Natural history museums are changing, both because of their own internal development and in response to changes in context. Historically, the aim of collecting from nature was to develop encyclopedic assemblages to satisfy human curiosity and build a basis for taxonomic information. Today, with global biodiversity in rapid decline, there are new reasons to build and maintain collections, while audiences are more diverse, numerous, and technically savvy. Institutions must learn to embrace new technology while retaining the authenticity of their stories and the value placed on their objects. The Future of Natural History Museums begins to develop a cohesive discourse that balances the disparate issues that our institutions will face over the next decades. It disassembles the topic into various key elements and, through commentary and synthesis, explores a cohesive picture of the trajectory of the natural history museum sector. This book contributes to the study of collections, teaching and learning, ethics, and running non-profit businesses and will be of interest to museum and heritage professionals and academics and senior students in Biological Sciences and Museum Studies.

Drawing on love studies and research in material cultures, this book seeks to re-examine love through materiality studies, especially their recent incarnations, new materialism and object-oriented philosophy, to spark a debate on the relationship between love, objects and forms of materializing affection. It focuses on love as a material form and traces connections between feelings and materiality, especially in relation to the changing notion of the material as marked by digital culture, as well as the developments in understanding the nature of non-human affect. It provides insight into how materiality, in its broadest sense, impacts the understanding of the meanings and practices of love today and reversely, how love contributes to the production and transformation of the material world.

The concept of the cultural commons has become increasingly important for legal studies. Within this field, however, it is a contested concept: at once presented as a sphere for creativity, democratic access and freedom of speech, but one that denies property rights and misappropriates the public domain. In this book, Merima Bruncevic takes up the cultural commons not merely as an abstract notion, but in its connection to physical spaces such as museums and libraries. A legal cultural commons can, she argues, be envisioned as a lawscape that can quite literally be entered and engaged with. Focusing largely on art in the context of the copyright regime, but also addressing a number of cultural heritage issues, the book draws on the work of Deleuze and Guattari in order to examine the realm of the commons as a potential space for overcoming the dichotomy between the owner and the consumer of culture. Challenging this dichotomy, it is the productive and creative potential of law itself that is elicited through the book's approach to the commons as the empirical basis for a new legal framework, which is able to accommodate a multitude of interests and values.

This is the first history of the harp in Scotland to be published. It sets out to trace the development of the instrument from its earliest appearance on the Pictish stones of the 8th century, to the present day. Describing the different harps played in the Highlands and the Lowlands of Scotland, the authors examine the literary and physical evidence for their use within the Royal Courts and "big houses" by professional harpers and aristocratic amateurs. They vividly follow the decline of the wire-strung clarsach from its links with the hereditary bards of the Highland chieftains to its disappearance in the 18th century, and the subsequent attempts at the revival of the small harp during the 19th and 20th centuries. The music played on the harp, and its links with the great families of Scotland are described. The authors present, in this book, material which has never before been brought to light, from unpublished documents, family papers and original manuscripts. They also make suggestions, based on their research, about the development and dissemination of the early Celtic harps and their music. This book, therefore, should be of great interest, not only to harp players but to historians, to all musicians in the fields of traditional and early music, and to any reader who recognises the importance of these beautiful instruments, and their music, throughout a thousand years of Scottish culture.

Public art is produced and 'lived' within multiple, interlaced and contested political, economic, social and cultural-symbolic spheres. This lively collection is a mix of academic and practice-based writings that scrutinise conventional claims on the inclusiveness of public art practice. Contributions examine how various social differences, across class, ethnicity, age, gender, religion, ability and literacy, shape encounters with public art within the ambits of the design, regeneration and everyday experiences of public spaces. The chapters richly draw on case studies from the Global North and South, providing comprehensive insights into the experiences of encountering public art via a variety of scales and realms. This book advances critical insights of how socially practised public arts articulate and cultivate geographies of social difference through the themes of power (the politics of encountering), affect (the embodied ways of encountering), and diversity (the inclusiveness of encountering). It will appeal to scholars, students and practitioners of cultural geography, the visual arts, urban studies, political studies and anthropology.

