What does 'Art' Mean Now? asks, and answers, fundamental questions about the nature of aesthetic experience and role of the arts in contemporary society. The Modern Age, Romanticism and beyond. viewed art as something transcending and separated from life, and usually something encountered in museums or classrooms. Nowadays, however, art tends to be defined not by a commonly agreed-upon standard of 'quality' or by its forms, such as painting and sculpture, but instead by political and ideological criteria. So how do we connect with the works in museums whose point was precisely they stood apart from such considerations? Can we and should we be educated to "appreciate" art-and what does it do for us anyway? What are we to make of the so-different newer works-installations, performances, excerpts from the world-held to be art that increasingly make it into museums? Adopting a subjectivist approach, this book argues that in the absence of a universal judgement or standard of taste, the experience of art is one of freedom. The arts and literature give us the means to conceptualize our lives, showing us ourselves as we are and as we might wish-or not wish-to be, as well as where we have been and where we are going. It will appeal to scholars of sociology, philosophy, museum studies, and art history, and to anyone interested in, or puzzled by, museums or college courses and their presentation of art today.

What does 'Art' Mean Now? asks, and answers, fundamental questions about the nature of aesthetic experience and role of the arts in contemporary society. The Modern Age, Romanticism and beyond. viewed art as something transcending and separated from life, and usually something encountered in museums or classrooms. Nowadays, however, art tends to be defined not by a commonly agreed-upon standard of 'quality' or by its forms, such as painting and sculpture, but instead by political and ideological criteria. So how do we connect with the works in museums whose point was precisely they stood apart from such considerations? Can we and should we be educated to "appreciate" art-and what does it do for us anyway? What are we to make of the so-different newer works-installations, performances, excerpts from the world-held to be art that increasingly make it into museums? Adopting a subjectivist approach, this book argues that in the absence of a universal judgement or standard of taste, the experience of art is one of freedom. The arts and literature give us the means to conceptualize our lives, showing us ourselves as we are and as we might wish-or not wish-to be, as well as where we have been and where we are going. It will appeal to scholars of sociology, philosophy, museum studies, and art history, and to anyone interested in, or puzzled by, museums or college courses and their presentation of art today.

Conflict, Cultural Heritage, and Peace offers a series of conceptual and applied frameworks to help understand the role cultural heritage plays within conflict and the potential it has to contribute to positive peacebuilding and sustainable development in post-conflict societies. Designed as a resource guide, this general volume introduces the multiple roles cultural heritage plays through the conflict cycle from its onset, subsequent escalation and through to resolution and recovery. In its broadest sense it questions what role cultural heritage plays within conflict, how cultural heritage is used in the construction and justification of conflict narratives and how are these narratives framed and often manipulated to support particular perspectives, and how we can develop better understandings of cultural heritage and work towards the better protection of cultural heritage resources during conflict. It moves beyond the protection paradigm and recognises that cultural heritage can contribute to building peace and reconciliation in post-conflict environments. The study offers a conceptual and operational framework to understand the roles cultural heritage plays within conflict cycles, how it can be targeted during war, and the potential cultural heritage has in positive peacebuilding across the conflict lifecycle. Conflict, Cultural Heritage, and Peace offers an invaluable introduction to cultural heritage at all stages in conflict scenarios which will benefit students, researchers and practitioners in the field of heritage, environment, peace and conflict studies.

This book explores how recent Colombian historical memories are informed by cultural diversity and how some of the country's citizens remember the brutalities committed by the Army, guerrillas, and paramilitaries during the internal war (1980-2016). Its chapters delve into four case studies. The first highlights the selections of what not to remember and what not to represent at the National Museum of the country. The second focuses on the well-received memories at the same institution by examining a display made to commemorate the assassination of a demobilized guerrilla fighter. The third discusses how a rural marginal community decided to vividly remember the attacks they experienced by creating a display hall to aid in their collective and individual healing. Lastly, the fourth case study, also about a rural peripheric community, discusses their way of remembering, which emphasizes peasant oral traditions through a traveling venue. By bringing violence, memory, and museum studies together, this text contributes to our understanding of how social groups severely impacted by atrocities recreate and remember their violent experiences. By drawing on displays, newspapers, interviews, catalogs, and oral histories, Jimena Perry shows how museums and exhibitions in Colombia become politically active subjects in the acts of reflection and mourning, and how they foster new relationships between the state and society. This volume is of great use to students and scholars interested in Latin American and public history.

