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.

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.

Artefacts made from skeletal materials since the Roman period were, before this book, neglected as a serious area of study. This is a comprehensive account which reviews over fifty categories of artefact. The book starts with a consideration of the formation, morphology and mechanical properties of the materials and illuminates characteristics concerning working with them. Following chapters discuss the organisation of the industry and trade in such items, including the changing status of the industry over time. Archaeological evidence is combined with that from historical and ethnological sources, with many illustrations providing key visual reference. Originally published in 1985.

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.

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.

There has been much academic interest in the role of museums as places where understanding of the past is shaped and legitimised for a wide and increasingly diverse public. This book focuses on the museum representations of the Highland Clearances - a much neglected aspect of one of the most disputed and politically-charged issues in modern Scottish history. Drawing together a range of inter-disciplinary themes and notions, it considers the cultural legacy of the period, brings to light the socially and historically conditioned meanings and values encapsulated in museum narratives of the Clearances, and shows the significance of collective memory in the negotiations inherent in heritage work. Examining both national and local museums in Scotland and concluding with comparisons with Australian museums of migration, Dynamics of Heritage contributes to our understanding of the processes of heritage construction, and its relationship to issues of memory and other modes of engagement with the past.

Taking the significant Faro Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (Council of Europe 2005) as its starting point, this book presents pragmatic views on the rise of the local and the everyday within cultural heritage discourse. Bringing together a range of case studies within a broad geographic context, it examines ways in which authorised or 'expert' views of heritage can be challenged, and recognises how everyone has expertise in familiarity with their local environment. The book concludes that local agenda and everyday places matter, and examines how a realignment of heritage practice to accommodate such things could usefully contribute to more inclusive and socially relevant cultural agenda.

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 an era of the rise of the free market and economic globalization, Martin Cloonan examines why politicians and policymakers in the UK have sought to intervene in popular music - a field that has often been held up as the epitome of the free market form. Cloonan traces the development of government attitudes and policies towards popular music from the 1950s to the present, discovering the prominence of two overlapping concerns: public order and the political economy of music. Since the music industry began to lobby politicians, particularly on the issue of copyright in relation to the internet, an inherent tension has become apparent with economic rationale on one side, and Romantic notions of 'the artist' on the other. Cloonan examines the development of policy under New Labour; numerous reports which have charted the economics of the industry; the New Deal for Musicians scheme and the impact of devolution on music policy in Scotland. He makes the case for the inherently political nature of popular music and asserts that the development of popular music policies can only be understood in the context of an increasingly close working relationship between government and the cultural industries. In addition he argues that a rather myopic view of the music industries has meant that policy initiatives have lacked cohesion and have generally served the interests of multinational corporations rather than struggling musicians.

Oceania, or the South Pacific, loomed large in the Victorian popular imagination. It was a world that interested the Victorians for many reasons, all of which suggested to them that everything was possible there. This collection of essays focuses on Oceania's impact on Victorian culture, most notably travel writing, photography, international exhibitions, literature, and the world of children. Each of these had significant impact. The literature discussed affected mainly the middle and upper classes, while exhibitions and photography reached down into the working classes, as did missionary presentations. The experience of children was central to the Pacific's effects, as youthful encounters at exhibitions, chapel, home, or school formed lifelong impressions and experience. It would be difficult to fully understand the Victorians as they understood themselves without considering their engagement with Oceania. While the contributions of India and Africa to the nineteenth-century imagination have been well-documented, examinations of the contributions of Oceania have remained on the periphery of Victorian studies. Oceania and the Victorian Imagination contributes significantly to our discussion of the non-peripheral place of Oceania in Victorian culture.

Shakespeare and Venice is the first book length study to describe and chronicle the mythology of Venice that was formulated in the Middle Ages and has persisted in fiction and film to the present day. Graham Holderness focuses specifically on how that mythology was employed by Shakespeare to explore themes of conversion, change, and metamorphosis. Identifying and outlining the materials having to do with Venice which might have been available to Shakespeare, Holderness provides a full historical account of past and present Venetian myths and of the city's relationship with both Judaism and Islam. Holderness also provides detailed readings of both The Merchant of Venice and of Othello against these mythical and historical dimensions, and concludes with discussion of Venice's relevance to both the modern world and to the past.

