UCL Course: Ethnographic Object Analysis

Convenors: Dr Julie Botticello, Dr Sarah Byrne, Devorah Romanek, Dr Marilena Alivizatou

Venues: UCL, British Museum, Horniman Museum

Dates: Wednesday 2, 9, 16, 23, 30 May 2012, 14:00 – 17:00pm

Do you ever visit museums and feel that you lack the specialist knowledge, skills and experience to critically analyse and evaluate ethnographic objects and displays? This training course, run by the UCL Centre for Museums, Heritage and Material Culture Studies, is designed to provide the skills necessary to do this.

Utilising collections at UCL, and with access to the British Museum and the Horniman Museum, this training course sets out to develop the skills and understanding necessary to best utilise ethnographic collections from Africa, the Americas and Oceania. The course will be particularly suitable for those wishing to develop their ethnographic expertise in such fields as museum studies and cultural heritage as well as graduates keen to familiarise themselves with the materiality of ethnographic objects, images and collections. You will be guided towards relevant themes and perspectives through a series of hands-on practical sessions run on a weekly basis.

Sessions will focus on:
•    Analytical techniques for examining materials, style and technique of ethnographic objects
•    Learning how to observe, document and describe ethnographic objects through drawing, classification and computer documentation systems
•    Handling skills, basic conservation assessment techniques and issues of conservation practice and ethics
•    Practical exploration of issues relating to exhibition, design and representation
•    Analytical techniques for ethnographic photographs and their storage

The training course will provide participants with a practical grounding to become confident in handling and using ethnographic objects in research and creative media. It will also provide some of the necessary skills needed by those interested in pursuing a career in museums and galleries, anthropology, culture and heritage, art history and the education sector.

Course Cost: £300, £250 (student concession)
For more information or to enrol please contact Dr. Sarah Byrne
s.byrne@ucl.ac.uk

Textile Society Grants

www.textilesociety.org.uk

Funded Postgraduate Opportunity: University of St Andrews

Professional Preparation Masters Degree - MLitt Museum and Gallery Studies

We invite applications for an AHRC-funded place on the full-time postgraduate Museum and Gallery Studies course starting in September 2012. 

Professional Preparation Master’s awards provide funding for Master’s or Postgraduate Diploma courses that focus on developing high level skills and competencies for professional practice in a field relevant to the content of the course.

St Andrews is Scotland’s only centre for Museum and Gallery Studies and enjoys an international reputation for its teaching and research. The course offers a wide-ranging professional training, and a high percentage of graduates have gone straight into careers in museums, art galleries, historic houses and other heritage organisations. Modules on the Theory and Practice of Museums are complemented by practical activities, undertaken in local and regional museums. The teaching takes place in the University’s museum (MUSA) which can be used as a ‘laboratory’ for experimentation in museum interpretation and education.  The vocational relevance of the programme is strengthened by links with the University’s museum staff and with outside museum professionals who contribute to the teaching.

Although we are based in the School of Art History we welcome applications from all disciplines.  We are looking for well-qualified candidates with at least a good 2:1 degree. 

To apply for an AHRC grant you need to:
* Complete a University of St Andrews on-line application form and, where the form asks how you intend to fund your studies, state that you want to be considered for an AHRC award.
* Add a separate Supporting Statement document saying how the course will contribute to your long-term career development.

Deadline for applications: 31 March 2012

To check your eligibility, go to the AHRC website at:
http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/FundingOpportunities/Documents/GuidetoStudentFunding.pdf

For further details of the course visit our website at:
http://www-ah.st-andrews.ac.uk/mgstud/

For further enquiries contact:  pgarthist@st-andrews.ac.uk

Roma Routes

The Roma Routes project is making a list of Gypsy, Roma, Traveller collections and
items in UK museums or archives. The aim of this project is to make it easier for people to find Gypsy, Roma, Traveller materials by making the list available and by publishing it on the Roma Routes website www.romaroutes.eu

This work is part of the EU funded Roma Routes project which promotes Roma heritage and culture, and involves heritage organisations and Roma representatives from Germany, Greece, Slovenia, Romania and the UK.

If you have relevant collections or items we would be grateful if you could send us an email, so that we can send you the necessary form: romaroutes@surreycc.gov.uk

Please also pass this on to others and do not hesitate to contact us if you have any information that might point us in the right direction.

Thanks very much in advance and best wishes,
Kate Stuart and Jen Coates
Roma Routes Project Officers

Curious new paintings at Pitt Rivers

Following the success of her previous exhibition on the Museum's Lower Gallery in early 2011, American artist Sue Johnson returns to the Pitt Rivers to show fifteen new works in The Curious Nature of Objects: Sue Johnson’s Paper Museum. The exhibition will open on Tuesday 24 January and will run until 10 June 2012 in the Museum’s Long Gallery.

‘Just occasionally, an artist comes to work with the collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum with such a sympathetic but different take that it changes everyone’s way of seeing. Such an artist is Sue Johnson.’ Jeremy Coote, Curator and Joint Head of Collections.

