Inside the Lost Museum: Curating, Past and Present

“The book derives its title from the Jenks Museum, a defunct natural history museum at Brown University. Woven throughout are vignettes about the museum’s founding curator, the naturalist John Whipple Potter Jenks, the institution’s colorful past, and a recent project—led by Lubar, artist Mark Dion, and a group of students—to recreate the museum as an art and history exhibit. These stories provide a narrative wedge into the history and philosophy of museums.

Objects are central to the book, which begins by considering the complex act of collecting. What do curators collect and why? What might be useful for research or exhibition? What is worth saving, and who decides? “Objects,” Lubar writes, “are important to museums, but they need to be the right objects, collected thoughtfully, documented thoroughly—and not too many.”

~Valerie Thompson

 

 

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/books/2017/08/14/a-behind-the-scenes-museum-tour-offers-insight-into-the-once-and-future-roles-of-these-iconic-institutions/