For families of the heroes who fought on the beaches of Normandy during World War II, for fans of Saving Private Ryan, or for traveler interested in history, here is the complete guide to visiting one of the world's most historic battlefields. The D-Day Visitor's Handbook includes everything you need to know to plan and make your visit to the site of the biggest seaborne invasion in history. This compact guidebook not only describes the most significant land invasion of World War II, but provides detailed battlefield maps and tours, identifies monuments and attractions, and locates museums and historical sites to make your planning easier and less stressful. This guide provides everything you need ahead of your visit, including: Easy-to-follow maps and tours Where to stay, dine, and shop Lists of the best D-Day museums How to find war relics still at the battlefield sites Historical context for each site, including a description of military action there A special bonus guide to World War II history and sites in Paris The D-Day Visitor's Handbook contains a wealth of detailed information that is perfect for those considering travelling to France, anyone about to visit these sites, veterans, students of military history, and any others who wish to learn about the history of this legendary battle.

Museums, Art and Inclusion in a Climate Emergency considers the impact of the Anthropocene on history and memory, approaches to objects and agency, and the incommensurability of western and Indigenous ontologies. Drawing on Indigenous knowledge, humanities and museological literature, continental philosophy, contemporary art and popular culture, Baker acknowledges the autonomous agency of geological forms, including soils, minerals and fossil fuels. Demonstrating that this has implications for an expanded idea of an 'inclusive' museum and its relationship to entities beyond 'life' and living species, the book argues that the 'inclusion' paradigm needs to include non-life actors. Gesturing to a geontological 'turn' through developing notions of geo-inclusion, the mineralhuman, and approaches to object agency that connect with Aboriginal 'heritage', Baker exposes the ongoing destruction of Country by mining interests in Western Australia and elsewhere. By addressing the need for urgent change through the artifice of the museum, the book identifies an expanded approach to inclusion beyond the limits imposed by the politics of identity. Museums, Art and Inclusion in a Climate Emergency theorises the potential of an expanded idea of the museum and will be of interest to scholars and students engaged in the study of museums and heritage, environmental humanities and geo-humanities, ecological art history and contemporary art.

Viewing Art with Babies demonstrates how to facilitate quality art viewing experiences with babies from as young as two months old. Such experiences can help to nurture early literacy and receptive language skills, sensory stimulation, and early brain development. Based on the author's research with babies in New Zealand, Australia, Romania, England, and the U.S., the book provides the reader with information about early brain, vision, sensory and language development, as well as the aesthetic preferences of babies. Danko-McGhee provides details about the type of art that babies like, how to display art in the learning environment, and how to interact with a baby when viewing art. Case studies of international museums, national museums and community agencies that have had success with engaging babies in art viewing experiences will be included in the book as a way to demonstrate how theory and research can be successfully put into practice. Viewing Art with Babies details practical ways that museum practitioners, early childhood and community educators and parents can provide art-viewing experiences in the museum, early childhood classroom or even their own home. It will be of interest to practitioners and parents around the world, as well as those engaged in the study of museum education.

1. Analyzing the conflicting meanings of the term 'cultural heritage', this book outlines a framework that will allow the reader to better grasp the theoretical and practical complexities of this fascinating notion. 2. Gathering together a range of existing views on cultural heritage and summarizing the strong and weak points of the current discourse in a clear, direct way, the book will be accessible to academics and students, as well as heritage professionals. 3. There are a large number of books out there about heritage, but many are quite dated and very few provide a coherent and structured view of the theoretical tenets behind the notion of cultural heritage and its practices, as the proposed book will.