Johnson’s striking paintings have been inspired by images of familiar types of ethnographic and archaeological objects in the illustrated catalogue of General Pitt-Rivers’s ‘second’ collection. Working in gouache, watercolour, and pencil on paper, and drawing on her extensive knowledge of natural history illustration, museums, and archives, Johnson redisplays and reorders familiar objects in new contexts and new juxtapositions.

This illustrated catalogue has been one of the major focuses of ‘Rethinking Pitt-Rivers: Analysing the Activities of a Nineteenth-Century Collector’ (2009–2012), a three-year research project, of which Johnson is an honorary research associate, based at the Museum and funded by a grant from The Leverhulme Trust. More information about the project can be found at: http://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/rpr/

A catalogue (£5.00) and postcards to accompany the exhibition will be available from the Museum shop and quality reproductions of a selection of the paintings can be ordered from www.prmprints.com

Reanimating Cultural Heritage in Sierra Leone exhibition, UCL

The exhibition is split across two sites at University College London. There is a video installation in the North Lodge (at the main entrance to UCL on Gower Street), whilst the main displays are set up in the North Cloisters in the Wilkins Building. The North Cloisters display provides a rare opportunity to see some iconic Sierra Leonean objects from the collections of the British Museum and Sierra Leone National Museum.

The exhibition is free and open to the public. The North Cloisters are open 7 days a week (9am-8pm), the North Lodge is open Monday-Friday 9am-5pm. The exhibition is open until 17 February.

An associated special event, 'Culture and Development in Sierra Leone' will be taking place on 2 February (5.30-8.00pm) in the Old Refectory, Wilkins Building, UCL. This will be the official launch of the www.sierraleoneheritage.org digital heritage resource. Speakers include:

H.E. Eddie Turay, Sierra Leone High Commissioner, UK
Foday Jalloh, Director of Culture, Ministry of Tourism and Cultural Affairs, Government of Sierra Leone
Ruth B. Phillips, Carleton University
Bill Hart, University of Ulster
Paul Basu, UCL


For more information see:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/January2012/12012012-sierra-leone-cultural-heritage-exhibition

James Green Scholarship, Sussex

The James Henry Green PhD scholarship is available to
students wishing to pursue doctoral research within the Department of Art
History at the University of Sussex. The three-year scholarship covers
University tuition fees* and an annual book award of £1000.

Deadline 27 April 2012

The scholarship is offered by the James Henry Green Charitable Trust through the James Green Centre for World Art at Royal Pavilion & Museums (RP&M), Brighton & Hove. The purpose of the award is to build and share knowledge about RP&M’s rich holdings of material and visual culture from Africa, Asia, the Pacific and Americas. For this reason the main requirement of the award is that the proposed doctoral research project considers some aspect of the World Art collection. Other requirements include a yearly report and, at some point during the scholarship, a public outcome for staff and visitors to Brighton Museum & Art Gallery (for example a talk, display or web article about the research project). The scholarship-holder is also expected to make a presentation on the subject of their doctoral research to the Trustees of the James Henry Green Charitable Trust at one of their annual general meetings during their tenure of the scholarship.

The World Art collection

The World Art collection is a Designated** collection of over 12,000 objects and images from Africa, Asia, the Pacific and Americas. The collection encompasses objects in a wide range of media and represents many different geographies and time periods; from Peruvian archaeological textiles to late 20th-century barbers’ signboards from Kenya. Many items in the collection were sold or donated by people associated with Britain’s former colonies and so these areas are particularly well represented. West Africa and South and South East Asia, for example, are areas of strength but the collection also includes important and rare material from southern Africa, China, North America and the Pacific.

Possible approaches

While research proposals which take a traditional object-based approach to the collection will be welcomed, work which situates the material in wider contexts is also encouraged. This might include researchwhich addresses:

• the complex networks of dealers, salerooms and collectors, which, particularly in the late 19th century, enabledmuseums such as that at Brighton to accumulate collections of ‘non-western’ material
• changing modes for the display and interpretation of ‘non-western’ material culture
• the role of particular individuals in forming collections and displays
• the role of historic collections in the context of contemporary cultural politics
• how collections material functioned in its ‘original’ context(s), for example items made for courtly or religious use
• issues of post-colonialism
• issues around gender or class and collecting

Further information

The Keeper and Curator of World Art are happy to facilitate access to collections and collections information for those individuals looking to develop a research proposal. Selection of the scholarship-holder will be made by the Department of Art History at the University of Sussex so enquiries regarding application should be made there.

Helen Mears, Keeper of World Art

t: 01273 292863

e: helen.mears@brighton-hove.gov.uk

History of Art University of Sussex contact

Fiona Allan, Research and Enterprise Coordinator

t: 01273 876612

e: f.m.allan@sussex.ac.uk

Dr Geoff Quilley, Senior Lecturer in Art History

t: 01273 876627

e: g.quilley@sussex.ac.uk

* International students are welcome to apply for the
scholarship but we regret that we can only pay the equivalent of ‘home’ student
tuition fees.

** The Designation scheme was launched in 1997 by
Resource (then Museum, Libraries & Archives Council, now Arts Council
England) to identify and celebrate the pre-eminent collections of national and
international importance held in England's non-national museums.

Information about applying for the scholarship can be downloaded from here:

The James Henry Green History of Art PhD Scholarship [DOC 62.00KB]