museum geography: exploring museums, collections and museum practice in the uk

Museum Geography: Exploring Museums, Collectionsand Museum Practice in the UK

Hilary Geoghegan*School of Geography, University of Exeter

Abstract

In the UK alone there are more than 2500 museums of interest to international and home audi-ences. Despite their prevalence and a strong museological culture in the UK and beyond, the geo-graphic study of museums is relatively under-developed. To date there has been no systematicoverview of this field either in the UK or internationally. This review article is intended as a con-tribution towards an emerging ‘museum geography’. Beginning with an exploration of researchon museums, collections and museum practice, the author then considers the recent ‘spatial turn’in museum studies and discusses how geographers have variously encountered museums, collec-tions and museum practice to date. The article then reviews the potential for the future study ofmuseums by geographers. In so doing, the author suggests that the study of museums offers someexciting opportunities for geographical research and teaching.

Introduction

Throughout 2006 and early 2007, the British Museum in London allowed the BBC tofilm a behind-the-scenes documentary aptly titled ‘The Museum’ (Smith 2007). Over thecourse of ten half hour programmes, curators, conservators and other museum staff intro-duced viewers to the building, its collections and the institution’s position as an interna-tionally renowned museum. The first programme attracted an audience of over 2 millionviewers and helped to position museums within the national consciousness as sites of dia-logue and spaces through which the past, present and future can be encountered bothintellectually and materially.

Museums have been around for hundreds of years. The earliest Western museums tookthe form of cabinets of curiosity, study collections or ‘Wunderkammer’ belonging to roy-alty and wealthy families. They contained miscellaneous artefacts that had the potential toinspire, enthuse and excite. One of the earliest cabinets of curiosity (circa. 1660)belonged to John Bargrave, the canon of Canterbury Cathedral, and contained items asvaried as a finger of a Frenchman and a box of stone fragments (McCarthy et al. 2007).It is in these cabinets and collections that many modern Western museums have theirroots (Hooper-Greenhill 1992); take the British Museum in London as an example.Founded on a bequest made by Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753) who wanted his collectionto remain together after his death, the British Museum opened in 1759 and was one ofthe world’s first public museums (Elsner and Cardinal 1994). Like other early Westernmuseums, the motivation behind collecting and displaying artefacts had shifted from apersonal desire to inspire and entertain, towards a need to educate the visiting public.Adhering to principles of taxonomic classification in the acquisition, organisation and dis-play of their collections, an intellectual and spatial division was drawn between the expertknowledge of the curator at work behind-the-scenes and the public space occupied by

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the museum visitor. Echoing a contemporary desire to assemble, organise and control aportion of the world, the British Museum became a powerful symbol of the modernistproject (c.f. Belk 2006; Bennett 1995; Livingstone 2003; MacGregor 2007). Today, theBritish Museum is regarded as a world-class institution and is charged with the collectionand preservation of the material record of human development. It attracts over 5 millionvisitors per year.

In recent years, many museums and their collections have been required to earn andjustify their keep (Keene 2005; NMDC 2003), with the result that museums are in acontinuous process of reinvention, with changes relating to approach, message, practiceand architectural style (Message 2006a,b). Some are also answerable to political masters,such as the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in the UK, and are there-fore subject to increased public scrutiny, as well as increased competition from other cul-tural experiences, such as shopping and leisure industries. Endeavouring to shake off theimage of boring and dusty storehouses, museums are redefining themselves as spaces ofcommunity, dialogue, public engagement, identity-formation and performance (Dicks2004; Message 2006b; Spalding 2002).

The traditional definition of the museum as ‘a building or institution in which objectsof historical, scientific, artistic, or cultural interest are preserved or exhibited’ (OED2008) continues to expand in order to embrace other spaces of display, collection andconsumption, for example shop windows, private homes, protected landscapes, airportlounges and hospitals. Furthermore, alongside visiting the displayed collections, museumcafes and shops have become integral parts of the museum experience, as shown in theV&A advert – ‘an ace caff with quite a nice museum attached’. This is not to suggest thatall spaces are museums; instead it is an attempt to extend our previous conceptions ofmuseum space in order to encourage further study of museums, their collections andassociated practices.

