Hilde Hein

Performance as an Aesthetic Category

THE SUBJECT MATTER of aesthetics is diffuse, unsystematic, and not easily fixed in terms of categorical subdivisions. Nonetheless, a wide range of vaguely related issues has preoccupied aestheticians, and various ones of these have dominated the field as fashions change and historical moments pass. A glance at the standard texts and anthologies used in aesthetics courses will reveal how the topics of aesthetics are commonly parcelled out. After making allowances for the individual predilections of idiosyncratic teachers and students, we may identify a comparatively small number of basic categories under which most of the issues dealt with under the name of aesthetics may be arranged.

The Matter of Museums.

Abstract This essay provides a theoretical framework for thinking about the role of objects in the 21st-century museum. It explores the interrelationship between experience and objects within museums from their 19th-century origins to the present, and looks at the implications of objects as experience generators. Along the way it considers the ways in which the search for experience can redefine the authenticity or power of an object, and traces connections between ideas and experience. In conclusion it argues that the ultimate consequence of acknowledging the “slippery” meanings of objects is to unleash dialogue among visitors, and reconcile object-centered and people-centered museum approaches.

The Art of Displaying Science: Museum Exhibitions

Science museums have recently become important instruments of science education. Unlike schools and universities, which continue to be the chief centers of formal education and training for professional research, museums are resources for spontaneous discovery in an informal setting. Addressed to both the general public and to scholars, museums collectively have a mission that is complex and diverse. They are required to combine elementary education and exposure to basic concepts of science with collection and preservation of rare and sophisticated research materials. They must combine serious pedagogy with artful entertainment and offer something of interest to both the expert and the novice.