Cultural Institutions
Staff in the Institute conduct cross-disciplinary research on subjects such as museum curating and education, archives, cultural memory, and knowledge itself. We have a history of successful collaboration with institutions such as Tate, National Portrait Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery, and the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. We thereby combine the best of intellectual, critical research with professional development, and enterprising ‘real world’ projects in the public domain.
Such collaborations are an opportunity to host critical and creative investigations into the future of interdisciplinary research in the arts and humanities, how cultural institutions develop their own education policy, the kind of research practices that go on in them, and how they can mobilize their archives to enhance this process. By these means, our activities reach a wide range of audiences through specific research projects, conferences, publications, web initiatives, and exhibitions.
From September 2010 we will be running new MA programmes in Museums, Galleries, and Cultural Institutions, and in Publishing Futures.*
By the term ‘Cultural Institutions’ the Institute looks beyond the now common concern with the so-called creative or cultural industries, and integrates such a concern within a clearer and more rigorous academic and professional programme of research. ‘Cultural institutions’ characterizes how we understand the fascinating creative and civic organizations that shape, house, fund, and disseminate culture today. These include organizations as diverse as galleries and museums, from the Tate and the ICA to the Science Museum and the Smithsonian, archival institutes such as the BFI, major public bodies like the BBC and the British Library, foundations like the Wellcome Trust, as well as publishers, media companies and other educational establishments, including universities themselves.
Colleagues in this research area across the university include Ferran Barenblit, Annette Hill, Sas Mays, Michael Mazière, Stephen Melville, Sina Najafi, Peter Ride, Nicola Sim, Dominic Willsdon.
Read more about ongoing projects related to staff in Cultural Institutions.
* Pending successful validation