u University museums and collections - Peter Stanbury

u  The loneliness of the university museum curator
Jane Weeks

Doubly isolated - from their colleagues within the university and from those in the larger museum community - university museum curators are learning to develop new approaches and missions for their institutions. Jane Weeks, a museum consultant specializing in museums in non-museum organizations, describes how this is being done in the United Kingdom. She has considerable experience of university museums, having managed a major Collections Management Project for University College London, and undertaken two regional surveys of university museums and collections in the south-west and the midlands of England, in conjunction with Kate Arnold-Forster.

u  The shifting audience of the university museum
Glenn Willumson

Faced with uncertainties of funding and the need to rely on increasing support from without the academic community, university museums in the United States are at risk of compromising their traditional mission of investigation, inquiry and challenge, according to Glenn Willumson. Yet the need for them to reassert their intellectual vigour and remain in the forefront of interdisciplinary dialogue has never been greater. The author holds a Ph.D. in art history and is currently curator of the Palmer Museum of Art, on Pennsylvania State University campus. He previously taught at the University of California and has served as a specialist in photography and American art at the Getty Research Institute. He has published extensively in American art and in the history of photography and is working on a book and exhibition project that considers the representation of the Western landscape and the first American transcontinental railroad. The recipient of numerous research awards, he has served on the editorial board of Cambridge University Press, the governing board of the Society for Photographic Education, and is a former advisor to History of Photography magazine.

u  Australian university museums and the Internet
Vanessa Mack and Richard Llewellyn

Two different approaches have been used in Australia to make data and images from university museums and collections available on the Internet in a meaningful, user-friendly way. Vanessa Mack is director of the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney, and formerly senior registrar at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. She is on the editorial board of Archives and Museum Informatics: Cultural Heritage Informatics Quarterly (Kluwer Academic Publishers), chair of the Movable Cultural Heritage Reference Group of the Heritage Council of New South Wales, and member of various University of Sydney Heritage and Museum committees. In 1997 she acted as co-ordinator of the federally funded pilot project to create Australian University Museums on Line (AUMOL), a combined catalogue-with-pictures of the holdings of university museums. She is also on the co-ordinating committee of the National Teaching and Learning Data Base project which grew out of AUMOL. Richard Llewellyn was formerly senior registrar of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. In 1997 he became the project manager for AUMOL, and has since been instigator and project manager of the National Teaching and Learning Data Base project and other similar Web-based collection projects.

u  A new museum for an ancient land: Patras University Science and Technology Museum
Penelope Theologi-Gouti

That university museums have a major role to play in contemporary life and are far more than the fortuitous outcome of random collecting is amply illustrated by the project of Patras University. Located just outside the city of Patras with a view over the Gulf of Corinth to the mountains of central Greece, it lies on a self-contained campus of about 240 hectares and is now the third largest institution of tertiary education in the country. Its decision to create a Science and Technology Museum was seen as vital to its mission as a major venue for scientific research and knowledge. The author is a member of the museum's preparatory team and is co-chair of the ICOM/CIDOC/Ethno Group. She was formerly secretary and vice-chair of the ICOM Hellenic National Committee. Her publications include texts in The International Core Data Standards for Ethnology/Ethnography (Collections Ethnographiques et Documentation Muséale), ICOM Study Series, 3, 1996, as well as its Greek version published in The Handbook for the Documentation of Ethnographic Collections, Athens, 1998.

u  University and museum in Brazil: a chequered history
Adriana Mortara Almeida and Maria Helena Pires Martins

University museums in Brazil often owe their existence to circumstance rather than design, and although this has given rise to a number of outstanding collections, it has not always fostered clear institutional links and structures. With this in mind, the University of São Paulo and Director of the Education and Cultural Action Department of the Museum of Contemporary Art.

u  University and museum in Mexico: a historical partnership
Yani Herreman

Mexican museums are well known for their strong educational and social role, a characteristic that may be attributable to the close links that have always existed between the university and the museum. Yani Herreman, head of the Unit for Cultural Promotion and the Dissemination of Science at the Iztacala Campus of the Autonomous National University of Mexico, explains how this came about. The author, an architect, was involved in the museographic design of the Outdoor Regional Museum of Iztacala and the project for the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Palaeontology in Villahermosa. She is a vice-president of ICOM and head of the working groups on museums and tourism and cross-cultural issues.

