Getting bogged down in Finding a definition of what 'popular culture' means can be a time-consuming exercise, but film, pop music, television, advertising and fashion are a good enough starting point.
These great cultural forms of the 20th century have all been around long enough to warrant a retrospective view, to be studied and appreciated in their own right. Yet why is it that the museum world, given all this fabulous new subject matter to play with, frequently makes such a hash of things?
The National Centre for Popular Music (NCPM) opened in Sheffield city centre in 1999 - the tail-end of a decade that had witnessed the birth of the Amazon generation, people who were used to regular spending splurges on the internet, buying up triple-CD reissues of classic albums from their youth and reading Sunday supplements on rock music. The marriage of Thatcherite regeneration-through-cultural-industry and Blairite rock respectability seemed to be made in heaven.
Perfect timing it might have been, but the NCPM was a colossal flop. Less than a year after opening it was unable to pay its debts and was technically insolvent. Just 104,000 visitors had toured the four 'drums' to view a disparate collection of exhibits and new technology that was never fully developed.
Common gripes within the museum world about the project included its slowness to return loaned material and a general consensus that the centre was poorly managed.
Mike Robinson, the chairman of tourism studies at the Sheffield Hallam University, believes the centre's failure was as much down to practicalities, as actual content. 'It set its prices too high and drastically overestimated its visitor base,' he says. 'More than that though, it lacked any sort of appealing and coherent narrative - there was an over-use of interpretation to try and compensate for the lack of material.'
Maev Kennedy, the heritage correspondent for the Guardian, cringes at the memory. 'It was just a dead idea from the start - it should never have got off the drawing board. The initial plan that cool, cutting-edge bands would go and perform in such a space, and that cool, cutting-edge kids would go there to see them - presumably on family tickets, with their parents - was tragic.'
Supporters of recently announced plans for a Manchester Music Archive, billed as a museum promoting the city's rich musical heritage, have been keen to stress that lessons have been learned from Sheffield.
The people behind the project, various figures intertwined with Mancunian music-making, are confident that the archive will generate international interest - that its cultural significance lies far beyond the confines of North West England and is more than just regional back-patting.
But surely the best way to experience such an organic phenomenon as contemporary music is first-hand, in the city's legion of venues and clubs? And if that's true of music, surely it also goes for other types of popular culture?
'Popular culture does not belong in a museum - it belongs on street corners,' says Kennedy. 'I don't think museums should blind themselves to the importance of popular culture, especially where it is clearly relevant to their collections - the Museum of London and V&A have in recent years been very savvy at popular exhibitions closely related to their collections, of which Black British Style at the V&A is only the latest example.
'But the idea of a new museum devoted to popular culture is entirely misguided, a fundamental misunderstanding of what a museum is.'
Manchester already has an example of a museum that touches on many aspects of popular culture. Urbis uses the latest technology to unravel the urban experience in the world's great cities. It opened to a mixed critical reaction, and has needed large sums of money from the city council to keep it afloat. None the less, the council seems determined to make the concept work.
Scott Burnham, the creative director at Urbis, is enthusiastic about the possibilities and challenges the museum presents. 'Popular culture is far too broad a term - I think the general public has a hard time grasping its scope,' he says. 'So putting it in an urban context gives it a handle that lets visitors say, "Oh, I get it".
Urbis is about bringing threads together, seeing how popular culture ends up being used by corporations, advertisements, and so on.' Burnham says that Urbis is reluctant to tag itself as a museum, preferring to see itself as a place that provides 'focus and perspective' instead.
While admitting that permanent exhibits present a problem in terms of relevance, Burnham believes that changing temporary displays does allow him to bring in more up-to-date subject matter. The ground floor of Urbis is home to 600 sq metres of gallery space, which changes content every three months. Recent displays have included the 'Manchester remix' of the Peter Saville exhibition that was at the Design Museum in London last year.
Staying relevant is a key factor in the thin line between success and failure. Take the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) on London's South Bank, which opened in 1988. This was a privately-funded enterprise that presented a popular and important slice of the national culture in an accessible, interesting way.
But before long, its mixture of traditional glass case displays, interactive exhibits and live interpretation, which had been revolutionary and were tremendously successful, were copied by other newer museums and visitor attractions such as the London Dungeon. With no refurbishment, it soon began to look tired and outdated, and was closed by the British Film Institute in 1999.
Are there parallels to be drawn between the fate of the NCPM and MoMI? Kennedy says not: 'I exempt the Museum of the Moving Image from all the above criticism. It had a genuine story, of national and international interest, to tell that was not told anywhere else and it possessed a fabulous collection.'
Kennedy talks of the Peter Stringfellow effect of most museums - of presenting popular cultural subject matter in an embarrassing way, like your parents dancing to Franz Ferdinand. MoMI avoided that by dint of its enthusiasm, film industry support and hip cachet, helped in part by its arty location. But in spite of these advantages, it failed because it didn't move with the times.
Faced with all these negative examples and failures, you'd expect Robinson from Sheffield Hallam University to give up on the idea of displaying popular culture.
But he is still confident that the right museum, telling its story authoritatively and with slick, entertaining presentation values, will always attract visitors - be they informed connoisseurs or totally unknowledgeable first-timers. Popular culture museums could yet become hip.
