Written as one of the requested prompts from
this meme.
Originally, I was planning for this to be just one, much longer, post, but when it comes to my field of study, especially with it being both a) obscure, and b) wide-ranging, any single post would take hours to come up with and be way too long and still leave out some of the important and interesting parts of museology as a discipline. So, I'd rather start short, and general, and then expand on certain topics in later posts.
This shouldn't be taken as a definitive sense of museology/museum studies, as it reflects only my own (relatively isolated) experiences with the Museum Studies program at the University of Washington, and even within that the curriculum you'd find that experiences vary widely even among students in the same year.
Museology (also called museum studies) is the study of how to organize and manage museums and museum collections. More generally, museum studies is a term used to denote academic programs, generally graduate programs, in the management, administration, or theory of museums.
Thank you Wikipedia, that's helpful.
It's a pretty accurate definition, although I would probably add something in about how interdisciplinary it really is. The center of the discipline is the place called "museum," rather than a specific body of knowledge, procedures or intellectual frameworks.
First I should probably define "museum" as it's used in Museology.
A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.
As it's applied to Museology, this would include "traditional museums" (a.k.a. institutions that have "Museum" attached to their name), but can also include:
- Science Centers
- Planetaria
- Zoos
- Aquaria
- Botanical Gardens
- Historical Houses/Sites
And, also partially:
- Libraries/Archives (usually as part of a museum collection)
- National Parks (in interpretation)
So museology concerns itself with the theory, skills, and practices involved with managing these institutions and their collections.
But, what exactly does one learn in Museology?
This is something I'll probably get into in a later post because there's a wide range of variation not just between programs within a program and even within individuals in the same class, depending on their area of interests.
Theoretical: The pondering of what the purpose of museums are, how they should be run, the role of museums in society and in adressing social issues, public perceptions of science/art, museums and law, informal education, visitor experience.
Practical: Skills needed to work as a museum director/educator/exhibit designer/curator/collections manager/registrar/audience researcher etc.
The UW Museology program is very practice based, at this point there's a required 6 credits of internships, and students are heavily encouraged to do more. Also networking. Networking is huge here, particularly in connecting the museology program to museums in Seattle.
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