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Museum Objects as Evidence: Challenging the Narrative at Bard Graduate Center with the Rijksmuseum

Museum Objects as Evidence: Challenging the Narrative course at Bard Graduate Center enhances student's understanding of history through the study of objects in the museum's collection.


School: Bard Graduate Center with the Rijksmuseum
Course: Museum Objects as Evidence: Challenging the Narrative
Location: Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Course dates: 8 to 19 July 2024
Application deadline: 2 February 2024

The Rijksmuseum and Bard Graduate Center has announced an interdisciplinary summer course in Amsterdam devoted to object-based research within a museum setting.

Anchored by case studies drawn from the Rijksmuseum's collections, the program explores the potential of object-oriented research in reshaping historical narratives and multiple techniques and perspectives for extracting the types of information museum objects generate.

Experts provide participants with an in-depth look at the technical, analytic and interpretive practices that take place in conservation studios, science laboratories and curatorial departments, including live demonstrations.

Object-oriented sessions will be complemented by seminars, lectures, excursions to other museums and institutions, and practical assignments highlighting the possibilities, challenges and limitations of studying and exhibiting cultural history in museums.

Key themes will include reading the object, object biography, objects as historical evidence, Damage, loss and decay, the question of authenticity, reconstructing the object, museum display and meaning, reimagining the object and thinking of the future through objects from the past.

Applications to this course have now closed.

Top image courtesy of the Rijksmuseum.

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