In what follows, the relevance and rich potential of the museum as a focus for geo-graphical research is considered. This review demonstrates how geographic thinking canilluminate many contemporary museum issues, particularly conceptions of museum space,objects and curatorial identity. By reflecting on a range of literatures that examine muse-ums and by highlighting the present opportunities for collaboration with museums, thisreview article is intended to encourage an emerging ‘museum geography’. The aim hereis to provide examples of some of those areas of research, which seem to the author tobe particularly fertile. Beginning with a discussion of recent work from museum studiesscholars, the article goes on to consider the museum as a site of research for geographers.The article concludes with three potential directions for further geographical research inthe areas of museums, collections and museum practice.

Research from Museum Studies

In the UK there are over 2500 museums (Museums Association 2005). They serve inter-national, national and local audiences. Some are funded by the state or charities and oth-ers are privately owned. These museums cover themes as varied as design and modernart, lawn mowers and pencils, social history and national heritage. They exist in physicallocations and virtually on the Internet. Museums have been the subject of academicenquiry for over 100 years, with early studies focusing on the institutional histories ofnational museums (Alberti 2005; Murray 1904; Robertson 2004; Stearn 1981). Morerecently, these institutions have become a focus of study across the humanities and socialsciences, in fields as diverse as anthropology, archaeology, cultural studies, history of art,

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history of science, philosophy, sociology and indeed geography. Scholars have researchedmuseums for a variety of reasons and from numerous perspectives: museum-going andcultural taste (Bourdieu 1984; Bourdieu and Darbel 1990); collecting and public history(Samuel 1994); the role and power of museums in society (Bennett 1995); museum accessand social inequality (Sandell 2002); and museum practice and the public understanding ofscience (Macdonald 2002). The museum offers researchers a subject worthy of in-depthstudy in its own right and a space from which to address important disciplinary questionsand themes, as well as debate contemporary public policy and museum issues.

The discipline responsible for the majority of rich and varied intellectual theorisingon the subject of museums is museum studies, also known as museology (see Bennett1995; Hooper-Greenhill 1992; Pearce 1992). Unlike geography, with its extensive dis-ciplinary heritage (Livingstone 1992), museum studies, as encountered today, came intobeing during the postmodern turn of the late 1970s (MacLeod 2001) and combines aunique mix of academics and practitioners. Accordingly, the subject continues to beresponsive to the demands and challenges of the museums sector, particularly in relationto questions of social inclusion and the plural character of contemporary society. Aninitial assessment of the museum studies literature indicates a largely practical treatmentof museums, offering toolkits to aid museum professionals [see, for example, Fahy(1995) on collections management and more recently Hooper-Greenhill (2007) onmuseums and education]. However, a closer look reveals a vibrant discipline, whichdraws on approaches from the social sciences and on occasion relevant work fromwithin geography, for example Duclos’ (1999) paper on the cartographies of collecting.Here Duclos considers the links between the practices of museology and cartography,whereby each discipline ‘attempts to make what is not immediately perceivable,perceivable’ – through collecting and map-making respectively (1999, 48). She alsoidentifies some of the ways in which cultural geography in particular can help research-ers in museum studies examine the ‘imperial assemblages’ and ‘topography andtaxonomy of collecting’ and its powerful role in the construction of a sense of placeand identity.