These great cultural forms of the 20th century have all been around long enough to warrant a retrospective view, to be studied and appreciated in their own right. Yet why is it that the museum world, given all this fabulous new subject matter to play with, frequently makes such a hash of things?
The National Centre for Popular Music (NCPM) opened in Sheffield city centre in 1999 - the tail-end of a decade that had witnessed the birth of the Amazon generation, people who were used to regular spending splurges on the internet, buying up triple-CD reissues of classic albums from their youth and reading Sunday supplements on rock music. The marriage of Thatcherite regeneration-through-cultural-industry and Blairite rock respectability seemed to be made in heaven.
Perfect timing it might have been, but the NCPM was a colossal flop. Less than a year after opening it was unable to pay its debts and was technically insolvent. Just 104,000 visitors had toured the four 'drums' to view a disparate collection of exhibits and new technology that was never fully developed.
Common gripes within the museum world about the project included its slowness to return loaned material and a general consensus that the centre was poorly managed.
Mike Robinson, the chairman of tourism studies at the Sheffield Hallam University, believes the centre's failure was as much down to practicalities, as actual content. 'It set its prices too high and drastically overestimated its visitor base,' he says. 'More than that though, it lacked any sort of appealing and coherent narrative - there was an over-use of interpretation to try and compensate for the lack of material.'
Maev Kennedy, the heritage correspondent for the Guardian, cringes at the memory. 'It was just a dead idea from the start - it should never have got off the drawing board. The initial plan that cool, cutting-edge bands would go and perform in such a space, and that cool, cutting-edge kids would go there to see them - presumably on family tickets, with their parents - was tragic.'
Supporters of recently announced plans for a Manchester Music Archive, billed as a museum promoting the city's rich musical heritage, have been keen to stress that lessons have been learned from Sheffield.
The people behind the project, various figures intertwined with Mancunian music-making, are confident that the archive will generate international interest - that its cultural significance lies far beyond the confines of North West England and is more than just regional back-patting.
But surely the best way to experience such an organic phenomenon as contemporary music is first-hand, in the city's legion of venues and clubs? And if that's true of music, surely it also goes for other types of popular culture?
'Popular culture does not belong in a museum - it belongs on street corners,' says Kennedy. 'I don't think museums should blind themselves to the importance of popular culture, especially where it is clearly relevant to their collections - the Museum of London and V&A have in recent years been very savvy at popular exhibitions closely related to their collections, of which Black British Style at the V&A is only the latest example.
'But the idea of a new museum devoted to popular culture is entirely misguided, a fundamental misunderstanding of what a museum is.'
Manchester already has an example of a museum that touches on many aspects of popular culture. Urbis uses the latest technology to unravel the urban experience in the world's great cities. It opened to a mixed critical reaction, and has needed large sums of money from the city council to keep it afloat. None the less, the council seems determined to make the concept work.
Scott Burnham, the creative director at Urbis, is enthusiastic about the possibilities and challenges the museum presents. 'Popular culture is far too broad a term - I think the general public has a hard time grasping its scope,' he says. 'So putting it in an urban context gives it a handle that lets visitors say, "Oh, I get it".
Urbis is about bringing threads together, seeing how popular culture ends up being used by corporations, advertisements, and so on.' Burnham says that Urbis is reluctant to tag itself as a museum, preferring to see itself as a place that provides 'focus and perspective' instead.
While admitting that permanent exhibits present a problem in terms of relevance, Burnham believes that changing temporary displays does allow him to bring in more up-to-date subject matter. The ground floor of Urbis is home to 600 sq metres of gallery space, which changes content every three months. Recent displays have included the 'Manchester remix' of the Peter Saville exhibition that was at the Design Museum in London last year.
Staying relevant is a key factor in the thin line between success and failure. Take the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) on London's South Bank, which opened in 1988. This was a privately-funded enterprise that presented a popular and important slice of the national culture in an accessible, interesting way.
But before long, its mixture of traditional glass case displays, interactive exhibits and live interpretation, which had been revolutionary and were tremendously successful, were copied by other newer museums and visitor attractions such as the London Dungeon. With no refurbishment, it soon began to look tired and outdated, and was closed by the British Film Institute in 1999.
Are there parallels to be drawn between the fate of the NCPM and MoMI? Kennedy says not: 'I exempt the Museum of the Moving Image from all the above criticism. It had a genuine story, of national and international interest, to tell that was not told anywhere else and it possessed a fabulous collection.'
Kennedy talks of the Peter Stringfellow effect of most museums - of presenting popular cultural subject matter in an embarrassing way, like your parents dancing to Franz Ferdinand. MoMI avoided that by dint of its enthusiasm, film industry support and hip cachet, helped in part by its arty location. But in spite of these advantages, it failed because it didn't move with the times.
Faced with all these negative examples and failures, you'd expect Robinson from Sheffield Hallam University to give up on the idea of displaying popular culture.
But he is still confident that the right museum, telling its story authoritatively and with slick, entertaining presentation values, will always attract visitors - be they informed connoisseurs or totally unknowledgeable first-timers. Popular culture museums could yet become hip.
