[ THE COURSE WILL NOT BE TAUGHT DURING 2022-2023]

Museums are the iconic buildings of the early twenty first century, as remarkable for their architectural heterogeneity as for the range of cultural aims they serve. They aspire to become places related to social diversity and cultural innovation which experiment with novel ways of presenting art and cultural heritage, and, in parallel, spaces of encounter and socialization.

The course focuses on contemporary reality and aims at the theoretical and practical knowledge of issues in the design and organization of exhibitions that engage their visitors. Integrating and amplifying the basic knowledge acquired in the field of museology, the course examines the experimentation and heterogeneity in the twentieth century and contemporary exhibition designs, discusses recent changes in curatorial practices, and turns attention to emerging challenges and their spatial and display implications, including the restructuring of museum collections, the re-staging of histories and identities, the representation in the museum of the tangible and intangible aspects of past and present, issues of museum ethics. It introduces students to key areas in exhibition design, including concept development, the relation between conceptual (museological) and spatial (museographical) design, interpretative planning and exhibition graphics, lighting principles and strategies.

The course explores theoretical approaches and practical issues, as reflected in Greek and international research and experience, and, by placing the emphasis on concrete cases of different kinds of museums, it relates and discusses different themes in the field in a synthetic way.