An important departure in the relatively short history of museum studies was theappropriation of a ‘new museology’ in the late 1980s, which involved a ‘radical re-examination of the role of museums’ (Vergo 1989, 3). Here a new approach to study-ing museums was advocated in order to reflect upon the perception and function ofmuseums in contemporary society, as well as account for the agency of those workingin and researching museums. As Pearce observed at the time: ‘We should not forgetthe process of producing meaning through the creation of collections, publications andinstallations is not impersonal, but rests in the hearts and minds of flesh-and-bloodmuseum staff’ (1992, 33). Museum studies researchers and others working in socialanthropology responded to the ‘new museology’ with the inclusion of feminist, postco-lonial and social history perspectives (c.f. Evans and Boswell 1999; Lumley 1988; Sher-man and Rogoff 1994; Vergo 1989). This ‘new museology’ identified the museum as asite of contestation and controversy (Karp and Levine 1991) and the late 1980s andearly 1990s ushered in a period of considerable institutional reflexivity. In order toaccommodate this ideological shift, museum exhibitions were revised to incorporate‘other’ perspectives and close attention was paid to the authority of the museum and itsstaff in their construction of displays for the public. Scholars and practitioners respondedto the ‘new museology’ in a number of important ways, by addressing questions ofaccess, collecting, practice and most recently space. The following sections discuss thesethemes in turn.

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ACCESS

Since the late 1980s, museums have become more inclusive in terms of their intellec-tual and physical accessibility (Karp et al. 1992).1 No longer wanting to be perceivedas sites of elitist and exclusive knowledge, museums and their scholars rejected earlierdistinctions based on gender, social class and narratives of empire and race, andadjusted their perspectives and outputs to reflect contemporary society (Hallam andStreet 2000; Karp and Levine 1991). In 2002, the British Empire and CommonwealthMuseum opened in Bristol and charts the 500-year history of Britain’s empire. Insteadof side-stepping Britain’s difficult or unfavourable past, the Museum openly examinesthe role of Empire in the nation’s history and its lasting impact on Britain’s heritagetoday.

Access remains a prominent agenda in museum studies. Sandell offers a discussion ofaccess in Museums, society and inequality (2002). He argues that ‘Museums are beginning toexplore their contribution towards the combating of social as well as cultural inequality’(ibid., xvii italics in original). Sandell suggests that museums have a responsibility toadvance an agenda of social equality on the individual, community and society level. TheOpen Museum in Glasgow is an example of a museum service with a strong commit-ment to social inclusion. They supply reminiscence kits to community groups, as well asenabling community groups to curate their own exhibitions in community centres usingobjects from the collection.

Practically speaking the changes to museum access have led to the development of anumber of ground-breaking initiatives intended to encourage new audiences to museumsand improve access to the collections. Examples include: object loan schemes pioneeredby Reading Museums Service; artefact repatriation by the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford;sites for debate on key issues such as at the Dana Centre at the Science Museum in Lon-don; and behind-the-scenes access to the undisplayed collections such as the Depot at theLondon Transport Museum.

COLLECTING AND CURATORIAL PRACTICE

Following on from the inclusion of ‘other perspectives’, there has been a deeper andmore meaningful consideration of museum collections and their biographies by practitio-ners and scholars from museum studies and anthropology (Barringer and Flynn 1998;Coombes 2003; Edwards 2001; Hooper-Greenhill 2000; Karp et al. 1992; Macdonald2003; Myers 2001). Acknowledging the often-contested histories behind museum objects,this interest has most recently focussed on the decision to return some collected items totheir source communities – with objects varying from historic photographs to humanremains. Requiring careful negotiation between indigenous peoples and cultural institu-tions, scholars are considering questions of appropriation and representation relating tothe curation of non-Western objects, in particular an ‘engagement with colonialism andthe politics of representation’ (Peers 2004; 4). For example anthropologists Peers andBrown recently undertook a project to return historic photographs from the Pitt RiversMuseum in Oxford to the Kainai peoples of Canada (cf. Brown and Peers 2005; Peersand Brown 2003; Simpson 2001).

In the UK alone, museum collections are home to over 2 million artefacts, makingexciting subject matter for further academic study (Museums Association 2005). More-over, museums have long been regarded as cathedrals to material culture, places wherevisitors come to worship the revered collections on display (Duncan 1991; Forgan 2005).



