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Article ID: CBB001212432

“Back Room” Pedagogies in University Museums in Britain (2013)

Dransart, Penelope (Author)

European Legacy
Volume: 18, no. 1
Issue: 1
Pages: 42-58
Publication date: 2013
Language: English

Publication Date: 2013
Edition Details: Part of a special issue, “Reflections on the Future University”

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Teaching; pedagogy Universities and colleges Museums Modern Early modern Great Britain Oxford University Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

The stage-like exhibitionary space, which members of the public visit, has received more scholarly scrutiny than the pedagogical and curatorial activities that take place in the back rooms of museums. This essay draws attention to the behind-the-scenes places in university museums as a pedagogic site where students learn through the close examination of artefacts. It addresses the social context of learning through the study of incomplete objects, which may involve handling them. This process of using artefacts to engage with different groups of people (collectors, curators, teaching staff and students) contributes to the physical and intellectual development of academic disciplines. It enhances the museum's institutional mission and survival as an incorporated body that is embedded in a greater whole, the university itself. The Ashmolean Museum, in the University of Oxford, and the Balfourian and Sibbaldian Museums, in the University of Edinburgh, were founded in the seventeenth century. But whereas the Ashmolean survived as an institution, the first Edinburgh collections did not. These historical antecedents serve as a backdrop to a discussion of how one particular example, the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (CUMAA), trains new generations of learners to evaluate empirical evidence and by working with different communities of users---students and the wider public---it ensures its survival.

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Description Provides some historical discussion and then focuses on activities at the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

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