On Sat, 23 Oct 1999, Amanda Philbeck wrote:

> I am doing a paper on visual storage.  What I am now looking for is the
> history behind it.  I am assuming that someone started the concept and
> documented why and how they did it.  Anyone have info on this?  I would
> appreciate it.

===============================

Two very different examples from the beginning of the '70s were parts of
the Native American collections at the Boston Children's Museum, and the
Cultural Gallery on the lower level of the Musee des Arts et Traditions
Populaires (National Museum of Folk Arts and Traditions - generally known
as the "ATP") in Paris - though the ATP had been planned over 20 years
earlier by Georges Henri Riviere, the creator of the "ecomuseum" concept,
who then had to wait decades before the French government finally agreed
the funds to build it.

No doubt some of those behind Boston, particularly Michael Spock and
Elaine Gurian (who I know lurks on Museum-L!) can give you more details.
On the ATP my current doctoral student Raymond de la Rocha Mille is
research Riviere and his work, and has been working in the ATP archives
with Andree Desvalles (who is planning a history of the ATP for its full
re-opening after renewal of the exhibitions).

The Luigi Nervi plans of the 1960s for a spectacular new building for the
Pitt Rivers Museum of archaeology and anthropology at Oxford University
would have offered something along the same lines, with people being able
to explore the collections thematically by following a circular path
inside the circular museum, or typologically in a radial direction.  I
understood this was the aim of the director, the late Bernard Fagg, and
his staff, but in the event the project collapsed before it began.

The open display of the American collections at the New York Metropolitan
Museum and computer system that supported it was also a major landmark of
the 1980s.

Patrick J. Boylan
(Professor of Heritage Policy and Management)

City University, Frobisher Crescent, Barbican, London EC2Y 8HB, UK;
phone: +44-171-477.8750, fax:+44-171-477.8887;
Home: "The Deepings", Gun Lane, Knebworth, Herts. SG3 6BJ, UK;
phone & fax: +44-1438-812.658;
E-mail: [log in to unmask];  Web site: http://www.city.ac.uk/artspol/

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