Tag: Susanne Popp

EuroVision – Museums Exhibiting Europe (EMEE)

EuroVision: Museums Exhibiting Europe (EMEE) is a European museum development project for national and regional museums. It explores an innovative inter­disciplinary approach for museums to re-interpret their objects in a broader context of European and trans-na­tional history. The necessary theoretical and practical framework is developed, put into practice and evalu­ated by an international, trans-sectoral network brin­ging together the creative excellence of museums and cultural workers in a project based on the scientific ex­pertise of History Didactics in mediating culture. It will be presented to the visitor in the so-called ‘EuroVision Lab.’ exhibitions, using the motto: ‘One Object – Many Visions – EuroVisions’. The ‘EuroVision Lab.’ is experimental by nature and is taking place at all partner institutions. It involves a variety of different activities with public appeal (e. g. exhibition projects, cultural performances), which put into practice the concept of the ‘Change of Perspective’ (COP) for the Europeanization of regional and national museums. In order to deal with historical culture and historical identity the COP has three components:

COP 1: European re-interpretation of objects
As if they were looking through a range of different len­ses, experts and visitors discover that one and the same object can be perceived in multi-layered ways and con­texts. Hence, the COP 1 encourages visitors to actively be engaged in the European re-interpretation of objects by intersecting local, national, transnational and global perspectives.

COP 2: Activation and participation of visitors
The COP 2 practices the change of perspective between museum experts and visitors. The museum puts strate­gies to the test that lead away from its traditional pre­rogative of historical interpretation by encouraging the visitors to reflect and express their own approach to the museum contents. The steps range from the activating presentation of the objects to a synaesthetic exhibiti­on design and to accompanying cultural programmes in parts designed by visitors and even ‘non-visitors’.

COP 3: Broadening perspectives
The COP 3 is achieved by changing the perspectives by means of international and interdisciplinary exchange of ideas, expertise and objects in order to overcome the narrowness of national and Eurocentric perspectives. In order to fulfill this aim, a European network of museum experts and cultural workers will be established.

In order to implement the “Change of Perspective“, the EMEE partners developed five so called toolkits. These manuals aim to mediate between theory and practice and to offer all interested museums instructions for innovative and creative concepts that are in support of the modernization and Europeanization of museum activities. The manuals can be downloaded for free from the project’s website along with the accompanying workshops.

The EMEE project also launched the EMEE Young Scenographers Contest which calls for young designers and scenographs to make the Change of Perspective visible in exhibitions.

Contact
Universität Augsburg
Lehrstuhl für Didaktik der Geschichte
Universitätsstraße 10
86159 Augsburg
Germany

Coordination: Prof. Dr. Susanne Popp
Project manager: Susanne Schilling M.A.

Save

EuroVision – Museums Exhibiting Europe

One Object – Many Visions
Launch of the EU project, EuroVision: Museums Exhibiting Europe

Augsburg/Germany – with around 2 million euros the Culture Programme of the European Union supports a museum project to be implemented between November 2012 and October 2016, coordinated by the University of Augsburg,  department of history didactics, headed by Prof. Dr. Susanne Popp. Project partners are the Université Paris-Est Créteil (France), Università degli Studi Roma Tre (Italy), the Bulgarian National History Museum in Sofia, the Museu Nacional de Arqueologia in Lisbon (Portugal), the National Museum of Contemporary History in Ljubljana (Slovenia), the art association monochrom in Vienna (Austria) as well as the Atelier Brückner in Stuttgart (Germany) headed by Prof. Dr. Uwe Brückner.

The ambitious aim of the project is to make museums more accessible in many ways: with an innovative and interdisciplinary approach developed by history didactics the project wants to re-interpret museum objects and put them into a broader context of national and transnational history. Visitors shall face objects not only on a regionally and nationally determined level of meaning, but discover transnational and European perspectives using new means of presentation, performances and possibilities for participation. At the same time the project develops creative concepts for audience development. Particularly by involving and activating the visitor, the project tries to attract the rather large number of “non-visitors” to the museums.

The concepts and ideas developed within this project will be presented and discussed on the project’s website. However, the project will not be presented to the wider public until approximately 3 years later. After the design phase the visitors to the museum can experience and examine the project’s results in the so called “Eurovision Labs.” These will be presented in each partner country in line with the motto “one object – many visions – EuroVision”.

Along with the “EuroVision Labs,” the project also implements a number of further methods which are intended to achieve the ambitious goals: During the course of the project a network of interested museums shall be established to collaborate in the long term. A scenographers’ competition adds novel synaesthetic ideas; Workshops for museum experts, cultural workers and university students are intended to implement the project’s results within the museum.

Project coordinator Prof. Susanne Popp about the launch of the project: “We are delighted that the work on the project finally starts and hope that with ‘EMEE’ we can make a contribution to a development and research of innovative museum work as well as to a productive cooperation of museum experts and educators, scenographers, cultural workers, media artists and researchers.”

For more information about ‘EMEE’ please contact:

Prof. Dr. Susanne Popp
Department of History Didactics
University of Augsburg
Universitätsstr. 10
86159 Augsburg
Email: info@emee-project.eu

EuroVision: Museums Exhibiting Europe

Save

Museums and Intercultural Dialogue

A very nice article by Eva Zimmerhof on museums as forums for intercultural dialogue has just been posted online by the Goethe Institute.

It begins: “In future the traditional national museums to be found in Europe are to open multidimensional perspectives on the history and culture of both the individual countries and on Europe as a whole. To implement this new approach the European Union has initiated a program called “Eurovision – Museums Exhibiting Europe” (EMEE). This is an interview with the project’s coordinator, Prof. Dr. Susanne Popp.”