Update

Broadly speaking, the GLAADH project funded modules and their underlying purposes to expand student awareness of art, design and architecture on a world-wide basis will continue indefinitely as a one of the main emphases of our curriculum here at the University of Plymouth.

It will be one of the areas of concern in our new 18th Century MA programme to be validated this year and will be further developed and enhanced in the upcoming complete revalidation of the undergraduate art history programme due to be undertaken in the 2006/07 academic year prior to our relocation to the Plymouth city campus site.

The art history department here intends to expand and develop relationships with local, regional and national collections of ethnographic and world cultures items, in conjunction with the upcoming revalidation processes and also in relation to a proposed MA degree in cultural management and museology that would address issues and practices in contemporary and historical museums in its turn.

The Royal Albert Memorial Museum is generally supportive of our links with them through a number of new initiatives, with GLAADH being one part of our collaborations. They will continue to provide support for the module currently being deployed i.e. ARHI 220/320 'Collecting Cultures'.

The new module 'Collecting and Exhibiting Cultures in the Nineteenth century' was first taught last academic year meeting with much success and received generally positive responses. It will be deployed again in the upcoming term's teaching. (We moved from semesters to terms starting this academic year, 2004/05).

Revision of modules

The topic coverage will be slightly altered from last year's emphasis on North American Indian cultural and artistic practices to bring a wider scope to the period from the 1770s to the 1920s in Europe in terms of ethnographical collecting and development of museums to house such items. Focus will be turned instead towards exploration and collecting in Africa, India and the Pacific within this period and will touch on specific instances of recent and controversial exhibitions of such work in the U.K. and Europe.

Also the assessment tasks will be revised slightly so that students can undertake a study of European collecting that might centre on either British, French or German ethnographic collecting during the period examination in the module.

Student take up

Student take up is very good but also these are not optional modules and generally the entire second and third level student groups will take the new module 'Collecting Cultures' on their major or single honours degree routes. So far the question of student numbers and access to Museum and other holdings in archives has not been adversely affected.

The other two modules involved in Plymouth's GLAADH project on not on offer this year due to changes in the art history provision and shifting teaching patterns. These modules are still validated and will be further modified when our entire programme goes through a process of revalidation in 2006 - 2007 prior to the move to the University of Plymouth's city campus.

Impact on final year dissertations

No big impact is detected yet in the choice of year three dissertation topics but one student in last year's CART 100 'Myths of Primitivism' is very keen to undertake post-graduate work following on from her research for one of the assessments for that module.

Student feedback

The feedback has been positive with the majority of students welcoming the introduction of material concerning arts produced in cultures outside the West. They had some concerns over the amount of relevant and appropriate reference material available in the Library in order to support their studies and these concerns will be addressed this year by the modification of the module 'Collecting Cultures' to address the period from the 1770s to 1920s in terms of European exploration and colonial collecting of ethnographic objects and materials in Africa, India and the Pacific.

Building up resources

I am currently building up the Library's holdings of recent and more foundational texts on these topics and will build the slide collection in accordance with the shift to examine collecting in Africa and the Pacific, as well as India.

Changing Perceptions

One of the aims set out in the last report was to address the issue of studying the arts of the world 'for their own sake' by asking students to voice their views on this subject.

This was perhaps a difficult goal but generally most students found ways to voice their own opinions regarding the possibility of seeing beyond stereotypes or constructed ways of viewing of these works to attain a perhaps idealised position of viewing it within or on its own terms.

These views came out usually within the context of debates we had in class on the appropriateness of historical collecting and the current methods of displays of certain objects and regalia, especially those associated with spiritual and religious practices by the cultures in question and the historical and current debates surrounding access to museum items by the originating communities and the issues of repatriation.

Students felt that by bringing a combination of approaches to a particular item or set of metonymical items (i.e. beaded moccasins, decorated shirts) such as was seen in those museums with connections to originating cultures that a balanced and more appropriate interpretation might take place.

They became much more aware during the module of the rather conservationist and conservative nature of the museum as an institution and that much could still change within current practices in order to be even more clear about the nature of the collections and their histories.

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