Author Archives:
Design in Museums: Towards an Integrative Approach
Maddalena Dalla Mura, Design in Museums: Towards an Integrative Approach. The Potential of Science and Technology Museums, in “Journal of Design History”, 22/3, 2009, pp. 259-270
Abstract:
To deal with design in museums today means not only to look at well-established design museums but also to integrate different resources and explore the potential of other types of [...]
Design Museum, London
Stretches, controversies, identity
In the article Establishing the Manifesto. Art Histories in the Nineteenth-century museum by Christopher Whitehead which I already mentioned and quoted, the author also offered some recent cases where museological and curatorial projects might be read and interpreted as agents of “boundary work”. Among these, he reported about two exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert [...]
Museums and the Construction of Disciplines
Imagine we could make tabula rasa on Exhibition Road and – one century passed since their official separation in 1909 – start over, using the collections of both the Victoria and Albert and of the Science Museum to build a new museum “of design”. How would we arrange collections? What would we keep under the [...]
Designing Modern Germany
some considerations on the role of museums
Designing Modern Germany by Jeremy Aynsley, published this year, is a text full of information and based on an important set of sources and references. The study is lead by the will of the author to understand and make clear how «cultural difference can be acutely perceived through design» (ibid., p. 22). Concluding the Introduction, [...]
Design Museums Statements #17
Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein
«The picture the Vitra Design Museum collections sketch of the history of modern furniture design may be incomplete, but precisely because of its deliberately restricted focus, it is considerably more distinct and coherent than many of the leading collections of publicly operated institutions.»
Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein
ref. Alexander von Vegesack, Origins and Holdings of [...]
Design Museums Statements #16
Design Museum, London
«The Design Museum is one of the world’s leading museums devoted to contemporary design in every form from furniture to graphics, and architecture to industrial design. It is working to place design at the centre of contemporary culture. It demonstrates both the richness of the creativity to be found in all forms of design, and [...]
Design Museums Statements #15
MAK, Vienna
«Design statement:
- Design is intervention, is change.
- Design raises questions. Design is goal-oriented action. Design sets things in motion.
- Design opens new spaces and perspectives.
- Design expands our perceptive faculties.
- Design is the source of and the grounds for a new reality and its possible imitation.
- Design allows us to partake in the archaic. For [...]
Design Museums Statements #14
Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
«Since its origins in 1879 in the Sydney International Exhibition, the Powerhouse Museum has striven to be a museum of the people, providing a cultural storehouse for the products of art and industry that would instruct and inspire visitors from all walks of life. Design has been the unifying theme over the past 125 years, [...]
