Collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches to museum collections. A Gesamtkunstwerk: from research to exhibitions, publications, and programmes

Milosch, Jane C. (2025) Collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches to museum collections. A Gesamtkunstwerk: from research to exhibitions, publications, and programmes. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

The idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk—a “total work of art”—has shaped my creative and scholarly approach to 20th-century and contemporary art, craft, decorative arts, and design. My work in museums has harnessed the expertise of different academic and creative disciplines,
from project conception through implementation. To achieve a Gesamtkunstwerk in exhibitions, publications, and programmes, I have collaborated with artists, designers, museum experts, publishers, scholars, and diverse stakeholders to explore how handcrafted objects and their display highlight the different roles and importance of art and visual culture. This multidisciplinary approach has enabled me to bring together various arts, craft, and design perspectives to create an artistically unified effect in my work.

This submission focuses on six publications presenting my art historical research alongside my curatorial and programmatic museum work. As a curator, educator, editor, and programme director, I have focused on pooling knowledge and resources to create opportunities for collections engagement. My work has involved extensive interviews with artists and collectors to consider objects—their origins, functions, past and current contexts—and to advance a broader appreciation for art in everyday life. My work in provenance research has emphasised the importance of transatlantic scholarship through shared expertise and human connections that foster historical, social and political contexts of collections. These collaborative approaches have enabled me to advance decorative arts scholarship, and open new ways of thinking about the many roles and interconnected nature of art, craft, and museums in societies today and in the past.

The exhibitions, publications, and programmes discussed in my submission coalesce around
three general themes:
• handcrafted objects—modern and contemporary;
• objects within environments—historical spaces and museum display; and
• object biographies—provenance research and the history of collecting.

Discussed chronologically, they include: (1) an exhibition that recreated an ancient Roman
villa in an Iowa museum by integrating art and decorative arts with music and theatre through community involvement; (2) the rediscovery of Grant Wood’s historic studio-home in Iowa that helped launch him to fame, which introduced a better understanding of the role of craft in the artist’s oeuvre and led to a resurgence of interest in his life and work; (3) the relaunch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s biennial Renwick Craft Invitational, which generated new interpretations about art and craft through dramatic displays of contemporary glass, ceramic sculpture, and handmade-paper installation art; (4) the directorship of a research fellowship programme at the Smithsonian Institution that brought contemporary artists together with diverse museum expertise and collections, which resulted in new exhibitions and artwork; (5) the founding of the Smithsonian Provenance Research Initiative, which resulted in a professional museum exchange programme that advanced Holocaust-era provenance research in the US and Germany, and introduced new methodologies; and (6) a monograph on the life and work of Korean-American artist Chunghi Choo and her former students which considered the impact of her art and design pedagogy in the fields of fibre and metalsmithing.

SIX PUBLICATIONS:

Publication 1. Art in Roman Life: Villa to Grave (L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2009)

Publication 2. Grant Wood’s Studio: Birthplace of ‘American Gothic’ (Prestel, 2005)

Publication 3. From the Ground Up: Renwick Craft Invitational 2007 (Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2007)

Publication 4. “Contemporary Art Informed by Science: The Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship” in Analyzing Art and Aesthetics (Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2013)

Publication 5. Collecting and Provenance: A Multidisciplinary Approach (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019)

Publication 6. Chunghi Choo and Her Students: Contemporary Art and New Forms in Metal (Arnoldsche, 2022)

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Subjects: N Fine Arts > NX Arts in general
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Culture and Creative Arts > History of Art
• Supervisor's Name: Pearce, Professor Nick
• Date of Award: 2025
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2025-85097
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 02 May 2025 09:27
• Last Modified: 02 May 2025 09:30
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.85097
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/85097

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