The concept of 'natural heritage' has become increasingly significant with the threat of dwindling resources, environmental degradation and climatic change. As humanity's impact on the condition of life on earth has become more prominent, a discernible shift in the relationship between western society and the environment has taken place. This is reflective of wider historical processes which reveal a constantly changing association between humanity's definition and perception of what 'nature' constitutes or what can be defined as 'natural'. From the ornate collections of specimens which formed the basis of a distinct concept of 'nature' emerging during the Enlightenment, this definition and the wider relationship between humanity and natural history have reflected issues of identity, place and politics in the modern era. This book examines this process and focuses on the ideas, values and agendas that have defined the representation and reception of the history of the natural world, including geology and palaeontology, within contemporary society, addressing how the heritage of natural history, whether through museums, parks, tourist sites or popular culture is used to shape social, political, cultural and moral identities. It will be of interest to scholars and practitioners within heritage studies, public history, ecology, environmental studies and geography.

This title was first published in 1988: In this book the author has translated five postwar experimental Japanese plays and recreated the artistic, social and spiritual milieu in which they were created. He describes the turning point in Japanese thinking about the nature and limitations of a Western-oriented modern culture, and the creation of "underground" theatres which in which evolved a new mythology of history. Professor Goodman sees these developments as an interplay between personal and political (ie revolutionary) salvation.

The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Tourism explores and critically evaluates the debates and controversies in this field of Tourism. It brings together leading specialists from a range of disciplinary backgrounds and geographical regions, to provide state-of-the-art theoretical reflection and empirical research on this significant stream of tourism and its future direction. The book is divided into 7 inter-related sections. Section 1 looks at the historical, philosophical and theoretical framework for cultural tourism. This section debates tourist autonomy role play, authenticity, imaginaries, cross-cultural issues and inter-disciplinarity Section 2 analyses the role that politics takes in cultural tourism. This section also looks at ways in which cultural tourism is used as a policy instrument for economic development. Section 3 focuses on social patterns and trends, such as the mobilities paradigm, performativity, reflexivity and traditional hospitality, as well as considering sensitive social issues such as dark tourism. Section 4 analyses community and development, exploring adaptive forms of cultural tourism, as well as more sustainble models for indigenous tourism development. Section 5 discusses Landscapes and Destinations, including the transformation of space into place, issues of authenticity in landscape, the transformation of urban and rural landscapes into tourism products and conservation versus development dilemmas. Section 6 refers to Regeneration and Planning, especially the creative turn in cultural tourism, which can be used to avoid problems of serial reproduction, standardisation and homogenisation. Section 7 deals with The Tourist and Visitor Experience, emphasising the desire of tourists to be more actively and interactively engaged in cultural tourism. This significant volume offers the reader a comprehensive synthesis of this field, conveying the latest thinking and research. The text is international in focus, encouraging dialogue across disciplinary boundaries and areas of study and will be an invaluable resource for all those with an interest in Cultural Tourism. This is essential reading for students, researchers and academics of Tourism as well as those of related studies in particular Cultural Studies, Leisure, Geography, Sociology, Politics and Economics.

This title was first published in 2001. The essays in this highly cosmopolitan collection were selected from over 250 contributions presented at the 19th World Congress in Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (IVR) held in New York in 1999. They represent a cross-section of contemporary work on human rights derived from eleven different countries.

For more than three decades, Louise Erdrich has enthralled readers with dazzling novels that paint an evocative portrait of Native American life.

In Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country, Erdrich takes us on an illuminating tour through the terrain her ancestors have inhabited for centuries: the lakes and islands of southern Ontario. Summoning to life the Ojibwe's sacred spirits and songs, their language and sorrows, she considers the many ways in which her tribe--whose name derives from the word ozhibii'ige, "to write"--have influenced her. Her journey links ancient stone paintings with a magical island where a bookish recluse built an extraordinary library, and she reveals how both have transformed her.

A blend of history, mythology, and memoir, Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country is an enchanting meditation on modern life, natural splendor, and the ancient spirituality and creativity of Erdrich's native homeland--a long, elemental tradition of storytelling that is in her blood.

Antiquarianism and the Visual Histories of Louis XIV: Artifacts for a Future Past provides a new interpretation of objects and images commissioned by Louis XIV (1638-1715) to document his reign for posterity. The Sun King's image-makers based their prediction of how future historians would interpret the material remains of their culture on contemporary antiquarian methods, creating new works of art as artifacts for a future time. The need for such items to function as historical evidence led to many pictorial developments, and medals played a central role in this. Coin-like in form but not currency, the medal was the consummate antiquarian object, made in imitation of ancient coins used to study the past. Yet medals are often elided from the narrative of the arts of ancient regime France, their neglect wholly disproportionate to the cultural status that they once held. This revisionary study uncovers a numismatic sensibility throughout the iconography of Louis XIV, and in the defining monuments of his age. It looks beyond the standard political reading of the works of art made to document Louis XIV's history, to argue that they are the results of a creative process wedded to antiquarianism, an intellectual culture that provided a model for the production of history in the grand siecle.