Forming a vital part of recent museum studies research, work on collecting and collec-tions varies from a broader focus on the collecting condition to smaller sensitive studiesof individual objects. An important text is On collecting by Pearce, in which she considers‘that curious human activity which we call collecting, and which … may be described asthe gathering together and setting aside of selected objects’ (1995, 3). Pearce discusses thepolitics, poetics and practices of European collecting, offering an extensive treatment ofindividual and institutional collectors both past and present. Subsequent studies by Pearce(1992, 1994, 1995, 1998) and others (Akin 1996; Belk 1995, 2006; Formanek 1991; Ho-skins 2006) have ranged from encounters with formal museum collections to the public’spresent preoccupation with collecting, in particular Martin’s (1999) Popular collecting andthe everyday self. By challenging how artefacts are differently valued by individuals andinstitutions, Martin suggests that popular collecting has the power to reinvent museums,for example the People’s Shows of the 1990s where people were invited to display theircollections in local museums.

The ‘new museology’ encouraged a new level of transparency in museums that forcedmany museum practitioners to challenge their position as sole knowledge bearers andaddress the assumption that visitors are mere consumers of curatorial knowledge (Hoo-per-Greenhill 1992). By redefining the role of the museum professional, museumsattempted to engage with new audiences. Many museums now encourage their visitorsto curate their own exhibitions, particularly with the help of electronic guides and onlineaccess to the collections. An example of this is the Science Museum’s ‘Ingenious’ websitewhere users are able to create their own web galleries based on the collections accessibleto them online (http://www.ingenious.org.uk). Furthermore, museum staff became thefocus of several academic studies relating to the changing role, power and professionaltradition of the curator (Alloway 1996; Coleborne 2003; Hughes 2003; Shelton 2001).Prompted by these changes in museums, Macdonald’s ethnographic account Behind thescenes as the Science Museum (2002) explores the construction of a new food exhibition atthe Science Museum in London: ‘My task was to enter the behind-the-scenes world ofthe Science Museum, to find out how it works, what kinds of passions and ideas moti-vate practice, and whether and how this percolates into the science that is put on publicdisplay’ (2002, 5). Observing the museum professionals as they designed the gallery, shequestioned how science is understood in museums and how scientific knowledge is trans-lated by curators for museum visitors.

SPACE

Museum studies has changed considerably over the last 30 years. The latest developmentrelates to the subject’s engagement with place and space. Museums and their collectionsare inherently spatial, with studies revealing a distinctive set of geographies relating toknowledge, material culture and practice. Museum studies are presently experiencing,what can be described as a ‘spatial turn’. This ‘turn’ marks a closer engagement betweenmuseum studies and geography, an early example of which is Duclos’ (1999) work onthe cartographies of collecting. As MacLeod insists: ‘Museum space is now recognisedas a space with a history of its own, a space active in the making of meaning and, mostimportantly, a space open to change’ (2005, 1). Focussing predominantly on museumarchitecture and the use of museum display space, MacLeod’s recent volume Reshapingmuseum space engages with the geographical dimensions of the museum. She echoesForgan’s earlier identification of the physical museum building, its located nature and itsarchitectural impact as key themes for further inquiry (2005). As Duclos noted: ‘the



physical space of a gallery and the physical relationship we have to objects are verypowerful forces’ (1999, 58). This ‘spatial turn’ is underlined further by a focus on‘Places and Spaces’ at a recent Museums Association annual conference attended byscholars and practitioners (Museums Association 2008). It can be argued that the deci-sion to consider the ‘spatiality’ of museums has important consequences for museumprofessionals, architects and exhibition designers, as well as geographers. All of this ofcourse begs the question, how have geographers studied museums?

Geography and Museums

Geographers are increasingly interested in museums: through collaborative research pro-jects; studying museum collections; and examining questions of representation, identity-formation and the cultural history of the museum itself. Even British geography’s owndisciplinary archives and collections are now on display in the ‘Unlocking the archive’project at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) in South Kensington that aims tomake its collections accessible to all. There are also the numerous university museumsconnected to geography departments (for example those in Birmingham, Cambridge andGlasgow). Recent research in historical and cultural geography might not claim itself as‘museum geography’ but explores themes of relevance to this nascent field. Three broadand overlapping fields relating to questions of knowledge, identity and material culturecan be identified and are discussed below.