Theorizing Archaeological Museum Studies is an attempt to reconnect archaeological practice, the theoretical richness of archaeology, and museum studies. The book therefore embraces both the practical aspects of archaeology and empirical studies in museums in order to rethink what happens when an artefact changes into an exhibit. This study is positioned at the intersection of both history and archaeological theory, and of the history of art and museum studies. The central focus of this book explores the relationship between museums and their dominant paradigms, on the one hand, and new approaches and theories in archaeology, on the other. It thus also illustrates the co-dependencies, relations and tensions that characterize the relationship between academia and museums. This book demonstrates how in becoming an exhibit, artefacts have - and continue to - become reflections of the discipline's prevailing paradigms while manifesting the dominant aims and methods of knowledge production pertaining at a given time and place, as well as the desired social interpretations and modes of presenting the past. Theorizing Archaeological Museum Studies will be important reading for academics and students (archaeology, heritage studies, museums studies) as well as practitioners (museum employees, heritage practitioners). The book is also intended for scholars from across the humanities interested in museum studies, heritage studies, curatorial studies, cultural studies, cultural geography, material culture, history of archaeology, archaeological theory, and the anthropology of things.

A New Role for Museum Educators shows how that learning happens in communities, how volunteers and professionals approach their work, the underlying principles and philosophies that guide the work of museum education, and how these are always evolving to remain relevant. Museum education in its most expansive definition is about communicating messages, creating learning experiences and, at its most aspirational, promoting human development for people of all backgrounds, abilities, and circumstances. This edited volume revisits the legacy of museum education practices, reflecting on the changing context of community and the role of cultural institutions, and provides insights into new directions that museums can take with a visitor-centered mindset. It provides foundational concepts around educational philosophies that guide practice, applied methods and approaches for implementation, and the ethos of an educational institution intended to support community learning and engagement that are essential to provide for the wide-ranging needs of all audiences. International perspectives from a variety of museums are considered, including art museums, children's museums, history museums and historic sites, science museums, botanical gardens, zoos and aquariums. Chapters included thought-provoking reflections on contemporary practices, concrete examples from across the globe, and useful tools for anyone working with public audiences. Grounded in practice and informed by research, this volume will be a go-to resource for arts and cultural organization practitioners, particularly those working in Museum Education. It will also be essential reading for students of Museum Studies, Education, and related fields

Enriching the existing scholarship on this important exhibition, Italy at Work: Her Renaissance in Design Today (1950–53), this book shows the dynamic role art, specifically sculpture, played in constructing both Italian and American culture after World War II (WWII). Moving beyond previous studies, this book looks to the archival sources and beyond the history of design for a greater understanding of the stakes of the show. First, the book considers art’s role in this exhibition’s import—prominent mid-century sculptors like Giacomo Manzù, Fausto Melotti, and Lucio Fontana were included. Second, it foregrounds the particular role sculpture was able to play in transcending the boundaries of fine art and craft to showcase innovative formalist aesthetics of modernism without falling in the critiques of modernism playing out on the international stage in terms of state funding for art. Third, the book engages with the larger socio-political use of art as a cultural soft power both within the American and Italian contexts. Fourth, it highlights the important role race and culture of Italians and Italian-Americans played in the installation and success of this exhibition. Lastly, therefore, this study connects an investigation of modernist sculpture, modern design, post-war exhibitions, sociology, and transatlantic politics and economics to highlight the important role sculpture played in post-war Italian and American cultural production. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, design history, museum studies, Italian studies, and American studies.

From the famed Oregon Trail to the boardwalks of Dodge City to the great trading posts on the Missouri River to the battlefields of the nineteenth-century Indian Wars, there are places all over the American West where visitors can relive the great Western migration that helped shape our history and culture. This guide to the Mountain West states of Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana--one of the five-volume Finding the Wild West series--highlights the best preserved historic sites as well as ghost towns, reconstructions, museums, historical markers, statues, works of public art that tell the story of the Old West. Use this book in planning your next trip and for a storytelling overview of America's Wild West history.

