Intersecting heritage, milieu and environment. The concept of Nordic museology in the early 1990s

Authors

  • Mattias Bäckström University of Oslo

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5617/nm.6396

Keywords:

museologies, museum studies and heritology, cultural heritage and natural heritage, environmental heritage and idea heritage, idea milieu and life milieu, environmental heritage and environmental history, cultural ecology and human ecology

Abstract

In this study, I investigate the concept of Nordic museology in the early
1990s. Per-Uno Ågren’s programmatic article about museology and cultural
heritage, published in 1993 in the first ever issue of the journal Nordic Museology,
is the point of departure for my historiographic investigation. Ågren’s article is firstly
contextualized within the international museological discourse of the 1980s and
early 1990s, secondly within a late twentieth-century idea milieu in Umeå where
curators and researchers received, revised, shaped and used a variety of concepts
and practices. The key concepts include traditional museology, new museology,
museum studies and heritology as well as idea milieu and life milieu, total heritage,
environmental heritage, idea heritage, cultural heritage and natural heritage.
What were the specifics of Ågren’s concepts of museology and cultural heritage in
relation to the adjacent concepts in the international museological discourse and
the idea milieu in Umeå? How did Ågren and his colleagues formulate the concept
of Nordic museology?

Author Biography

Mattias Bäckström, University of Oslo

IKOS - Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages

Centre for Museum Studies

PhD in History of Science and Ideas, Postdoctoral Fellow

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