Download or read book Making Museums Matter written by Stephen Weil and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2012-01-11 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume of 29 essays, Weil's overarching concern is that museums be able to “earn their keep”—that they make themselves matter—in an environment of potentially shrinking resources. Also included in this collection are reflections on the special qualities of art museums, an investigation into the relationship of current copyright law to the visual arts, a detailed consideration of how the museums and legal system of the United States have coped with the problem of Nazi-era art, and a series of delightfully provocative training exercises for those anticipating entry into the museum field.

Download or read book Museum Matters written by Miruna Achim and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2021-08-24 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Museum Matters tells the story of Mexico's national collections through the trajectories of its objects. The essays in this book show the many ways in which things matter and affect how Mexico imagines its past, present, and future.

Download or read book Museums Matter written by James Cuno and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-12-15 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of an encyclopedic museum was born of the Enlightenment, a manifestation of society’s growing belief that the spread of knowledge and the promotion of intellectual inquiry were crucial to human development and the future of a rational society. But in recent years, museums have been under attack, with critics arguing that they are little more than relics and promoters of imperialism. Could it be that the encyclopedic museum has outlived its usefulness? With Museums Matter, James Cuno, president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, replies with a resounding “No!” He takes us on a brief tour of the modern museum, from the creation of the British Museum—the archetypal encyclopedic collection—to the present, when major museums host millions of visitors annually and play a major role in the cultural lives of their cities. Along the way, Cuno acknowledges the legitimate questions about the role of museums in nation-building and imperialism, but he argues strenuously that even a truly national museum like the Louvre can’t help but open visitors’ eyes and minds to the wide diversity of world cultures and the stunning art that is our common heritage. Engaging with thinkers such as Edward Said and Martha Nussbaum, and drawing on examples from the politics of India to the destruction of the Bramiyan Buddhas to the history of trade and travel, Cuno makes a case for the encyclopedic museum as a truly cosmopolitan institution, promoting tolerance, understanding, and a shared sense of history—values that are essential in our ever more globalized age. Powerful, passionate, and to the point, Museums Matter is the product of a lifetime of working in and thinking about museums; no museumgoer should miss it.

Download or read book Reinventing the Museum written by Gail Anderson and published by Altamira Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reinventing the Museum presents iconic essays from the 20th century and the latest thinking of the 21st century on ideology, public engagement, and new frameworks. Its 44 seminal articles and selected bibliography guide students through nearly a century of museum thought and theory.

Download or read book Museums in Motion written by Edward Porter Alexander and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2008 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1979, Edward P. Alexander's Museums in Motion was hailed as a much-needed addition to the museum literature. In combining the history of museums since the eighteenth century with a detailed examination of the function of museums and museum workers in modern society, it served as an essential resource for those seeking to enter to the museum profession and for established professionals looking for an expanded understanding of their own discipline. Now, Mary Alexander has produced a newly revised edition of the classic text, bringing it the twenty-first century with coverage of emerging trends, resources, and challenges. New material also includes a discussion of the children's museum as a distinct type of institution and an exploration of the role computers play in both outreach and traditional in-person visits.

Download or read book Matters of Belonging written by Wayne Modest and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication examines creative and collaborative practices within ethnographic and world cultures museums across Europe as part of their responses to ongoing public and scholarly critique.

Download or read book Positioning Your Museum as a Critical Community Asset written by Robert P. Connolly and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-11-10 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this how-to guide, practitioners at cultural heritage venues share their experiences in building sustainable relationships with their geographic and demographic communities. The volume includes practical discussions of activity types that museums can employ to build relationships with their communities including education, advocacy, co-creative, while serving as a community asset and resource. Case studies include direct application of successes and lessons learned with an emphasis on small to medium sized institutions with limited staff and budgets. Highlights include: Thematic discussions on topics such as building an advocacy network between the museum and community; developing cultural heritage institutions as critical and essential components of educational systems; museum response to community expressed needs through a co-creative approach; the varied means for developing community members as cultural heritage stakeholders; and positioning the cultural heritage institution as an integral community asset. Twenty case studies directly apply the thematic discussions in small to medium-sized museum contexts. Extensive list of resources including digital links to forms, workbooks, and guides produced in the case studies. A list of national organizations and an extensive bibliography on community museum engagement. Specifically addressed to smaller institutions with limited budgets and limited or no full-time staff, the volume includes cost-effective projects that can be completed for $1,500 or less.