REPRESENTING THE WORLD

Recently geographers have become increasingly interested in the spatial organisation ofthe museum and its effect on how the world is represented, with researchers paying closeattention to the physical architecture of the building, modes of categorisation, visitingpractices and the biographies of the collections themselves (Naylor and Hill forthcoming).Through the example of the museum, geographers have been able to extend their under-standing of where, why and how knowledges and understandings of the world are con-structed and maintained throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. With theirinterests in the evolutionary history of disciplines such as geography and the sciences, andto a lesser extent the cultures of exploration, historical geographers have explored the rolemuseums play as ‘a space for the presentation and production of disciplinary knowledge’(Driver 2000; Livingstone 2003; Naylor 2002; Withers 1995, 149, 2001; Withers andFinnegan 2003); with Livingstone arguing that museums are ‘a symbolic writing of space’(Livingstone 2003, 38). By attending to these underexplored museum histories, geogra-phers have been able to unearth the characters and personalities, contested spaces andinterpretive practices residing in museums.

IDENTITY-FORMATION

As the role of the museum has been redefined in recent years by contemporary society,social and cultural geographers have identified and theorised the role museums play inthe production and legitimisation of identities, knowledges and spaces, in particular place-based identities. Desforges and Maddern’s (2004) work offers an example of how officialmuseum narratives have been advanced in light of a multicultural society, namely narra-tives at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in New York. More recently, Till’s (2005)work The New Berlin chooses to elide work done in museum studies, preferring to draw



on accounts from disciplines which have engaged with museums, for example Haraway’s(1989) Primate visions, Clifford’s (1988) The predicament of culture and Anderson’s (1991)Imagined Communities. Here Till exposes the powerful political effect that cultural sites,such as museums, can have upon a city, its inhabitants and understandings of its history.She considers such sites to be ‘places of memory’, a theme picked up in the work ofHetherington (2006).

As theoretical fashions have shifted, so new perspectives have informed the study ofmuseums by geographers. Postcolonial approaches, for example, have informed Duncan’s(2003) critique of the National Maritime Museum’s reinterpretation of British imperialheritage. For Duncan, the majority of the white British public ‘fail to see museums aspoliticized or contested sites, because traditionally museums have displayed culturalobjects in an anodyne fashion masking the collecting practices and underlying political-economic conditions that have allowed, indeed expected, one society to collect, displayand interpret and radically recontextualise the products of another’ (2003, 17). Geogra-phers have also explored museums in relation to questions of heritage, tourism and howthe past is understood (Crang 1994; Graham et al. 2000; Harvey 2001; Harvey et al.2002; Johnson 1996, 1999, 2004; Lowenthal 1985; Wheelan 2002; Withers 1996). Here,the established field of heritage studies begins to overlap with the geography of museums,raising important questions of scale, exemplified by Crang’s early work on re-enactmentgroups and living history (1994) and more recently Ashworth et al.’s (2007) nod towardssmaller scale heritage in the form of geneaology.