Museum Bodies provides an account of how museums have staged, prescribed and accommodated a repertoire of bodily practices, from their emergence in the eighteenth century to the present day. As long as museums have existed, their visitors have been scrutinised, both formally and informally, and their behaviour calibrated as a register of cognitive receptivity and cultural competence. Yet there has been little sustained theoretical or practical attention given to the visitors' embodied encounter with the museum. In Museum Bodies Helen Rees Leahy discusses the politics and practice of visitor studies, and the differentiation and exclusion of certain bodies on the basis of, for example, age, gender, educational attainment, ethnicity and disability. At a time when museums are more than ever concerned with size, demographic mix and the diversity of their audiences, as well as with the ways in which visitors engage with and respond to institutional space and content, this wide-ranging study of visitors' embodied experience of the museum is long overdue.

Excavations of medical school and workhouse cemeteries undertaken in Britain in the last decade have unearthed fascinating new evidence for the way that bodies were dissected or autopsied in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This book brings together the latest discoveries by these biological anthropologists, alongside experts in the early history of pathology museums in British medical schools and the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and medical historians studying the social context of dissection and autopsy in the Georgian and Victorian periods. Together they reveal a previously unknown view of the practice of anatomical dissection and the role of museums in this period, in parallel with the attitudes of the general population to the study of human anatomy in the Enlightenment.

As the hundredth anniversary approaches, it is timely to reflect not only upon the Great War itself and on the memorials which were erected to ensure it did not slip from national consciousness, but also to reflect upon its rich and substantial cultural legacy. This book examines the heritage of the Great War in contemporary Britain. It addresses how the war maintains a place and value within British society through the usage of phrases, references, metaphors and imagery within popular, media, heritage and political discourse. Whilst the representation of the war within historiography, literature, art, television and film has been examined by scholars seeking to understand the origins of the 'popular memory' of the conflict, these analyses have neglected how and why wider popular debate draws upon a war fought nearly a century ago to express ideas about identity, place and politics. By examining the history, usage and meanings of references to the Great War within local and national newspapers, historical societies, political publications and manifestos, the heritage sector, popular expressions, blogs and internet chat rooms, an analysis of the discourses which structure the remembrance of the war can be created. The book acknowledges the diversity within Britain as different regional and national identities draw upon the war as a means of expression. Whilst utilising the substantial field of heritage studies, this book puts forward a new methodology for assessing cultural heritage and creates an original perspective on the place of the Great War across contemporary British society.

Dark Tourism, as well as other terms such as Thanatourism and Grief Tourism, has been much discussed in the past two decades. This volume provides a comprehensive exploration of the subject from the point of view of both practice - how Dark Tourism is performed, what practical and physical considerations exist on site - and interpretation - how Dark Tourism is understood, including issues pertaining to ethics, community involvement and motivation. It showcases a wide range of examples, drawing on the expertise of academics with management and consultancy experience, as well as those from within the social sciences and humanities. Contributors discuss the historical development of Dark Tourism, including its earlier incarnations across Europe, but they also consider its future as a strand within academic discourse, as well as its role within tourism development. Case studies include holocaust sites in Germany, as well as analysis of the legacy of war in places such as the Channel Islands and Malta. Ethical and myriad marketing considerations are also discussed in relation to Ireland, Brazil, Rwanda, Romania, U.K., Nepal and Bosnia-Herzegovina. This book covers issues that are of interest to students and staff across a spectrum of disciplines, from management to the arts and humanities, including conservation and heritage, site management, marketing and community participation.

