Museum Philosophy for the Twenty-first Century

Museum Philosophy for the Twenty-first Century PDF Author: Hugh H. Genoways
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 9780759107540
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Presents reflections on museum philosophy for the 21st century from an international group of contributors.

Museum Philosophy for the Twenty-first Century

Museum Philosophy for the Twenty-first Century PDF Author: Hugh H. Genoways
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 9780759107540
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Presents reflections on museum philosophy for the 21st century from an international group of contributors.

Museums at the Forefront of the History and Philosophy of Geology

Museums at the Forefront of the History and Philosophy of Geology PDF Author: Gary D. Rosenberg
Publisher: Geological Society of America
ISBN: 0813725356
Category : Geological museums
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Information on museum activities around the world.

The Routledge Companion to Museum Ethics

The Routledge Companion to Museum Ethics PDF Author: Janet Marstine
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136715266
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
Routledge Companion to Museum Ethics is a theoretically informed reconceptualization of museum ethics discourse as a dynamic social practice central to the project of creating change in the museum. Through twenty-seven chapters by an international and interdisciplinary group of academics and practitioners it explores contemporary museum ethics as an opportunity for growth, rather than a burden of compliance. The volume represents diverse strands in museum activity from exhibitions to marketing, as ethics is embedded in all areas of the museum sector. What the contributions share is an understanding of the contingent nature of museum ethics in the twenty-first century—its relations with complex economic, social, political and technological forces and its fluid ever-shifting sensibility. The volume examines contemporary museum ethics through the prism of those disciplines and methods that have shaped it most. It argues for a museum ethics discourse defined by social responsibility, radical transparency and shared guardianship of heritage. And it demonstrates the moral agency of museums: the concept that museum ethics is more than the personal and professional ethics of individuals and concerns the capacity of institutions to generate self-reflective and activist practice.

Progressive Museum Practice

Progressive Museum Practice PDF Author: George E Hein
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315421844
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Preeminent museum education theorist George E. Hein explores the work, philosophy, and impact of educational reformer John Dewey and his importance for museums. Hein traces current practice in museum education to Dewey's early 20th-century ideas about education, democracy, and progress toward improving society, and in so doing provides a rare history of museum education as a profession. Giving special attention to the progressive individuals and institutions who followed Dewey in developing the foundations for the experiential learning that is considered best practice today, Hein demonstrates a parallel between contemporary theories about education and socio-political progress and, specifically, the significance of museums for sustaining and advancing a democratic society.

Interpreting Objects in the Hybrid Museum

Interpreting Objects in the Hybrid Museum PDF Author: Helena Robinson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 042984560X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Interpreting Objects in the Hybrid Museum examines the recent trend for converged collecting institutions and uses its investigation as a catalyst for critical reflection by all stakeholders on the risks, as well as advantages, of integration for cultural engagement. Drawing on three case studies of restructured cultural organisations in Australia and New Zealand, Robinson provides valuable insights into the conceptual and practical ways in which hybridised collecting institutions operate. Reflecting on the ultimate value of converged institutions for the communities they serve, the book uncovers the dangers of misalignment between bureaucratic decision-making and the creation of cultural meaning. Actively contesting policy assumptions about the benefits of integrating museums with other kinds of cultural institutions, the book’s analysis of empirical evidence provides an important counterbalance by exposing the impacts of supposedly benign structural changes to museum organisations on fundamental processes of research, documentation and contextualisation of collections. Interpreting Objects in the Hybrid Museum highlights the consequences of policy decisions on the distinctive interpretive role of museums. As such, the book should be of interest to a range of academic and professional audiences, including scholars and students in the fields of museum and heritage studies, library and archival science, cultural studies and politics. It should also be essential reading for cultural heritage practitioners working across the museum, heritage, library, archive and gallery sectors.

The Responsive Museum

The Responsive Museum PDF Author: Caroline Lang
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
The Responsive Museum interrogates the thinking, policies and practices that underpin the educational role of the museum. It unravels the complex relationship of museums with their publics, and discusses today's challenges and the debates that have resulted.

