Buscar
Resultados de la búsqueda
-
2018
Journal article
The Janitor and his museum: John Wilson (1775–1832) and the teaching of ‘practical zoology’ in early nineteenth-century Edinburgh
A description by William Jardine of Applegirth of the state of taxidermy in early nineteenth-century Edinburgh draws attention to the agency of the University of Edinburgh’s Janitor, John Wilson, in contributing to the University’s Natural History Museum, in the building of his own private museum collection, and in the teaching...Swinney, Geoffrey N ; McGowan, R Y
-
2017
Journal article
Recycled objects: curatorial practice and the engagement of contemporary art in the interpretation of historical African figurative sculpture
Through a case study approach those acts of assembling, juxtaposing and exhibiting collections of objects, which constitute the western museum, are analysed as artistic processes which produce the museum as a form of ‘public art’. The paper takes as its fulcrum L’Ange, a contemporary artwork formed from recycled materials by...Swinney, Geoffrey N
-
2016
Journal article
Making space for models: (re)representing engineering in Scotland’s national museum, 1854–present
The model-making practices and the role of engineering models on display within a British (and since 1999 Scottish) Government-funded, ‘national’, museum are examined. The changing curatorial perceptions of models and their role over the 160-year history of the Museum are analysed, as are the spaces in which, and the processes...Staubermann, Klaus ; Swinney, Geoffrey N
workshop practice, exhibition, curation, translation of scale, public engagement, and model-making
-
2016
Journal article
George Wilson's Map of Technology: giving shape to the ‘industrial arts’ in mid-nineteenth-century Edinburgh
An intriguing symbol adorns the grave, in Edinburgh's Old Calton Burial Ground, of George Wilson (1818–1859), Britain's first Professor of Technology. Wilson himself had devised the symbol as an emblem for the Industrial Museum of Scotland of which he was Director. In his professorial role he defined and delineated the...Swinney, Geoffrey N
technological education, Industrial Museum of Scotland, National Museums Scotland, geographies of science, collections, and teaching
-
2014
Conference paper (unpublished)
Recycled Objects: Exhibiting Africa in Scotland.
Those acts of assembling, juxtaposing and exhibiting objects, which constitute the western museum, have themselves been conceptualised as artistic processes which produce the museum as a form of ‘public art’ (Hein, 2006). Such an holistic concept is fundamentally geographical: the place and placement of objects creating new aesthetic and discursive...Swinney, Geoffrey N
-
2013
Journal article
Exhibiting Livingstone: A life and legacy on display
The paper combines a biographical and a geographical perspective to construct an auto-critique of a commemorative exhibition as a museological event. Taking as its primary focus the bicentenary exhibition staged in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh in 2012–2013, it situates an autobiographical exploration of the process of collaboration...Worden, Sarah ; Swinney, Geoffrey N
Malawi, Scotland, curation, museology, commemoration, and visitor experience
-
2013
Doctoral thesis
Towards an Historical Geography of a ‘National’ Museum: The Industrial Museum of Scotland, the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art and the Royal Scottish Museum, 1854-1939.
This thesis adopts a primarily process-based methodology to put a museum in its place as a site of knowledge-making. It examines the practices of space which were productive of a government-funded (‘national’) museum in Edinburgh. Taking a spatial perspective, and recognising that place is both material and metaphorical, the thesis...Swinney, Geoffrey N
history of science, exhibition, museum education, institutional history, geographies of science, and visitor experience
-
2012
Book chapter
What do we know about what we know? The museum ‘register’ as museum object.
As the title suggests, this essay considers how registers provide knowledges about collections, and challenges prevailing perceptions that registers are an unproblematic resource. To do this I adopt the epistemological position that registers are themselves museum objects – ‘meta-objects’, collections of records about collections, an archive of an archive. -...Swinney, Geoffrey N