This book looks at various syncretic traditions in India, such as Bhakti, Nath Yogi, Sufi, Imam Shahi, Ismailis, Khojas, and others, and presents an elaborate picture of a redefined cultural space through them. It also investigates different syncretisms—Hindu–Muslim, Hindu– Muslim–Christian and Aboriginal-Ethnic—to understand diverse aspects of hybridity within the Indian nation space. It discusses how Indian nationalism was composed of different opinions from its inception, reflecting its rich diversity and pluralistic traditions. The book traces the emergence of multiple contours of Indian nationalism through the historical trajectory of religious diversity, lingering effects of colonialism, and experimentation with secularism. This volume caters to scholars and students interested in cultural studies, religion studies, pilgrimage studies, history, social anthropology, historical sociology, historical geography, religion, and art history. It will also be of interest to political theorists and general readers.

By analyzing some of the most controversial topics related to the Second World War in south-eastern Europe: the Holocaust, the genocide of Serbs and Roma, the issue of political prisoners and state-sponsored crimes, censorship during Communist Yugoslavia, the use of memory in war propaganda, and representation of tragedies in museums and art, this book allows for a greater understanding of the development of intergroup violence in the former Yugoslavia.

Urban heritage, which is part of the conceptual expansion of cultural heritage, has become an extraordinarily complex notion. Any aspect of urban life and experience can become heritage and this heritage is then continuously re-interpreted and exploited as a source not only for a city's identification, but also for its cultural and economic innovation. This book provides a detailed overview of Central European urban heritage. It examines the key aspects of urban heritage - tangible/monumental, natural/landscape, world heritage/urban quarter and heritage experience/dark heritage. The 'regimes of urban heritage' approach retraces two hundred years of the development of European urban heritage to understand how it has become so significant and how it could integrate practically every area of urban existence. The novelty of the book is the interpretation of this development as a process of successive and integrating regimes, which are examined through the changing urban heritage agency and discourse. Through the examples of European cities and towns, such as Belgrade, Budapest, Gdansk, Krakow, Ljubljana, Subotica, Szentendre, Vienna, but also Edinburgh, Nordic cities and Rome, these changes reveal their inner complexities and become comparable in an interdisciplinary analysis. Further, a particular aspect of the history of these cities is revealed through the development of their own urban heritage. The book is primarily aimed at academics, researchers and postgraduate students of cultural and economic geography, cultural history, culture and heritage management, modern and contemporary history as well as urban history, planning and sociology.

This book explores the attribution and local negotiation of cultural valuations of artistic and art-institutional practices around the world, and considers the diverse ways in which these value attributions intersect with claims of universality and cosmopolitanism. Taking Michael Herzfeld's notion of the "global hierarchy of value" as point of departure, the volume brings together six empirical studies of the collection, circulation, classification and exhibition of objects in present-day Brazil, China, India, Japan, South Africa and Indigenous Australia in light of Europe's loss of global hegemony. Including reflections by a number of senior scholars, the chapters demonstrate that the question of valuation lies at the heart of artistic and art-institutional practices writ large - including museum practices, museum architecture, galleries, auction houses, art fairs and biennales.

The Future of Religious Heritage examines the resurgence of religious heritage in a secular age and frames such heritage as both legacy from the past and promise for the future. Drawing on case studies from across Europe, the volume addresses the intersection of three well-defined areas of research: secularism, religious heritage, and the question of renewal. Considering the heritagisation of religion and the sacralisation of heritage, contributions to the book consider to what extent the idea of renewal, so pivotal to religious and secular ontologies, is present in heritage formations. Thinking about the temporalities of re-enactment and reconstruction, the volume examines whether heritage practices incorporate religious time into secular practice. Problematising such temporalities of the sacred in our post-secular age, the volume explores how these intersections of religious and secular time in heritage practices inform constructions of the future. The Future of Religious Heritage addresses the paradox of the secularisation of religion and the sacralisation of heritage in a post-secular age. It will appeal to academics and students with an interest in critical heritage studies, religion, and (post)secularism, and will also be of interest to those studying re-enactment, regeneration and renewal.