A Place That Matters Yet

A Place That Matters Yet PDF Author: Sara Byala
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022603027X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
A Place That Matters Yet unearths the little-known story of Johannesburg’s MuseumAfrica, a South African history museum that embodies one of the most dynamic and fraught stories of colonialism and postcolonialism, its life spanning the eras before, during, and after apartheid. Sara Byala, in examining this story, sheds new light not only on racism and its institutionalization in South Africa but also on the problems facing any museum that is charged with navigating colonial history from a postcolonial perspective. Drawing on thirty years of personal letters and public writings by museum founder John Gubbins, Byala paints a picture of a uniquely progressive colonist, focusing on his philosophical notion of “three-dimensional thinking,” which aimed to transcend binaries and thus—quite explicitly—racism. Unfortunately, Gubbins died within weeks of the museum’s opening, and his hopes would go unrealized as the museum fell in line with emergent apartheid politics. Following the museum through this transformation and on to its 1994 reconfiguration as a post-apartheid institution, Byala showcases it as a rich—and problematic—archive of both material culture and the ideas that surround that culture, arguing for its continued importance in the establishment of a unified South Africa.

Do Museums Still Need Objects?

Do Museums Still Need Objects? PDF Author: Steven Conn
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812221559
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
In this broadly conceived study Steven Conn examines the development of American museums across the twentieth century with a historian's attention and a critic's eye. He focuses on an array of museum types and asks illuminating questions about the relationship between museums and American cultural life.

Museums and Communities

Museums and Communities PDF Author: Viv Golding
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0857851330
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
This edited volume critically engages with contemporary scholarship on museums and their engagement with the communities they purport to serve and represent. Foregrounding new curatorial strategies, it addresses a significant gap in the available literature, exploring some of the complex issues arising from recent approaches to collaboration between museums and their communities. The book unpacks taken-for-granted notions such as scholarship, community, participation and collaboration, which can gloss over the complexity of identities and lead to tokenistic claims of inclusion by museums. Over sixteen chapters, well-respected authors from the US, Australia and Europe offer a timely critique to address what happens when museums put community-minded principles into practice, challenging readers to move beyond shallow notions of political correctness that ignore vital difference in this contested field. Contributors address a wide range of key issues, asking pertinent questions such as how museums negotiate the complexities of integrating collaboration when the target community is a living, fluid, changeable mass of people with their own agendas and agency. When is engagement real as opposed to symbolic, who benefits from and who drives initiatives? What particular challenges and benefits do artist collaborations bring? Recognising the multiple perspectives of community participants is one thing, but how can museums incorporate this successfully into exhibition practice? Students of museum and cultural studies, practitioners and everyone who cares about museums around the world will find this volume essential reading.

Museum Making

Museum Making PDF Author: Suzanne Macleod
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136445749
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description
Over recent decades, many museums, galleries and historic sites around the world have enjoyed an unprecedented level of large-scale investment in their capital infrastructure, in building refurbishments and new gallery displays. This period has also seen the creation of countless new purpose-built museums and galleries, suggesting a fundamental re-evaluation of the processes of designing and shaping of museums. Museum Making: Narratives, Architectures, Exhibitions examines this re-making by exploring the inherently spatial character of narrative in the museum and its potential to connect on the deepest levels with human perception and imagination. Through this uniting theme, the chapters explore the power of narratives as structured experiences unfolding in space and time as well as the use of theatre, film and other technologies of storytelling by contemporary museum makers to generate meaningful and, it is argued here, highly effective and affective museum spaces. Contributions by an internationally diverse group of museum and heritage professionals, exhibition designers, architects and artists with academics from a range of disciplines including museum studies, theatre studies, architecture, design and history cut across traditional boundaries including the historical and the contemporary and together explore the various roles and functions of narrative as a mechanism for the creation of engaging and meaningful interpretive environments.