Negotiating Race and Rights in the Museum traces the evolution of pervasive racial ideas, and 'post-race' allusions, over more than a century of museum thinking and practice. Drawing on the illuminating history of the Smithsonian Institution, this book offers an account of how museums have addressed and renegotiated wider calls for inclusion, 'self-definition', and racial justice, in ways that continually re-centre and legitimise the White frame. Charting the emergence of 'post-race' ideas in museums, Bunning demonstrates how and why 'culturally specific' approaches have been met with suspicion and derision by powerful museum stakeholders against the backdrop of a changing United States of America, just as they have offered crucial vehicles for sectoral change. This study of the evolution of racial ideas in response to Black empowerment highlights deeply entrenched forms of White supremacy that remain operative within the international museum sector today, and serves to reinforce the urgent calls for the active disruption of racist ideas and the redesign of institutions. Negotiating Race and Rights in the Museum will appeal to those working in the international fields of museum and heritage studies, cultural studies, and American studies, and all who are interested in the production of racial ideas and White supremacy in the museum.

This volume explores how Italian institutions, dealers, critics, and artists constructed a modern national identity for Italy by exporting - literally and figuratively - contemporary art to the United States in key moments between 1929 and 1969. From artist Fortunato Depero opening his Futurist House in New York City to critic Germano Celant launching Arte Povera in the United States, Raffaele Bedarida examines the thick web of individuals and cultural environments beyond the two more canonical movements that shaped this project. By interrogating standard narratives of Italian Fascist propaganda on the one hand and American Cold War imperialism on the other, this book establishes a more nuanced transnational approach. The central thesis is that, beyond the immediate aims of political propaganda and conquering a new market for Italian art, these art exhibitions, publications, and the critical discourse aimed at American audiences all reflected back on their makers: they forced and helped Italians define their own modernity in relation to the world's new dominant cultural and economic power. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, social history, exhibition history, and Italian studies.

Paul Reed's latest battlefield walking guide covers the site of the largest amphibious invasion of all time, the first step in the Allied liberation of France and the rest of northwest Europe. The places associated with the landings on the Normandy coast on 6 June 1944 are among the most memorable that a battlefield visitor can explore. They give a fascinating insight into the scale and complexity of the Allied undertaking and the extent of the German defences - and into the critical episodes in the fighting that determined whether the Allies would gain a foothold or be thrown back into the sea. All the most important sites are featured, from Pegasus Bridge, Merville Battery, Ouistrehem and Longues Battery to Juno, Gold, Omaha and Utah Beaches, Pointe du Hoc and Sainte-Mere-Eglise. There are twelve walks, and each one is prefaced by a historical section describing in vivid detail what happened in each location and what remains to be seen. Information on the many battlefield monuments and the military cemeteries is included, and there are over 120 illustrations. Walking D-Day introduces the visitor not only to the places where the Allies landed and first clashed with the Germans defenders but to the Normandy landscape over which the critical battles that decided the course of the war were fought.

Examining the artistic, intellectual, and social life of performance, this book interrogates Theatre and Performance Studies through the lens of display and modern visual art. Moving beyond the exhibition of immaterial art and its documents, as well as re-enactment in gallery contexts, Guy's book articulates an emerging field of arts practice distinct from but related to increasing curatorial provision for 'live' performance. Drawing on a recent proliferation of object-centric events of display that interconnect with theatre, the book approaches artworks in terms of their curation together and re-theorizes the exhibition as a dynamic context in which established traditions of display and performance interact. By examining the current traffic of ideas and aesthetics moving between theatricality and curatorial practice, the study reveals how the reception of a specific form is often mediated via the ontological expectations of another. It asks how contemporary visual arts and exhibition practices display performance and what it means to generalize the 'theatrical' as the optic or directive of a curatorial concept. Proposing a symbiotic relation between theatricality and display, Guy presents cases from international arts institutions which are both displayed and performed, including the Tate Modern and the Guggenheim, and assesses their significance to the enduring relation between theatre and the visual arts. The book progresses from the conventional alignment of theatricality and ephemerality within performance research and teases out a new temporality for performance with which contemporary exhibitions implicitly experiment, thereby identifying supplementary modes of performance which other discourses exclude. This important study joins the fields of Theatre and Performance Studies with exciting new directions in curation, aesthetics, sociology of the arts, visual arts, the creative industries, the digital humanities, cultural heritage, and reception and audience theories.

