What is it about?
What is the role of academics in their collaborations with museums? The emergence of popular music exhibitions has raised questions about how historical and academic knowledge about sound in cities contributes to an understanding of lived experience. Taking a detailed look at a 40 review of popular music at RMIT University's Museum in Melbourne, Australia, the article considers the challenge of reproducing pop music's commercial "bullshit" in favor of a clear sense of how culture and social life operates in and is informed by popular music.
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Why is it important?
The article brings together popular music and museum studies with a critical focus on how representation can change to improve public engagement with social and cultural knowledge. It uses the invention of the Morphos, a multidimensional object built around sound and image to discuss how popular music in the museum can more effectively connect with an understanding of everyday life in cities. The artcile encourages academics to be involved in public life through museum curatorial work.
Perspectives
Academics have an obligation to use their research skills and understanding of the world to contribute critical knowledge about "bullshit," that is the trivial, misleading, commercial and market focused aspects of life that deny or subvert the full expression of human experience. Connecting popular music and cultural and media studies with museum studies can realize this responsibility.
Marcus Breen
Boston College
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Melbourne popular music in the museum: Locating the academy in the sonic city, Perfect Beat, January 2017, Equinox Publishing,
DOI: 10.1558/prbt.v17i2.29540.
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