper will be a consolidation and revision of presentations made during the semester. 3 credits. MDP.