Bøker i Routledge Research in Museum Studies-serien

Visitor engagement and learning, outreach, and inclusion are concepts that have long dominated professional museum discourses. The recent rapid uptake of various forms of social media in many parts of the world, however, calls for a reformulation of familiar opportunities and obstacles in museum debates and practices. Young people, as both early adopters of digital forms of communication and latecomers to museums, increasingly figure as a key target group for many museums. This volume presents and discusses the most advanced research on the multiple ways in which social media operates to transform museum communications in countries as diverse as Australia, Denmark, Germany, Norway, the UK, and the United States. It examines the socio-cultural contexts, organizational and education consequences, and methodological implications of these transformations.

Museums and the Ancient Middle East comprises a remarkable group of case studies from many of the world's leading museums, including the British Museum, the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin.

Computer technology has transformed modern society, yet curators wishing to reflect those changes face difficult challenges in terms of both collecting and exhibiting. This book examines how curators at the Smithsonian Institution have met these challenges. It makes useful reading for curators, scholars, and students.

This innovative collection of essays offers a comparative history of independent and institutional collections of psychiatric objects in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom. Leading scholars in the field investigate collectors, collections, their display, and the reactions to exhibitions of the history of insanity.

Current discourse on Indigenous engagement in museum studies is often dominated by curatorial and academic perspectives, in which community voice, viewpoints, and reflections on their collaborations can be under-represented. This book provides a unique look at Indigenous perspectives on museum community engagement and the process of self-representation, specifically how the First Nations Elders of the Blackfoot Confederacy have worked with museums and heritage sites in Alberta, Canada, to represent their own culture and history. Situated in a post-colonial context, the case-study sites are places of contention, a politicized environment that highlights commonly hidden issues and naturalized inequalities built into current approaches to community engagement. Data from participant observation, archives, and in-depth interviewing with participants brings Blackfoot community voice into the text and provides an alternative understanding of self and cross-cultural representation. Focusing on the experiences of museum professionals and Blackfoot Elders who have worked with a number of museums and heritage sites, Indigenous Voices in Cultural Institutions unpicks the power and politics of engagement on a micro level and how it can be applied more broadly, by exposing the limits and challenges of cross-cultural engagement and community self-representation. The result is a volume that provides readers with an in-depth understanding of the nuances of self-representation and decolonization.

This collection of essays focuses on the rarely studied hidden spaces in museums and explores issues such as the relationship between storage and canonization, the politics of collecting, the use of museum storage as a form of censorship, the architectural character of storage space, and the economic and epistemic value of museum objects.

The 1970s saw the emergence and subsequent proliferation across the Arabian Peninsula of `national museums¿, institutions aimed at creating social cohesion and affiliation to the state within a disparate population. Representing the Nation examines the wide-ranging use of exhibitionary forms of national identity projection via consideration of their motivations, implications (current and future), possible historical backgrounds, official and unofficial meanings, and meanings for both the user/visitor and the multiple creators. The book responds to, due to the importance placed on tradition, heritage and national identity across all the states of the Peninsula, and the growth of re-imagined and new museums, the need for far greater discussion and research in these areas.

This volume examines peace museums, a small and important (but often overlooked) series of museums whose numbers have multiplied internationally since the 1970s. It introduces the history and significance of peace museums and their different approaches through a selected series of peace museum sites. It attempts to categorize and distinguish between different types of museums that are linked to peace in name, theme or purpose and to urge a "critical peace museums studies" in examining their varied emphasis and content.

Current discourse on Indigenous engagement in museum studies is often dominated by curatorial and academic perspectives, in which community voice, viewpoints, and reflections on their collaborations can be under-represented. This book provides a unique look at Indigenous perspectives on museum community engagement and the process of self-representation, specifically how the First Nations Elders of the Blackfoot Confederacy have worked with museums and heritage sites in Alberta, Canada, to represent their own culture and history. Situated in a post-colonial context, the case-study sites are places of contention, a politicized environment that highlights commonly hidden issues and naturalized inequalities built into current approaches to community engagement. Data from participant observation, archives, and in-depth interviewing with participants brings Blackfoot community voice into the text and provides an alternative understanding of self and cross-cultural representation.

