7 October 2010
'Museums: Cutting-edge culture for the 21st century'
Public lecture, Thursday October 14th, 6pm, admission free.
The impact museums have made on the creative industries, social development and urban regeneration over the last decade will be explored at a public lecture presented by the V&A at Dundee project next week.
Australian academic Dr Kylie Message will deliver her talk, 'Museums: cutting-edge culture for the 21st century’ at the University of Dundee’s Dalhousie Building on Thursday October 14th. All are welcome to attend and admission is free. The lecture will be followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience.
Dr Message’s talk will examine how, over the last decade, museums all around the world have been reinventing themselves. They are now much more than scholarly, cultural archives, and their contemporary remit to reach out to a broader public often combines with the aim to generate opportunities for both creative industries and social development. In addition, the architectural expectations of new buildings and the requirements of the "event exhibit" have changed the way any new museum is built, operates and serves its public purpose.
'Museums now reflect global economics and local politics, and play an increasingly important role in urban regeneration schemes. New museums now shape our public culture,' said Dr Message.
The lecture will be illustrated with a range of new museum projects from the UK and Europe, the USA, and Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific, showing how new museums are evolving as cross-disciplinary and yet eminently popular institutions.
The lecture is being presented by the V&A at Dundee project, which aims to establish a landmark building at the heart of Dundee’s redeveloped waterfront to house major exhibitions from the Victoria and Albert Museum and other international collections.
The V&A at Dundee is being delivered by Design Dundee Ltd, a ground-breaking partnership between the Victoria and Albert Museum - the world’s greatest museum of art and design - and the University of Dundee, the University of Abertay Dundee, Dundee City Council and Scottish Enterprise.
Dr Message is Senior Lecturer in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology and Associate Dean (Research Training) for the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Australian National University.
Her research examines the complex relationships between museums, social development, and changing concepts of citizenship in multicultural postcolonial societies. She has studied museums globally, from those in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific through to others in Europe and the USA. Kylie is author of the book `New Museums and the Making of Culture’ (Berg, 2006).
She is currently based in the USA where she is undertaking a Smithsonian Institution Research Fellowship at the Division of Political History in the National Museum of American History, and at the National Museum of the American Indian.
Free tickets for the lecture are available from www.dundee.ac.uk/tickets or by calling 01382 385564.
For more on the V&A at Dundee see: www.vandaatdundee.com.
For media enquiries contact:
Roddy Isles
Head, Press Office
University of Dundee
Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384910
E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk
MOBILE: 07800 581902 |
