"On the State of Research at Museums" Conference

The conference is intended to explore museums as places where knowledge is created by trying to consider the differences between museums and universities. Asking  the question about the status of knowledge at art museums, whether it is expert knowledge or not, will be crucial in this context. How do exhibition projects position themselves in the world of science? Are they discriminated because they are temporary by nature? Or, perhaps, quite the opposite, they serve to bridge a gap in a traditional approach to the dissemination of research. We would like to discover projects of what kind are being carried out in art institutions in Poland and in other countries. We also hope that the conference will allow us to confront diverse perspectives on and interpretations of research effort undertaken at museums. Against this background, it appears crucial to ensure recognition of research conducted at museums at legal and formal levels, mainly by examining limitations imposed by the currently binding regulations and comparing them with solutions adopted in other countries.

The conference will also be an opportunity to reflect upon searches for an ideal model of modus operandi of a museum as an institution dealing with research and using its outcomes in the context of science and research organizational framework that has been put in place in Poland after 1989. In the Interwar period (1918-1939) Mieczysław Treter defined museums as scientific institutions in which „thanks to a systematic arrangement of specimens collected in a planned and skillful way and properly conserved the whole of human knowledge, or alternatively its one branch, of the nature of the universe or of man and his civilization or culture, is manifested” (M. Treter, Muzea współczesne. Studium muzeologiczne. Początki, rodzaje, istota i organizacja muzeów. Publiczne zbiory muzealne w Polsce i przyszły ich rozwój [Contemporary Museums. Museological Study. Beginnings, Types, Essence and Organization of Museums. Public Museum Collections in Poland and Their Future Development], Warsaw 2019). Looking from our contemporary perspective, seeing museums as purely scientific and research institutions is neither realistic nor welcome. Wishing to give shape to the predicted development of scientific contexts of museum activities we will also focus on aspects of democratization of science in museums and on the expansion of the structure of knowledge production.

The conference will be a good moment to introduce this year's edition of ”Muzealnictwo” [Museology] scientific journal, which discusses aspects of scientific activities carried out by museums and in itself is an example of research efforts of an institution of culture, i.e., the National Institute for Museums and Public Collections, the co-organizer of the conference.

Conference programme:

3rd of December: Research-based activities in museums

10.00 Opening of the session: Jarosław Suchan (Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi) i Piotr Majewski (NIMOZ)

10:30-11:15 prof. Charles Esche: Transitioning, demodernising and gathering. Some actions for museums to practice

11:30-12:30 Discussion panel: Research activities in museums vs. the formal demands of scholarship

•            dr Żaneta Gwardzińska-Chowaniec: Museums as spaces for research on museum law.

•            dr hab. Hubert Kowalski: Museums within the University Framework. Places for carrying out research and creating collections.

12:45-14:00 Discussion: scholarship vs. the social mission of a museum

Participants: Paulina Długosz, dr Dominik Kacper Płaza, dr Beata Nessel-Łukasik
Moderator: dr Karol Franczak

14:45–15:15 Panel: Museum vs. University – different forms of research-based activity

•            dr Lisa Moran: Taighde | The Irish Museum of Modern Art as site for research

•            dr hab. Tomasz de Rosset: Is the museum a scientific and scholarly research institution?

15:30–17:00 Discussion: academic and museum collaboration

Participants: Paweł Kendra, dr Marcin Szerle, dr Katarzyna Wagner, Magdalena Zych, Justyna Żak-Szwarc

Moderator: dr hab. Agnieszka Rejniak-Majewska

17:15–18:45 Discussion: Museums within a third level education institution

Participants: dr Urszula Bończuk-Dawidziuk, prof. dr hab. inż. Marcin Chrzanowski, Lilianna Lewandowska
Moderator: dr Łukasz Biskupski

19:00 Presentation of the latest issue of Muzealnictwo

 

4th of December : Subject matter and the practices of museum research

 

9:00 Opening of the session: Agnieszka Pindera i Natalia Słaboń (Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi)

9:15–10:00 prof. Beatrice von Bismarck: Producting Difference – Curatorial Policity

10:00–10:45 dr Paul O’Neill: Art - in - Exhibition as Public Forms of Escape

11:00–12:00 Discussion panel: Modern art vs. museum research practices

•            Lotte Bode: Bridging the gap between institution and artist: Archiving performance at the M HKA

•            dr Monika Stobiecka: Between the archaeological museum and the contemporary art gallery. The theoretical role of exhibitions at the interface between archaeology and contemporary art

12:15–13:15 Discussion: Exhibition as a tool to practice science

•            dr Dorota Jędruch i Filip Skowron: Methods and methodologies – museum strategies in the arranging of exhibits based on the example of the Power of the Museum exhibition.

•            Dorota Seweryn-Puchalska: Exhibitions with features of a scientific research
Moderator: dr Tomasz Załuski

13:30–15:00 Discussion: Museum collection as a topic of research and a research instrument

Participants: Aleksandra Janiszewska, Elżbieta Modzelewska, dr Łukasz Nawrocki

Moderator: Maria Romanowska-Zadrożna

15:15 - 16:15 Discussion: Oral histories – a new research domain

Participants: Anna Michalska, dr Mariusz Niestrawski

Moderator: dr hab. prof. UŁ Kaja Kaźmierska

16:15–16:30 Conference closing

The co-organizer of the conference is the National Institute for Museums and Public Collections: