Gosselin, Viviane

PhD, Curator of Contemporary Culture, Museum of Vancouver

Viviane Gosselin is Curator of Contemporary Culture at the Museum of Vancouver and Associate Researcher with the UBC Centre for the Study of Historical Consciousness. Her doctoral research examined how frameworks associated with the discourse on the pedagogy of historical thinking help conceptualize the experience of exhibition makers and museum visitors. Her study underscored the need for museums to consider their role as promoters of historical consciousness in fulfilling their educational mandate and maintaining their social relevance. Other research interests include intercultural curation, citizen-curation, and critical museology. She has been invited to speak at professional and academic conferences in Quebec, Norway, Sweden, the UK and the USA.

Dr. Gosselin has led several exhibition teams in museums for the past fifteen years while serving on peer review committees with the Canadian Museums Association, Canadian Heritage, and the Canada Council for the Arts. In 2011, the British Columbia Museums Association recognized her leadership in the museum field. Her work received awards of excellence with the Canadian Association of Science Centres (2007) and the Canadian Museums Association (2012).

She served on the editorial board of MUSE (the CMA quarterly journal) from 2006 to 2011 and has published in Museum and Society (2008), Canadian Diversity (2009), Iber (2009), co-edited National Museums: New Studies from around the World (Routledge, 2011), and contributed a chapter to New Possibilities for the Past (UBC Press, 2011). She was recently elected to the board of ICOM-Canada, the national body of the International Council of Museums. Dr. Gosselin is currently co-editing THEN/HiER's fourth book project with Phaedra Livingstone (University of Oregon). The book investigates how museums function as sites of historical consciousness.
 

Publications Since 2007

"Civic Museography, Porous Narratives and the Choir Effect: Sex Talk in the City at the Museum of Vancouver." THEMA. La revue des Musées de la civilisation 1 (2014): 107-16.
http://thema.mcq.org/index.php/Thema/article/view/29/pdf

"Embracing a New Understanding of the City: The Museum of Vancouver's Vision in Action." Journal of Museum Education 38(1) (2013): 20-26.

Playhouse: The Architecture of Daniel Evan White (exhibition catalogue editor). Vancouver: Museum of Vancouver, 2013.

With T. Falkowsky. Object (ing): The Art/design of Tobias Wong (exhibition catalogue editors). Vancouver: Museum of Vancouver,  2012.

“Looking Back, Looking Forward.” RoundUp 249 (2011), 41-2.

Open to Interpretation: Mobilizing Historical Thinking in the Museum. PhD Dissertation, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/39863

With A. Lemay. “Death, Exposed: Bringing Life into Death Exhibitions.” Muse 6(29) (2011): 24-8.

"Historical Thinking in the Museum: Open to Interpretation." In New Possibilities for the Past: Shaping History Education in Canada, edited by Penney Clark, 245-63. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011.

With Peter Seixas and Kadriye Ercikan. "Canadians Confront the History Wars." Canadian Diversity/Diversité canadienne 7(1) (2009): 50-54.

With David Anderson. "Private and Public Memories of Expo '67: A Case Study of Montreal World’s Fair, 40 Years After the Event." Museum and Society 6(1) (2008): 1-21.

With Susan Ashley and Jennifer Parker. "NaMU: EU Museum Project Connects and Educates Scholars from Around the World." Muse 26(6) (2008): 36-9.

"Ambitious and Daring: North Vancouver’s Presentation House Gallery." Muse 26(4) (2008): 32-5.

"Mapping New Trajectories: The Case of the Exhibition Frontières at the Musée des Confluences in Lyon, France." In NaMu III: National Museums in a Global World. Linköping University Electronic Press, Sweden, 2007.
http://www.ep.liu.se/ecp/031/011/ecp0703111.pdf