The redecoration of the exhibition spaces at the Borghese palace and villa, undertaken together with the reinstallation of the family's vast art collections, was one of the most important events in the cultural life of eighteenth-century Rome. In this comprehensive study, Carole Paul reconstructs the planning and execution of the project and explains its multifaceted significance: its place in the history of Italian art, architecture, and interior design at a complex moment of transition from baroque to neoclassical style, as well as its unrecognized but profound influence on the development of the modern art museum. The study shows how the installations and decorations worked together to evoke traditional themes in innovative ways. Addressed primarily to a new audience of tourists from abroad, the thematic content of the spaces celebrated the greatness of the Borghese family and of Roman tradition, while their stylistic diversity and sophistication made a case for the continued vitality - even modernity - of Roman art and culture. Designed for the exercise of a highly refined social performance, these sites helped to model the experience of art as a form of enlightened modern civility.

In the ancient world being a philosopher was a practical alternative to being a christian. Philosophical systems offered intellectual, practical and moral codes for living. By the Middle Ages however philosophy was largely, though inconsistently, incorporated into Christian belef. From the end of the Roman Empire to the Reformation and Renaissance of the sixteenth century Christian theologians had a virtual monopoly on higher education. The complex interaction between theology and philosophy, which was the result of the efforts of Christian leaders and thinkers to assimilate the most sophisticated ideas of science and secular learning into their own system of thought, is the subject of this book. Augustine, as the most widely read author in the Middle Ages, is the starting point. Dr Evans then discusses the classical sources in general which the medieval scholar would have had access to when he wanted to study philosophy and its theological implications. Part I ends with an analysis of the problems of logic, language and rhetoric. In Part II the sequence of topics - God, cosmos, man follow the outline of the summa, or systematic encyclopedia of theology, which developed from the twelfth century as a text book framework. Does God exist? What is he like? What are human beings? Is there a purpose to their lives? These are the great questions of philosophy and religion and the issues to which the medieval theologian addressed himself. From `divine simplicity' to ethics and politics, this book is a lively introduction to the debates and ideas of the Middle Ages.

In the world of law enforcement art and antiquity crime has in the past usually assumed a place of low interest and priority. That situation has now slowly begun to change on both the local and international level as criminals, encouraged in part by the record sums now being paid for art treasures, are now seeking to exploit the art market more systematically by means of theft, fraud and looting. In this collection academics and practitioners from Australasia, Europe and North America combine to examine the challenges presented to the criminal justice system by these developments. Best practice methods of detecting, investigating, prosecuting and preventing such crimes are explored. This book will be of interest and use to academics and practitioners alike in the areas of law, crime and justice.

Crowdsourcing, or asking the general public to help contribute to shared goals, is increasingly popular in memory institutions as a tool for digitising or computing vast amounts of data. This book brings together for the first time the collected wisdom of international leaders in the theory and practice of crowdsourcing in cultural heritage. It features eight accessible case studies of groundbreaking projects from leading cultural heritage and academic institutions, and four thought-provoking essays that reflect on the wider implications of this engagement for participants and on the institutions themselves. Crowdsourcing in cultural heritage is more than a framework for creating content: as a form of mutually beneficial engagement with the collections and research of museums, libraries, archives and academia, it benefits both audiences and institutions. However, successful crowdsourcing projects reflect a commitment to developing effective interface and technical designs. This book will help practitioners who wish to create their own crowdsourcing projects understand how other institutions devised the right combination of source material and the tasks for their 'crowd'. The authors provide theoretically informed, actionable insights on crowdsourcing in cultural heritage, outlining the context in which their projects were created, the challenges and opportunities that informed decisions during implementation, and reflecting on the results. This book will be essential reading for information and cultural management professionals, students and researchers in universities, corporate, public or academic libraries, museums and archives.