MATERIAL WORLDS

The geographical study of museums also incorporates a growing body of work on collec-tors, collecting and collections. This work has focused predominantly on Victorian collec-tors. Focusing on the vast collections of the nineteenth century pharmaceutical magnate SirHenry Wellcome, Hill offers a detailed consideration of the objects and early keepers ofthe collection (curators). Hill begins to remedy what she describes as the earlier ‘partialview’ of collections ‘privileging practices and spaces of display … over other aspects of[the] collection’s development’ (2006a, 341, 2006b, 2007). She examines themes as variedas enchantment, object biography and the circulation of knowledge in relation to this par-ticular material culture. These themes are also played out in examinations of contemporarycollecting practice, as in my own work on the relationship between technology enthusiastsand the staff and collections of the Science Museum (Geoghegan 2008). This showed thatthe Museum could build on the energy and expertise of enthusiasts to reanimate stored col-lections of telecommunications equipment and early British computers. This is one exam-ple of how it is possible to make sense of and uncover some of the often ‘invisible’geographies of museums by drawing on cultural geographic theorising in relation to ama-teur and professional knowledges (Ellis and Waterton 2005), frontstage and backstage spacesand practices (Crang 1994), as well as geography’s present preoccupation with materialculture (Anderson and Tolia-Kelly 2004; Cook and Tolia-Kelly in press). Historical andcultural geographers continue to examine collections in increasingly innovative ways, forexample Patchett’s (2008) work on the biogeographical narratives of Scottish taxidermycollections and Parry’s (2004) work on the collection of bio-information.

By acknowledging, engaging with and reflecting upon work from museum studies,geographers have the potential to make an important contribution to the discipline’s pres-ent ‘spatial turn’. Both policy documents and museum culture could benefit from furthergeographical examination.



Museum Geography: Some Future Directions

Museum professionals are coming to recognise that they need to be less exclusive about exper-tise and information. … The future lies in much more serious and wholehearted collaborationwith those outside the museum (Keene 2005, 22–23).

In the UK at least, museum curators are aligning themselves with Higher Education. Thisis good news for geography departments interested in forming collaborative partnershipswith museums and their staff. The British Museum’s recent award of AHRC academicanalogue status enables Museum staff to apply for research funding and has led to the for-mation of numerous partnerships relating to museum practice, knowledge transfer andthe Museum’s extensive collections.2 In this section, I suggest three potential directionsfor future geographical research in this area.

MUSEUMS

It has been established in this short review that museums are fertile sites for geographi-cal research. With the exception of work by Macdonald on the Science Museum(2005) and recent work on the uses of museum reserve collections (Keene 2005), thebehind-the-scenes world of the museum remains relatively understudied. Employingqualitative methodologies (both archival and ethnographic), geographers have the poten-tial to make a significant contribution to this field, particularly in relation to museumstores and the reserve collections they house. My own research with the ScienceMuseum (Geoghegan 2008), Hill’s (2006a,b, 2007) work with the Wellcome Collectionand Bouquet and Porto’s consideration of ‘museum magic’ (2006), reveal the complexgeographies relating to collections and the spaces and practices hidden from publicview. These studies raise important questions regarding frontstage and backstage practiceand performance, the production of amateur ⁄expert knowledges and ideas of mystery,haunting and enchantment in relation to museum spaces and objects. In recent years,museum stores and archives have been identified as sites ripe for geographical explora-tion. For example, work by geographers, Hayden Lorimer and Merle Patchett, in col-laboration with artist, Kate Foster, examines the case of the Blue Antelope skull storedin the Hunterian Collection at the University of Glasgow. Tracing the object’s biogra-phy, the project aims to ‘enliven the ‘Glasgow’ skull’s afterlife by re-casting it in othercontexts, re-telling the quietened histories of the Blue Antelope’ (Blue Antelope 2008).

A second area for further study is the place of performance in the museum context.Performance could relate here to the ways of being in museums, as well as the role oftheatre and art in bringing static displays to life. Artistic interventions in museums can‘complement or re-work existing collections’ (Message 2006a; 605) and living history sitescan become locations for cultural performance (Peers 2007). The theme of performanceoffers geographers the opportunity to engage practically with questions of display andinterpretation, as well as set in motion creative geographies relating to museum theatreand ‘live’ interpretation – a theme that is of increasing interest to museum practitioners.Geographers also have the potential to make a significant contribution to work onmuseum audiences. Building on and extending earlier discussions of audiences as passiveand disinterested, here geographers could explore the ways in which visitors use andengage with museums as sites for education, discussion and community, as well as thevisitor experience – particularly in those spaces where visitors are encouraged to self-curate (see for example, Butler 2007b).



