Category Archives: Case Studies
Design, childhood, museums
V&A Childhood Museum, London
I recently visited the V&A Museum of Childhood in London, Bethnal Green. Compared to “children museums”, where the participatory quality and the active engagements of kids is predominant, the Museum of Childhood has a more complex nature due to its history and to the history of its collections. In fact, the museum in Bethnal Green [...]
Industrial Design at the Canada Science
and Technology Museum, Ottawa
© photo Canada Science and Technology Museum, Ottawa
In 2009 the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa started a programme and strategy to collect and exhibit industrial design. While the programme is still under development, some points seem to be quite clear. As far as can be learned from the considerations made by the curatorial [...]
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 [...]
Multiple voices
Vienna, MAK
Discourses and voices on design are multiplying. Museums are no exceptions.
Consider for instance one European capital city like Vienna, where the MAK - Museum für Angewandte Kunst is acknowledged and renowned as a museum of design, but where other institutions – the Design Forum at Museum Quartier, the Möbel Museum, the Wien Museum and the [...]