Displaying the Ideals of Antiquity investigates the study and display of ancient sculpture from archaeological, art historical, and museum studies perspectives. Ancient sculptures not only give us knowledge about ancient Greek and Roman pasts, but they also mediate ideals that inform modern perceptions of antiquity. This book analyzes how an art historical tradition establishes and preserves an idealized view of antiquity in classical archaeology and in museum exhibitions. The authors investigate how these ideals are kept alive today-an approach that often is neglected in studies on ancient reception.This book offers an international scope and illustrates how academic conceptual foundations influence museum exhibitions.This timely volume discusses contemporary museum exhibitions of ancient sculpture and clarifies how old discourses continue to affect museum exhibitions and conceptualizations of ancient sculptures. The authors analyze close to 100 museums around the world, and demonstrate the ways in which ancient sculptures are mediated across Europe and the West.

Collecting has a long tradition in the Middle East but the museum as a public institution is relatively new. Today there are national museums for antiquities in most Arab countries. While in some cases the political and social climate has hindered the foundation of museums, with existing collections even destroyed at times, the recent museum boom in the Gulf States is again changing the outlook. This unique book is the first to explore collecting practices in archives and museums in the modern Arab world, featuring case studies of collecting practices in countries ranging from Egypt and Lebanon to Palestine, Jordan, Iraq and the Gulf, and providing a theoretical and methodological basis for future research. The authors are also concerned with investigating the relationship between past and present, since collecting practices tell us a great deal not only about the past but also about the ways we approach the past and present conceptions of our identities. Collections can be textual as well, as in the stories, memories or events selected, recalled, and retold in the pages of a text. As interest in memory studies as well as popular and visual culture grows in the Arab World, so collecting practices are at the heart of any critical approach to the past and the present in that region. The book will be of great interest not only to scholars and students of the modern Arab world but also to professionals in museums and collections in the region, as well as around the world.

The performance of heritage takes place in prestigious institutions such as museums and archives, in officially sanctioned spaces such as jubilees and public monuments, but also in more mundane, ephemeral and banal cultural practices, such as naming of phenomena, viewing exhibitions or walking in the countryside. This volume examines the performance of Nordic heritage and the shaping of the very idea of Norden in diverse contexts in North America, the Baltic and the Nordic countries and examines the importance of these places as sites for creating and preserving cultural heritage. Offering rich perspectives on a part of Europe which has not been the centre of discussion in the Anglophone world, this volume will be of value to a wide readership, including cultural historians, museum practitioners, policy-makers and scholars of heritage, ethnology and folkloristics.

Electronic imaging and digital applications have brought numerous benefits for museums, galleries, archives and other organizations in the arts, culture and heritage sectors. Bringing together leading international practitioners from different disciplines, the EVA (Electronic Imaging and the Visual Arts) conferences help those working in the field to gain the most from developments in multimedia technology. This accessible volume collects recent papers from EVA conferences, covering case studies from the world's greatest institutions, as well as from some of the smallest and most innovative. Topics covered include virtual reconstruction of destroyed buildings, digital image archiving, 2D and 3D digitization projects, website evaluation, virtual archaeology, handheld interactive visitor support, exploiting digital cultural heritage and electronic aids for non-speaking people, as well as summaries of international research and technology development. The volume presents in convenient form the wealth of experience of a great variety of international specialists, allowing readers to further enhance the visitor experience of their collections.

Throwing fresh light on a much discussed but still controversial field, this collection of essays places the presence of Italian literary theories against and alongside the background of English dramatic traditions, to assess this influence in the emergence of Elizabethan theatrical convention and the innovative dramatic practices under the early Stuarts. Contributors respond anew to the process of cultural exchange, cultural transaction, and generic intertextuality involved in the debate on dramatic theory and literary kinds in the Renaissance, exploring, with special emphasis on Shakespeare's works, the level of cultural appropriation, contamination, revision, and subversion characterizing early modern English drama. Shakespeare and Renaissance Literary Theories offers a wide range of approaches and critical viewpoints of leading international scholars concerning questions which are still open to debate and which may pave the way to further groundbreaking analyses on Shakespeare's art of dramatic construction and that of his contemporaries.