COLLECTIONS

Collections are regarded by many as the lifeblood of museums. However, due torestricted space, the majority of museums are only able to display a small percentage oftheir collections to the public at any one time. Often alienated from the everyday visitordue to health and safety risks and its unmediated nature, a museum’s stored collection isan important site for scholars from all disciplines (Shelton 2001). As those researchersinterested in material culture advocate, we have a lot to learn from objects (Andersonand Tolia-Kelly 2004; Attfield 2000; Gell 1998; Jackson 2000; Latour 2005). With theirculturally privileged position, museum objects are no exception. Objects can pose newquestions and add a richness to academic accounts. For geographers, museums and theirobjects can propose unexplored questions or inspire new research. Taking the ScienceMuseum collections as an example, they span more than 300 years of technologicaldevelopment and are made up of objects, films and documentation from around theworld.

Nevertheless, it is not just sufficient to recognise and begin working with collections.Researchers could benefit from a closer engagement with the approaches, strategies andtechniques employed by museum staff when researching objects and collections. Oppor-tunities for collaboration in relation to museum collections are extensive, from collectionsresearch to the redefinition of what constitutes museum space. Collaboration is to themutual benefit of researchers and museum staff for two main reasons. First, academics areincreasingly required to demonstrate the impact of their research and achieve knowledgetransfer, which can be undertaken in the spaces of the museum and with their staff andvisitors. Second, in line with policy directives from the Department for Culture, Mediaand Sport (1999), museums are re-evaluating the position and role of their collections.Moreover, as the definition of the museum continues to expand, domestic spaces of dis-play, for example shelves and mantelpieces, could be explored to consider more personalgeographies of collection and curation (see DeSilvey 2006, 2007; Ellis and Haywood2006; Gregson 2007; Gregson and Crewe 2003; Hurdley 2006; Rose 2003).

MUSEUM PRACTICE

The practices employed by museum staff, such as exhibition-making, the production ofmaterial narratives and a close engagement with the public, have a range of possibilitiesfor the implementation and dissemination of geographical projects. In this way the adop-tion of museum practice has the potential to redefine how geography is done and expandthe potential outputs from research projects as mentioned above, particularly in relationto geography’s present interest in becoming more public [Fuller 2008; see also Jordanova(2006) on public history and Merriman (2004) on public archaeology]. A recent examplehas been work by Felix Driver and Lowri Jones on the Hidden Histories of Exploration.Based on detailed archival work, the project culminated in a public exhibition at theRoyal Geographical Society (with IBG) in South Kensington, London (Hidden Histories2009).

Writing about artists and geographers, Foster and Lorimer observe that ‘Comingtogether, it seems, is the mood of the moment’ (2007, 425). Geography is embracing col-laboration, whether it is with artists (Daniels 2005; Driver et al. 2002; Foster and Lorimer2007; McLaren 2007; Postle et al. 2004) or museums (Breward et al. 2006; Geoghegan2008; Owens 2008), amongst other groups. In line with the policy context surroundingmuseums, the award of analogue status to some museums in recent years presents further



opportunities for collaboration not just in relation to studying the collections, but also thedevelopment of museum practice and the enhancement of knowledge transfer betweeninstitutions and disciplines. Research councils are supporting such work as never before,with impact and knowledge transfer becoming buzz words. From personal experience,one of the most fruitful opportunities is the collaborative studentship, now a standardform of doctoral level collaboration across the UK research councils (Butler 2007a; Geog-hegan 2008).3 As Demeritt suggests: ‘The premises of collaborative research lie preciselyin this potential to open up not just new knowledge and (self-) understandings but alsonew research rationales and roles for participants’ (2005, 2080–2081; Demeritt and Lees2005). Geographers could employ curatorial practices in their explorations of issues rele-vant to contemporary geographical research, thereby enabling a combination of skills andexperience, as well as challenging some of the ways in which museum professionals andgeographers approach their work.

