Orkney and Shetland's museums are shortlisted for art prize
The Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney which won a major architecture prize last year and the Shetland Museum and Archives in Lerwick are two museums on Scottish islands in the running for one the UK's most prestigious art prizes being among ten museums shortlisted. Formerly known as the Gulbenkian Prize, the winner of the £100,000 award is due to be announced in May. Both of the Scottish museums were commended for housing collections in interesting locations.
Shetland's Museum and Archives are a brand new facility in a restored 19th Century dock, which opened to the
public last summer to tell the story of Scotland's most northerly islands.
Pier Arts Centre has already surpassed its predicted visitor numbers. Reopened last summer after a £4.5m upgrade - it houses the important British art collection of author, peace activist and philanthropist Margaret Gardiner.
The harbour-side building won the UK's largest architecture prize last November - the £25,000 Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS) Shetland's Museum and Archives Courtesy:http://www.museumbrandingblog.co.uk/ Andrew Doolan Award.
Other museums and galleries on the list include the National Army Museum and the British Library in London, and the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool.
Judges will visit all nominees in March, before drawing up a final shortlist of four in early April. The winner will be announced on 22 May at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London during Museum and Galleries Month 2008. Broadcaster Sue MacGregor, who chairs the judging panel, said: "We're going to have an exciting and absorbing time visiting all 10 museums and galleries."
A book must for museums, regardless of who win
Recoding the Museum: Digital Heritage and the Technologies of Change by Ross Parry, published in September 2007 (ISBN 978-0415353878 hardback £65.00 and paperback at £22.99 " is a cultural reading of how 'new media' has coded the practices, aspirations and perceptions of the modern museum."
Through an historical approach, Ross Parry excavates cultural assumptions and values that provide the basis of museum information management and display, and that are still used to this day. The book analyses topics such as digitisation techniques, database management, virtual reality and hypermedia.
Parry resists models of technological determinism, passive media, and the notions of the museum as a constant institution transmitting knowledge, and predicates : that communication technologies are as formed (as they inform) society; that new media as a cultural product is an active contributor to any message it transmits;
and that museums themselves are an adaptive medium that tend to be part of dynamic interactions with a diverse and active audience. For students and professionals in the field, this is a hugely interesting and enlightening book full of ideas and arguments to make you think.
News source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/north_east