Even though the idea of altering an existing building is presently a well established practice within the context of adaptive reuse, when the building in question is a 'mnemonic building', of recognized heritage value, alterations are viewed with suspicion, even when change is a recognized necessity. This book fills in a blind spot in current architectural theory and practice, looking into a notion of conservation as a form of invention and imagination, offering the reader a counter-viewpoint to a predominant western understanding that preservation should be a 'still shot' from the past. Through a micro-historical study of a Renaissance concept of restoration, a theoretical framework to question the issue of conservation as a creative endeavor arises. It focuses on Tiberio Alfarano's 1571 ichnography of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, into which a complex body of religious, political, architectural and cultural elements is woven. By merging past and present temple's plans, he created a track-drawing questioning the design pursued after Michelangelo's death (1564), opening the gaze towards other possible future imaginings. This book uncovers how the drawing was acted on by Carlo Maderno (1556-1629), who literally used it as physical substratum to for new design proposals, completing the renewal of the temple in 1626. Proposing a hybrid architectural-conservation approach, this study shows how these two practices can be merged in contemporary renovation. By creating hybrid drawings, the retrospective and prospective gaze of built conservation forms a continuous and contiguous reality, where a pre-existent condition engages with future design rejoining multiple temporalities within continuity of identity. This study might provide a paradigmatic and timely model to retune contemporary architectural sensibility when dealing with the dilemma between design and preservation when transforming a building of recognized significance.

Art, in its many forms, has long played an important role in people's imagination, experience and remembrance of places, cultures and travels as well as in their motivation to travel. Travel and tourism, on the other hand, have also inspired numerous artists and featured in many artworks. The fascinating relationships between travel, tourism and art encompass a wide range of phenomena from historical 'Grand Tours' during which a number of travellers experienced or produced artwork, to present-day travel inspired by art, artworks produced by contemporary travellers or artworks produced by locals for tourist consumption. Focusing on the representations of 'touristic' places, locals, travellers and tourists in artworks; the role of travel and tourism in inspiring artists; as well as the role of art and artwork in imagining, experiencing and remembering places and motivating travel and tourism; this edited volume provides a space for an exploration of both historical and contemporary relationships between travel, tourism and art. Bringing together scholars from a wide range of disciplines and fields of study including geography, anthropology, history, philosophy, and urban, cultural, tourism, art and leisure studies, this volume discusses a range of case studies across different art forms and locales.

In his examination of the excavation of ancient Assyria by Austen Henry Layard, Shawn Malley reveals how, by whom, and for what reasons the stones of Assyria were deployed during a brief but remarkably intense period of archaeological activity in the mid-nineteenth century. His book encompasses the archaeological practices and representations that originated in Layard's excavations, radiated outward by way of the British Museum and Layard's best-selling Nineveh and Its Remains (1849), and were then dispersed into the public domain of popular amusements. That the stones of Assyria resonated in debates far beyond the interests of religious and scientific groups is apparent in the prevalence of poetry, exhibitions, plays, and dioramas inspired by the excavation. Of particular note, correspondence involving high-ranking diplomatic personnel and museum officials demonstrates that the 'treasures' brought home to fill the British Museum served not only as signs of symbolic conquest, but also as covert means for extending Britain's political and economic influence in the Near East. Malley takes up issues of class and influence to show how the middle-class Layard's celebrity status both advanced and threatened aristocratic values. Tellingly, the excavations prompted disturbing questions about the perils of imperial rule that framed discussions of the social and political conditions which brought England to the brink of revolution in 1848 and resurfaced with a vengeance during the Crimean crisis. In the provocative conclusion of this meticulously documented and suggestive book, Malley points toward the striking parallels between the history of Britain's imperial investment in Mesopotamia and the contemporary geopolitical uses and abuses of Assyrian antiquity in post-invasion Iraq.

In 1937 the author, then aged 19, found the remains of an ancient boat at Ferriby on the Humber shore. This book is his own account of his discoveries, excavations and research over 50 years since the first boat find. The importance of this and the subsequent finds was only fully recognised after World War II, when the new technique of carbon-14 dating revealed that the Ferriby Boats were built before 1000 BC. This makes them the oldest plank-built boats found anywhere in the world apart from Ancient Egypt and the Aegean; they predate any similar craft in Northern Europe by half a millennium and present evidence for a style of boat building previously unknown. The excavation and preservation of the boats presented many problems, not least the constant battle with mud and the tide. Over the years the author pioneered methods of excavating and recording which have since become standard in the field of maritime archaeology. This book also presents a realistic reconstruction of the boats with estimates of its performance. They suggest a capacity for navigation at this time not previously imagined and add a new and fundamental dimension to the history of man's relationship with the sea.