Download or read book Inside the Lost Museum written by Steven Lubar and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-07 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Curators make many decisions when they build collections or design exhibitions, plotting a passage of discovery that also tells an essential story. Collecting captures the past in a way useful to the present and the future. Exhibits play to our senses and orchestrate our impressions, balancing presentation and preservation, information and emotion. Curators consider visitors’ interactions with objects and with one another, how our bodies move through displays, how our eyes grasp objects, how we learn and how we feel. Inside the Lost Museum documents the work museums do and suggests ways these institutions can enrich the educational and aesthetic experience of their visitors. Woven throughout Inside the Lost Museum is the story of the Jenks Museum at Brown University, a nineteenth-century display of natural history, anthropology, and curiosities that disappeared a century ago. The Jenks Museum’s past, and a recent effort by artist Mark Dion, Steven Lubar, and their students to reimagine it as art and history, serve as a framework for exploring the long record of museums’ usefulness and service. Museum lovers know that energy and mystery run through every collection and exhibition. Lubar explains work behind the scenes—collecting, preserving, displaying, and using art and artifacts in teaching, research, and community-building—through historical and contemporary examples. Inside the Lost Museum speaks to the hunt, the find, and the reveal that make curating and visiting exhibitions and using collections such a rewarding and vital pursuit.

Download or read book Museums as Agents of Change written by Mike Murawski and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-04-26 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Museums everywhere have the potential to serve as agents of change—bringing people together, contributing to local communities, and changing people’s lives. So how can we, as individuals, radically expand the work of museums to live up to this potential? How can we more fiercely recognize the meaningful work that museums are doing to enact change around the relevant issues in our communities? How can we work together to build a stronger culture of equity and care within museums ? Questions like these are increasingly vital for all museum professionals to consider, no matter what your role is within your institution. They are also important questions for all of us to be thinking about more deeply as citizens and community members. This book is about the work we need to do to become changemakers and demand that that our museums take action toward positive social change and bring people together into a more just, equitable, compassionate, and connected society. It is a journey toward tapping the energies within all of us to make change happen and proactively shape a new future.

Download or read book Do Museums Still Need Objects written by Steven Conn and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Sound Heritage written by Jeanice Brooks and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-31 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sound Heritage is the first study of music in the historic house museum, featuring contributions from both music and heritage scholars and professionals in a richly interdisciplinary approach to central issues. It examines how music materials can be used to create narratives about past inhabitants and their surroundings - including aspects of social and cultural life beyond the activity of music making itself - and explores how music as sound, material, and practice can be more consistently and engagingly integrated into the curation and interpretation of historic houses. The volume is structured around a selection of thematic chapters and a series of shorter case studies, each focusing on a specific house, object or project. Key themes include: Different types of historic house, including the case of the composer or musician house; what can be learned from museums and galleries about the use of sound and music and what may not transfer to the historic house setting Musical instruments as part of a wider collection; questions of restoration and public use; and the demands of particular collection types such as sheet music Musical objects and pieces of music as storytelling components, and the use of music to affectively colour narratives or experiences. This is a pioneering study that will appeal to all those interested in the intersection between Music and Museum and Heritage Studies. It will also be of interest to scholars and researchers of Music History, Popular Music, Performance Studies and Material Culture.

Download or read book Museums in a Troubled World written by Robert R. Janes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-05-12 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are Museums Irrelevant? Museums are rarely acknowledged in the global discussion of climate change, environmental degradation, the inevitability of depleted fossil fuels, and the myriad local issues concerning the well-being of particular communities – suggesting the irrelevance of museums as social institutions. At the same time, there is a growing preoccupation among museums with the marketplace, and museums, unwittingly or not, are embracing the values of relentless consumption that underlie the planetary difficulties of today. Museums in a Troubled World argues that much more can be expected of museums as publicly supported and knowledge-based institutions. The weight of tradition and a lack of imagination are significant factors in museum inertia and these obstacles are also addressed. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, combining anthropology ethnography, museum studies and management theory, this book goes beyond conventional museum thinking. Robert R. Janes explores the meaning and role of museums as key intellectual and civic resources in a time of profound social and environmental change. This volume is a constructive examination of what is wrong with contemporary museums, written from an insider’s perspective that is grounded in both hope and pragmatism. The book’s conclusions are optimistic and constructive, and highlight the unique contributions that museums can make as social institutions, embedded in their communities, and owned by no one.