Curating the Contemporary in the Art Museum investigates the art museum as a space where the contemporary is staged - in exhibitions, collecting practices, communication, and policies. Curating the Contemporary in the Art Museum traces the art museum back to the postwar era. Including contributions by established and emerging art historians, academics and curators, the book proposes that the art museum is engaged in the contemporary in a double sense: it (re)presents contemporary art, while the contemporary condition itself also has a significant impact on art and the museum that houses it. Presenting a diverse range of international cases of exhibitions and curatorial practices, which hail primarily from Europe and Scandinavia, the essays examine the politics of staging "national", "international", and "global" framings of modernism, as well as the new public spaces shaped in digital practices and changing political frameworks. The book investigates both the seminal and the unknown exhibitions and institutions that created contemporary art as we know it today. Curating the Contemporary in the Art Museum provides a historical perspective on the museum of contemporary art. It constitutes a step towards differencing the canon of modernist and contemporary art and a more complex understanding of the politics of curating the contemporary in the art museum, why it will be of interest to academics and students engaged in the study of museums, curating, exhibitions, and art history.

This comprehensive book brings to light the portraits, private collections and public patronage of the princesse de Lamballe, a pivotal member of Marie-Antoinette's inner circle. Drawing extensively on unpublished archival sources, Sarah Grant examines the princess's many portrait commissions and the rich character of her private collections, which included works by some of the period's leading artists and artisans. The book sheds new light on the agency, sorority and taste of Marie-Antoinette and her friends, a group of female patrons and model of courtly collecting that would be extinguished by the coming revolution.

The 1980s and early 1990s have seen a marked increase in public interest in our historic environment. The museum and heritage industry has expanded as the past is exploited for commercial profit. In The Representation of the Past, Kevin Walsh examines this international trend and questions the packaging of history which serves only to distance people from their own heritage. A superficial, unquestioning portrayal of the past, he feels, separates us from an understanding of our cultural and political present. Here, Walsh suggests a number of ways in which the museum can fulfill its potential - by facilitating our comprehension of cultural identity.

Cemetery Tours and Programming: A Guide shows the range and opportunities of cemetery programming that go beyond basic starting points like dog-walking or traditional historic walking tours. It illustrates the reuses of both historic and contemporary burial grounds through the lenses of recreation, education, and reflection. This guide takes readers through the historical roots of cemetery programming, options for creating diverse programming, and step-by-step suggestions for executing events. While most cemeteries do not have a large paid staff, this book is accessible to anyone (paid staff members, volunteers, a Friends Group, or museum or historical society) looking to broaden the scope of how their local cemetery is utilized.

As one of the most monumental and recognisable landmarks from Zanzibar's years as a British Protectorate, the distinctive domed building of the Zanzibar Museum (also known as the Beit al-Amani or Peace Memorial Museum) is widely known and familiar to Zanzibaris and visitors alike. Yet the complicated and compelling history behind its construction and collection has been overlooked by historians until now. Drawing on a rich and wide range of hitherto unexplored archival, photographic, architectural and material evidence, this book is the first serious investigation of this remarkable institution. Although the museum was not opened until 1925, this book traces the longer history of colonial display which culminated in the establishment of the Zanzibar Museum. It reveals the complexity of colonial knowledge production in the changing political context of the twentieth century British Empire and explores the broad spectrum of people from diverse communities who shaped its existence as staff, informants, collectors and teachers. Through vivid narratives involving people, objects and exhibits, this book exposes the fractures, contradictions and tensions in creating and maintaining a colonial museum, and casts light on the conflicted character of the 'colonial mission' in eastern Africa.

Cemetery Tours and Programming: A Guide shows the range and opportunities of cemetery programming that go beyond basic starting points like dog-walking or traditional historic walking tours. It illustrates the reuses of both historic and contemporary burial grounds through the lenses of recreation, education, and reflection. This guide takes readers through the historical roots of cemetery programming, options for creating diverse programming, and step-by-step suggestions for executing events. While most cemeteries do not have a large paid staff, this book is accessible to anyone (paid staff members, volunteers, a Friends Group, or museum or historical society) looking to broaden the scope of how their local cemetery is utilized.