u The University of Oregon Museum of Art: a bridge across the Pacific
David Alan Robertson

From the outset, the University of Oregon Museum of Art (UOMA), was a museum with a mission. Founded in 1932 as a study centre for Asian culture, it continues to play that role by providing a broad cultural understanding of Asian cultures through the study of the visual arts. These responsibilities have grown in recent years as the state of Oregon extends its social, cultural and economic relations with Japan, the Republic of Korea, South-east Asia, Taiwan, and, most recently, the People's Republic of China. David Robertson became director of the UOMA in 1996, having served as museum director at Loyola University in Chicago and, prior to that, Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. His museum career has been predominantly at academic museums, including the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, and the University of Missouri Museum of Art and Archaeology. He also worked at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Since coming to Oregon, he has reinvigorated the museum's historical purpose of focusing upon the arts of the Pacific Rim and has established vital relations with sister institutions in Asia and throughout the United States for programme, collections, and exhibition exchange.

u  Carnival, cricket and culture: museum life in Antigua and Barbuda
Arthur Gillette

With a total population of some 65,000, the diminutive Caribbean island nation of Antigua and Barbuda can boast of surprisingly dynamic and forward-looking museum activity. In addition to two rural heritage centres - the Dow's Hill Historical Centre and Betty's Hope, a full-scale seventeenth-century sugar mill in working order - it counts a national museum in the capital city, St John's, and a site-cum-museum - Nelson's Dockyard - at English Harbour, once a repair base for British fleets and now thronged with yachts of many nationalities. Arthur Gillette is former editor-in-chief of Museum International and, since retirement in 1998, a freelance writer on cultural heritage issues and guide to strolls through the history of Paris. A veteran yachtsman, he sailed into English Harbour on his Amity and shares his 'discovery' with us.

u  Innovation in Italy: the a.muse project
Maurizio Maggi

Museum professionals and the public have long been aware of the inadequacy of Italian museums in view of the unparalleled artistic treasures they contain. The need for reform led to a major pilot project aimed at identifying the direction of ongoing change so as to pint the way for Italian museums and to foster communication among the most forward-looking institutions. Maurizio Maggi is scientific director of the Arch Institute (Institute for Assessment and Research on Cultural Heritage of the Rosselli Foundation of Turin, Italy) and was manager of the a.muse research projects. He has developed surveys and published books and articles on the cultural heritage, environmental management and sustainable tourism.

u  Exhibiting in a landmark: the designer's challenge
Maria da Luz Nolasco

The city of Oporto, Portugal, built along the hillsides overlooking the mouth of the Douro River, forms and exceptional urban landscape with a Thousand-year history. Its historical centre was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1997 and in 2001 it will share with Rotterdam the honour of being European Capital of Culture. Its continuous growth, linked to the sea (the Romans gave it the name Portus, or port), can be seen in its many and varied monuments, among them the Santa Casa de Misericórdia. To commemorate the institution's 500^th anniversary Maria da Luz Nolasco was called upon to design an exhibition that had to confront the challenge of its exceptional architectural surroundings. Currently curator at the Museum of Aveiro, the author has written extensively on museum and heritage subjects and is an active member of the Portuguese Association of Museology and of ICOM-Portugal.

u  Grooming new millennium museum directors
Sherene Suchy

Recent trends suggest that the new millennium museum director needs to be a leader who balances a belief in the institution and the reality of marketing. Sherene Suchy's research indicates that most curatorial staff, the pool from which museum directors usually emerge, are not necessarily suited for this role, raising questions about how museums create career paths, manage succession planning, invest in leadership training and orient boards for their role in the selection process. The author is the director of a private practice specializing in individual and organizational development based in Sydney, Australia. She has more than twenty years experience in management development programmes with public- and private-sector organizations, and has been actively involved since 1991 in the cultural-industry sector, including an international study on the director's role in museum leadership.