THE EXHIBITION AS PRODUCT AND GENERATOR OF SCHOLARSHIP
Conference, 27–8 November 2008, München, Deutsches Museum
A project by the working group Collections and Collecting
Organised by Helmuth Trischler, Christian Sichau and Susanne Pickert (Deutsches Museum München)
Co-financed by the Research Network and the Deutsches Museum
No exhibition without scholarship: Object-based studies and the exploration of the cultural context of the object are prerequisites for an intelligible presentation. However, exhibitions do more than merely visualise the results of research. They have the potential to stimulate learning and generate knowledge by posing new research questions.
How can researchers take advantage of this opportunity? In what way can academic arguments be translated into spatial arrangement while at the same time remaining serviceable for reading and citing by future researchers? What might the results of an academic examination of an exhibition look like? Unlike printed texts – the traditional publication media of academia – common standards of terminology and argumentation have yet to emerge. What exactly is the role of the objects on display? Recent history of science and technology has interrogated the epistemic quality of these material sources of research intensively. Yet how do the objects display their salient feature when staged for exhibition purposes?
The conference brought together curators, museum experts, designers, artists, experts in cultural studies and historians of science and technology to engage in a discussion about their experiences and expectations of the exhibition as product and generator of scholarship.
The proceedings will be published as Max Planck Preprint in Feburary 2010.