Download or read book The Art of Relevance written by Nina Simon and published by Museum 2.0. This book was released on 2016-06-14 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do the London Science Museum, California Shakespeare Theater, and ShaNaNa have in common? They are all fighting for relevance in an often indifferent world. The Art of Relevance is your guide to mattering more to more people. You'll find inspiring examples, rags-to-relevance case studies, research-based frameworks, and practical advice on how your work can be more vital to your community. Whether you work in museums or libraries, parks or theaters, churches or afterschool programs, relevance can work for you. Break through shallow connection. Unlock meaning for yourself and others. Find true relevance and shine.

Download or read book Active Collections written by Elizabeth Wood and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, many museums have implemented sweeping changes in how they engage audiences. However, changes to the field’s approaches to collections stewardship have come much more slowly. Active Collections critically examines existing approaches to museum collections and explores practical, yet radical, ways that museums can better manage their collections to actively advance their missions. Approaching the question of modern museum collection stewardship from a position of "tough love," the authors argue that the museum field risks being constrained by rigid ways of thinking about objects. Examining the field’s relationship to objects, artifacts, and specimens, the volume explores the question of stewardship through the dissection of a broad range of issues, including questions of "quality over quantity," emotional attachment, dispassionate cataloging, and cognitive biases in curatorship. The essays look to insights from fields as diverse as forest management, library science, and the psychology of compulsive hoarding, to inform and innovate collection practices. Essay contributions come from both experienced museum professionals and scholars from disciplines as diverse as psychology, education, and history. The result is a critical exploration that makes the book essential reading for museum professionals, as well as those in training.

Download or read book Things American written by Jeffrey Trask and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-11-29 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American art museums of the Gilded Age were established as civic institutions intended to provide civilizing influences to an urban public, but the parochial worldview of their founders limited their democratic potential. Instead, critics have derided nineteenth-century museums as temples of spiritual uplift far removed from the daily experiences and concerns of common people. But in the early twentieth century, a new generation of cultural leaders revolutionized ideas about art institutions by insisting that their collections and galleries serve the general public. Things American: Art Museums and Civic Culture in the Progressive Era tells the story of the civic reformers and arts professionals who brought museums from the realm of exclusivity into the progressive fold of libraries, schools, and settlement houses. Jeffrey Trask's history focuses on New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, which stood at the center of this movement to preserve artifacts from the American past for social change and Americanization. Metropolitan trustee Robert de Forest and pioneering museum professional Henry Watson Kent influenced a wide network of fellow reformers and cultural institutions. Drawing on the teachings of John Dewey and close study of museum developments in Germany and Great Britain, they expanded audiences, changed access policies, and broadened the scope of what museums collect and display. They believed that tasteful urban and domestic environments contributed to good citizenship and recognized the economic advantages of improving American industrial production through design education. Trask follows the influence of these people and ideas through the 1920s and 1930s as the Met opened its innovative American Wing while simultaneously promoting modern industrial art. Things American is not only the first critical history of the Metropolitan Museum. The book also places museums in the context of the cultural politics of the progressive movement—illustrating the limits of progressive ideas of democratic reform as well as the boldness of vision about cultural capital promoted by museums and other cultural institutions.

Download or read book Mission Matters written by Gail Anderson and published by American Alliance of Museums. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a fresh and practical look on mission statements and strategic thinking. Anderson lays out the importance of mission statements while providing useful examples of vision, values, and other components typically a part of a museum's strategic framework. This book takes the discussion to the present and into the future.

Download or read book The Great Good Place written by Ray Oldenburg and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 1999-08-18 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The landmark survey that celebrates all the places where people hang out--and is helping to spawn their revival A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice "Third places," or "great good places," are the many public places where people can gather, put aside the concerns of home and work (their first and second places), and hang out simply for the pleasures of good company and lively conversation. They are the heart of a community's social vitality and the grassroots of a democracy. Author Ray Oldenburg portrays, probes, and promotes th4ese great good places--coffee houses, cafes, bookstores, hair salons, bars, bistros, and many others both past and present--and offers a vision for their revitalization. Eloquent and visionary, this is a compelling argument for these settings of informal public life as essential for the health both of our communities and ourselves. And its message is being heard: Today, entrepreneurs from Seattle to Florida are heeding the call of The Great Good Place--opening coffee houses, bookstores, community centers, bars, and other establishments and proudly acknowledging their indebtedness to this book.