Visitor engagement and learning, outreach, and inclusion are concepts that have long dominated professional museum discourses.  The recent rapid uptake of various forms of social media in many parts of the world, however, calls for a reformulation of familiar opportunities and obstacles in museum debates and practices. Young people, as both early adopters of digital forms of communication and latecomers to museums, increasingly figure as a key target group for many museums.  This volume presents and discusses the most advanced research on the multiple ways in which social media operates to transform museum communications in countries as diverse as Australia, Denmark, Germany, Norway, the UK, and the United States.  It examines the socio-cultural contexts, organizational and education consequences, and methodological implications of these transformations. 

The edited volume offers detailed analysis of how innovative curatorial relationships between museums and academia have sought to engage new, younger, audiences through the collaborative transformation of museums and exhibitions. Thematic topics explored include the forming and nature of interdisciplinary partnerships, the integration of museum learning into higher education, audience engagement, and digital technology. With a particular emphasis on practice in the US, the range of projects discussed includes those at both widely recognized and lesser known institutions, from The Met to the Tohono O¿odham Nation Cultural Center in the US, to Ewha University Museum in South Korea, and Palazzo Strozzi in Italy. The role of art and the work of the artist are firmly positioned at the core of many of the relationships explored.

Snapshots of Museum Experience uses a method of photo-elicitation with child visitors to the museum in order to investigate children¿s experience, rather than the usual focus on museum learning. By so doing, the book undermines many of our assumptions about the interests, needs and demands of child museum visitors.

Climate change is a complex and dynamic environmental, cultural and political phenomenon that is reshaping our relationship to nature. Climate change is a global force, with global impacts. Viable solutions on what to do must involve dialogues and decision-making with many agencies, stakeholder groups and communities crossing all sectors and scales. Current policy approaches are inadequate and finding a consensus on how to reduce levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere through international protocols has proven difficult. Gaps between science and society limit government and industry capacity to engage with communities to broker innovative solutions to climate change. Drawing on leading-edge research and creative programming initiatives, this collection details the important roles and agencies that cultural institutions (in particular, natural history and science museums and science centres) can play within these gaps as resources, catalysts and change agents in climate change debates and decision-making processes; as unique public and trans-national spaces where diverse stakeholders, government and communities can meet; where knowledge can be mediated, competing discourses and agendas tabled and debated; and where both individual and collective action might be activated.

"Simultaneously published in the UK"--Title page verso.

This book reflects on the complexity and difficulty of museums' experiences in presenting and interpreting the histories of slavery and abolition. It draws together contributions from academics, museum professionals, community activists and artists who were involved in marking the bicentenary of Britain¿s abolition of the slave trade.

This innovative collection of essays offers a comparative history of independent and institutional collections of psychiatric objects in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom. Leading scholars in the field investigate collectors, collections, their display, and the reactions to exhibitions of the history of insanity.

"Simultaneously published in the UK"--T.p. verso.

"Simultaneously published in the UK"--Title page verso.

"Simultaneously published in the UK"--T.p. verso.

Thurner explores the broader meaning of the ongoing return to curiosity in the museum within this book and argues that it indicates a need for reflection about what museums are actually museums of. The Museum of Babel provides a unique and thoughtful reflection upon this fundamental question and examines the history of museums from a transatlantic perspective. Providing engaging and lively meditations on the histories that have made museums, Thurner provides a novel reflection on exhibits of the museum¿s own past, whilst also demonstrating what museums are and making suggestions as to what they might become.

Climate change is a complex and dynamic environmental, cultural and political phenomenon that is reshaping our relationship to nature, but gaps between science and society limit government and industry capacity to engage with communities to broker innovative solutions to climate change. Drawing on leading-edge research and creative programming initiatives, this collection details the important roles and agencies that cultural institutions (in particular, natural history and science museums and science centres) can play within these gaps as resources, catalysts and change agents in climate change debates and decision-making processes; as unique public and trans-national spaces where diverse stakeholders, government and communities can meet; where knowledge can be mediated, competing discourses and agendas tabled and debated; and where both individual and collective action might be activated.

"Diversity and Philanthropy at African American Museums is the first scholarly book to analyse contemporary African American museums from a multifaceted perspective"--

Museum Thresholds is a progressively interdisciplinary volume, in which a range of international experts explore the importance and potential of entrance spaces for visitor experience. The chapters, in the three themed sections, explore a range of museum thresholds: first as a problem space; then through different media; and finally from the perspective of other subjects and professions (performance, gaming, retail and discourse studies) each of which have much to bring to future thinking and design.