This book highlights emerging trends and new themes in South Asian history. It covers issues broadly related to religion, materiality and nature from differing perspectives and methods to offer a kaleidoscopic view of Indian history until the late eighteenth century. The essays in the volume focus on understanding questions of premodern religion, material culture processes and their spatial and environmental contexts through a study of networks of commodities and cultural and religious landscapes. From the early history of coastal regions such as Gujarat and Bengal to material networks of political culture, from temples and their connection with maritime trade to the importance of landscape in influencing temple-building, from regions considered peripheral to mainstream historiography to the development of religious sects, this collection of articles maps the diverse networks and connections across regions and time. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of history, archaeology, museum and heritage studies, religion, especially Hinduism, Sufism and Buddhism, and South Asian studies.

Understanding Authenticity in Chinese Cultural Heritage explores the construction of "authenticity" and its consequences in relation to Chinese cultural heritage - those objects, texts, and intangible practices concerned with China's past. Including contributions from scholars around the world reflecting on a range of different materials and time periods, Understanding Authenticity emphasizes the situatedness and fluidity of authenticity concepts. Attitudes towards authenticity change over time and place, and vary between communities and object types, among stakeholders in China as they do elsewhere. The book examines how "authenticity" relates to four major aspects of cultural heritage in China - Art and Material Culture; Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation; Living and Intangible Heritage; and Texts and Manuscripts - with individual contributions engaging in a critical and interdisciplinary conversation that weaves together heritage management, art history, archaeology, architecture, tourism, law, history, and literature. Moving beyond conceptual issues, the book also considers the practical ramifications for work in cultural heritage management, museums, and academic research. Understanding Authenticity in Chinese Cultural Heritage provides an opportunity for reflection on the contingencies of authenticity debates - not only in relation to China, but also anywhere around the world. The book will be of interest to scholars and students in a variety of fields, including heritage studies, Asian studies, art history, museum studies, history and archaeology.

Digital Approaches to Inclusion and Participation in Cultural Heritage brings together best examples and practices of digital and interactive approaches and platforms from a number of projects based in European countries to foster social inclusion and participation in heritage and culture. It engages with ongoing debates on the role of culture and heritage in contemporary society relating to inclusion and exclusion, openness, access, and bottom-up participation. The contributions address key themes such as the engagement of marginalised communities, the opening of debates and new interpretations around socially and historically contested heritages, and the way in which digital technologies may foster more inclusive cultural heritage practices. They will also showcase examples of work that can inspire reflection, further research, and also practice for readers such as practice-focused researchers in both HCI and design. Indeed, as well as consolidating the achievements of researchers, the contributions also represent concrete approaches to digital heritage innovation for social inclusion purposes. The book's primary audience is academics, researchers, and students in the fields of cultural heritage, digital heritage, human-computer interaction, digital humanities, and digital media, as well as practitioners in the cultural sector.

This book focuses on the 3.11 disaster in Japan, involving a powerful earthquake and tsunami, from an anthropological perspective. It critically reflects on the challenges of conducting anthropological research when encountering disaster at home and the position of social scientist as sufferer. Emphasizing the role of culture in disaster mitigation, the book offers theoretical consideration of the role of cultural heritage in risk management, in line with recent trends in international policy on disaster risk reduction. Taking an approach 'with the people in', the author explores how culture features in disaster recovery at community level and considers implications for policy. The chapters explore the response and adaptation by local cultural practitioners and performing arts groups, as well as farmers and fishers. Japanese farming and fishing are presented as an innovative and dynamic part of the recovery process. The book will be of interest to scholars and policy makers working in disaster studies, Japan studies, and fields including anthropology, geography, sociology and heritage management.