"With an impressively light touch and a no less impressively wide-ranging grasp of complex arguments, Sharon Macdonald has given us a coherent, convincing, and historically deep account of what heritage has been and where it may be going. Through her concept of ‘past presencing’, she successfully traces and illustrates its socio-cultural trajectories through sometimes wildly differing terrains of memory, nostalgia, and conservation. Her examination of the European contexts in which so much of the interest in heritage has emerged, moreover, is uncompromisingly anthropological, allowing her to offer an enlightening reversal of the Eurocentrism with which the topic has hitherto so often been approached." - Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University
Memorylands is an original and fascinating investigation of the nature of heritage, memory and understandings of the past in Europe today. It looks at how Europe has become a ’memoryland’ – littered with material reminders of the past, such as museums, heritage sites and memorials; and at how this ‘memory phenomenon’ is related to the changing nature of identities – especially European, national and cosmopolitan. In doing so, it provides new insights into how memory and the past are being performed and reconfigured in Europe – and with what effects.
Engagingly written and accessible to general readers as well as offering a new synthesis for advanced researchers in memory and heritage studies, Memorylands is essential reading for those interested in identities, memory, material culture, Europe, tourism and heritage.
About the Author: Sharon Macdonald is Anniversary Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of York, UK and Visiting Professor in the Institute of European Ethnology, Humboldt University, Berlin. Her authored books include Difficult Heritage (Routledge, 2008) and Reimagining Culture, and, as editor, The Politics of Display (Routledge, 1997) and The Companion to Museum Studies (Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2007).
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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.
About the Editors: Kirsten Drotner is Professor of Media Studies at the Institute of for the Study of Culture at the University of Southern Denmark and founding director of DREAM (Danish Research Centre on Education and Advanced Media Materials). Her recent books in English include International Handbook of Children, Media and Culture (2007, co-editor Sonia Livingstone) and Digital Content Creation (2010, co-editor Kim C. Schrøder).
Kim Christian Schrøder is Professor of Communication at the Department of Communication, Business and Information Technologies at Roskilde University, Denmark. His recent books in English include Researching Audiences (2003, co-authors K. Drotner, S. Kline, C. Murray) and Digital Content Creation (2010, co-editor K. Drotner).
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The 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.
"This new Companion is remarkable. It offers museum professionals a chance to rethink the work they do from first principles, and it offers students, who may be its most important audience, a chance to understand the museum in its largest frame ... [It] offers philosophical guidance on making the museum, and society, a better place. Indeed, this volume does more than redefine ethics for the twenty-first century museum. It redefines the museum." - Steven Lubar, Brown University, USA
]]>Covering the philosophy and sociology of art, traditions in art history and art display, the psychology of the aesthetic experience and ideas about learning and communication, Interpreting Art in Museums and Galleries advances major theoretical frameworks for understanding interpretation from curators’ and visitors’ perspectives. Although not a manual, the book is deeply practical. It presents extensively researched European and North American case studies involving interviews with professionals engaged in significant cutting-edge interpretation projects. Finally, it sets out the ethical and political responsibilities of institutions and professionals engaged in art interpretation.
Thoroughly researched with immediately practical applications, this book will inform the practices of art curators and those studying the subject.
]]>In Transforming Museums in the 21st Century, Graham Black argues that museums must transform themselves if they are to remain relevant to 21st-century audiences – and this root and branch change would be necessary whether or not museums faced a funding crisis. It is the result of the impact of new technologies and the rapid societal developments that we are all a part of, and applies not just to museums but to all arts bodies and to other agents of mass communication.
Through comment, practical examples and truly inspirational case studies, this book allows the reader to build a picture of the transformed 21st-century museum in practice. Such a museum is focused on developing its audiences as regular users. It is committed to participation and collaboration. It brings together on-site, online and mobile provision and, through social media, builds meaningful relationships with its users. It is not restricted by its walls or opening hours, but reaches outwards in partnership with its communities and with other agencies, including schools. It is a haven for families learning together. And at its heart lies prolonged user engagement with collections, and the conversations and dialogues that these inspire.
Sitting alongside Graham Black’s previous book, The Engaging Museum, we now have a clear vision of a museum of the future that engages, stimulates and inspires the publics it serves, and plays an active role in promoting tolerance and understanding within and between communities.
]]>Leicester Readers in Museum Studies are a major landmark in the development of professional training for museums and the cultural heritage. Each volume in the series provides a coherent set of course materials, selected and annotated by the course team of the Department of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, which is widely recognized as a leader in the field of museum training.
Each reader presents key texts for the museum profession, many of which are from journals and other sources which are not widely available. The texts are international, designed for use worldwide, but are largely drawn from sources published in North America, and the United Kingdon. Each volume has a full introduction and notes for further reading.
The readers are designed to be used both for course work and for self-study. They address the key issues confronting museums in the late twentieth century on both a practical and theoretical level. All of the books in this series are available as complimentary exam copies. To request an exam copy, simply click on a book below to go to that book's page and then click on the e-Inspection Copy button to fill in the online request form.
]]>Key Issues in Cultural Heritage is a unique series which aims to identify interdisciplinary debates within the changing and under-theorized field of Heritage Studies and to explore how they impact the practices not only of heritage management and conservation, but also the processes of production, consumption and engagement with heritage in its many and varied forms. Each volume brings together a selection of international contributors and global case studies, providing a balance of theoretical and empirical content.
All of the books in this series are available on e-inspection. To request an e-inspection copy, simply click on a book below to go to that book's page and then click on the e-Inspection Copy button to fill out the online request form.
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