Conclusion

I have attempted to demonstrate through the consideration of the various bodies ofresearch above that museums are important spaces for the discussion, investigation, per-formance and representation of themes and issues of significance to geographers. Bystudying museums and ⁄or their collections and by employing those practices used bycuratorial staff, researchers can explore key geographical questions of space, place andidentity from a new perspective. Similarly, the incorporation and application of geo-graphic-thinking into museum studies has the potential to unlock a multitude of newunderstandings of museums, their collections and associated practices.

In this short article, I have proposed a museum geography that has a range of possibili-ties for geography, museum studies and the wider museum world. Most obviously, it hasgreat potential for geographers interested in collaborative research surrounding themessuch as material culture, identity, community and performance. In 2005 and 2007, theMuseums Association (MA) published reports which highlighted the ways in whichmuseums can encourage a greater engagement with their collections. The terms ‘mobility’and ‘spatiality’ were integral to both documents. Geographers clearly have an importantcontribution to make to both museology and the political context surrounding museumsand collections, not to mention the poetical encounter with the space of the museumand the varied collected objects. There are a multitude of sites within easy reach of geog-raphy departments where museum geographies might be explored; for example the 400or so university museums in the UK offer one way in which geographers can begin col-laborating and studying museums.

Even though this article has focussed predominantly on the UK, many of the themesdiscussed here are likely to be of relevance to those working outside the UK. This ispartly because of the international nature of museums, evidenced by the existence of theInternational Council of Museums (ICOM). It is also shown by the circulation of exper-tise around the world emanating from departments in the UK, such as the University ofLeicester’s museum studies programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate levels thathave been in operation for over 40 years. Yet, it is important to note that museums areintimately tied to their particular national policy contexts and funding systems, not tomention disciplinary trajectories. It is hoped therefore that this article will encouragescholars in, for example North America, South-East Asia and Australasia to produce asimilar survey of the terrain in their part of the world thereby widening discussion ofmuseum geography.



In sum, the museum remains a complex institution and a ‘valuable vehicle for the cri-tique of contemporary culture’ (Message 2006a, 605). Museums and collections offergeographers exciting sites and subjects for research and teaching. This article has high-lighted the wide range of debates surrounding museums as poetic and highly politicisedsites. Moreover, it has begun to map the expanse of as yet unexplored museum territory,marking that it is now time to consider museum geography more closely.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Ian Cook, two anonymous reviewers and Catherine Brace for theirhelp and comments on earlier versions of this article. This research was supported by anESRC CASE studentship award no. PTA-033-2003-00036 and an ESRC PostdoctoralFellowship award no. PTA-026-27-1611.

Short Biography

Hilary Geoghegan is a cultural geographer with interdisciplinary interests in knowledgeand knowing, museum geography and theories of enthusiasm. She is an AssociateResearch Fellow at the University of Exeter and is currently working on a project aboutlandscape, belonging and climate change. Prior to this she was an Economic and SocialResearch Council (ESRC) Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Geography atRoyal Holloway, University of London. Working in collaboration with the ScienceMuseum in London, Hilary also completed her PhD, entitled ‘The Culture of Enthusi-asm: Technology, Collecting and Museums’ at Royal Holloway. For further informationplease see her website: http://www.hilarygeoghegan.wordpress.com.

Notes

* Correspondence address: Hilary Geoghegan, School of Geography, University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus,Penryn, Cornwall, TR10 9EZ, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

1 In museum studies, access has been defined in terms of cultural, financial, intellectual, physical and social accessi-bility. Here, access is considered in terms of social inclusion.2 The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) academic analogue status enables institutions such asnational museums, galleries, archives and libraries to bid for research grants and research leave, in their own right.3 ‘Collaborative Doctoral Studentships are PhD studentship projects based in UK universities. Projects are oftencarried out in collaboration with non-academic organisations, who typically contribute resource and ⁄ or intellectualsupport and mentoring for the project and ⁄ or student’ (RCUK 2009).

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