Weighing the Years: Museums and the Lightness of Life

Professor Gaynor Kavanagh DPhil MPhil FMA
Cardiff School of Art & Design

Date: 18 October 2006
Time: 5.45pm for 6pm start
Venue: The Lecture Theatre, UWIC, Howard Gardens Campus

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Summary

It is taken for granted, not least by the museums’ world itself, that the essential purpose of museum practice is to safeguard objects and collections. This raises many questions about why as a society we need to hold onto things. What human function does it serve to licence an institution to keep things on our behalf? Indeed why as a species do we need to retain objects at all? Professor Kavanagh’s paper will address our relationship to objects through the most fundamental of sensory functions: touch.

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