Stuart Burch Not Homepage histories ! & teacherly tweets

Museum and Society was “launched in March 2003 as an independent peer reviewed journal which brings together new writing by academics and museum professionals on the subject of museums. It is both international in scope and at the cutting edge of empirical and theoretical research on museums”.

Accessed 18/05/2011

Museum & Society seeks to be a “forum... [for] dialogue and debate about the museum and its role in the world... [M]useum issues have burst out of the glass case” generating “newsworthy stories” that “are no longer confined to the professional spaces of the gallery, lecture hall or seminar room.” I responded to this and to the journal’s call for “innovative articles” by experimenting with a non-standard way to write “about museums and museum-related matters”.

Accessed 18/05/2011

Accessed 18/05/2011

Our main concern is with the tone and content of the article that calls into question the professionalism and integrity of specific individuals – particularly Lars Nittve – in a manner which, we feel, is inappropriate for a journal that presents empirical and theoretical research on museums. We appreciate that the style you have adopted is not perhaps uncommon within the art press but feel that it is too speculative and personal for Museum and Society (Sandell 2011).

[W]e feel that the specific case study “should be situated within the literature and history of the problem more fully. It should engage with the debates in museum studies and contemporary art about the problem – which have been ‘live’ for 40 years” (report 2).

This, we would argue, would enable you to develop a more even handed, nuanced and ultimately more powerful critique that explores how and why curators, artists and institutions are caught up in ethical dilemmas posed by the use of institutional critique. We would therefore require more substantial revisions before the article could be considered for the journal (Sandell 2011). This, we would argue, would enable you to develop a more even handed, nuanced and ultimately more powerful critique that explores how and why curators, artists and institutions are caught up in ethical dilemmas posed by the use of institutional critique. We would therefore require more substantial revisions before the article could be considered for the journal (Sandell 2011).

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