Thinking about museums

As part of Museums & Galleries Month which took place in May, University museum curator Matthew Jarron teamed up with Beth Lord of the Philosophy department to stage a very successful one day conference called Thinking about Museums: Objects of Desire and the Concept of Collecting.

The conference explored some of the philosophical issues of museums and collecting such as what museums and their objects tell us about the ways we think, and how we arrive at concepts of collecting, museum objects and the museum itself. Speakers included Mark O'Neill, of Glasgow City Museums, Neil Curtis of Marischal Museum, Geoff Swinney of the National Museums of Scotland, Sherri Irvin of Carleton University, Ottawa, Craig Smith and Jean-Paul Martinon of Goldsmiths College, University of London and various staff and postgraduates from Dundee.

It is intended that some of the papers will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Museum Management & Curatorship.