Re-animating modernism: picture language, museum display and visual reproduction

Abstract

This work, six published essays and one book, contributes to the historical and theoretical understanding of nineteenth- and twentieth-century culture through two case studies: museums, understood in relation to the larger history of practices of collecting and display and to the development of media since the nineteenth century; and Otto Neurath, who was, among many things, a key member of the Vienna Circle and inventor of Isotype, one of the first systematic methods of what we might today term data visualization or information graphics. An introductory essay focusses on Modernism and materialism as two central themes and theoretical concerns that emerge in these writings. For the submission the writings are divided into two groups: A materialist Approach to Cultural History via Otto Neurath, and The Museum as Material and Media. The introductory essay explains and contextualises these groupings, showing how the writings included here develop a distinctive approach to cultural history and museum studies.

Date of Award	Oct 2015
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Brighton