US Public Memory, Rhetoric, and the National Mall examines "the nation's front yard," understanding it as both a public face the United States presents to the world and a site where its less apparent moral story is told. This book provides a uniquely thorough, interdisciplinary, and integrated examination of how the National Mall shares a moral story of the United States and, in so doing, reveals the soul of the nation. The contributors explore 11 different memorials, monuments, and museums found across the Mall, considering how each rhetorically remembers a key element of the nation's past, what the rhetorical memory tells us about the nation's soul, and how each site must thus be understood in relation to the commemorative landscape of the Mall.

This volume considers in depth the most up-to-date approaches to museum communication - museums as media, museums and audience and the evaluation of museums. Museum, Media, Message begins by placing museum communication in the context of mass communication and media studies. The book is divided into three sections, the first analysing how museums and galleries construct and transmit complex systems of value and legitimation through processes of collection and exhibition. The second section raises philosophical and management issues and explores examples of work with specific audiences. The third section uses examples and case-studies to introduce methods for studying the audiences' experiences of communication events in museums. Museum, Media, Message is compiled for people who want to develop a more critical and informed professional practice in relation to museum and gallery audiences. The mix of philosophical discussion and practical examples will enable readers to develop their skills of analysis and reflection on day-to-day activities. The book will also be of value to people in related fields who are interested in current debates and issues in museums.

Series Information:
Leicester Readers in Museum Studies

Collections management is a fundamental part of museum work, yet recently the poor state of museum collections has been highlighted, especially in terms of physical care and documentation. As a response, there has been emphasis upon the development of standards for collections management. This text brings together recent papers discussing some of the issues affecting collections management in the 1990s. It identifies the main issues relating to collections and looks at why museums should develop appropriate documentation systems. The book also examines the status of research within museums, the various sources of advice relating to security and addresses the basics of insurance and indemnity.

Interpreting Slavery at Museums and Historic Sites aims to move the field forward in its collective conversation about the interpretation of slavery-acknowledging the criticism of the past and acting in the present to develop an inclusive interpretation of slavery. Presenting the history of slavery in a comprehensive and conscientious manner is difficult and requires diligence and compassion-for the history itself, for those telling the story, and for those hearing the stories-but it's a necessary part of our collective narrative about our past, present, and future. This book features best practices for: *Interpreting slavery across the country and for many people. The history of slavery, while traditionally interpreted primarily on southern plantations, is increasingly recognized as relevant at historic sites across the nation. It is also more than just an African-American/European-American story-it is relevant to the history of citizens of Latino, Caribbean, African and indigenous descent, as well. It is also pertinent to those descended from immigrants who arrived after slavery, whose stories are deeply intertwined with the legacy of slavery and its aftermath. *Developing support within an institution for the interpretation of slavery. Many institutions are reticent to approach such a potentially volatile subject, so this book examines how proponents at several sites, including Monticello and Mount Vernon, were able to make a strong case to their constituents. *Training interpreters in not only a depth of knowledge of the subject but also the confidence to speak on this controversial issue in public and the compassion to handle such a sensitive historical issue. The book will be accessible and of interest for professionals at all levels in the public history field, as well as students at the undergraduate and graduate levels in museum studies and public history programs.

Collaboration and interdisciplinary practice in the museum are on the rise. Academics, Artists, and Museums examines twenty-first century partnerships between the museum and higher education sectors, with a focus on art museums and exhibits. The edited volume offers detailed analysis of how innovative curatorial relationships between museums and academia have sought to engage new, younger, audiences through the collaborative transformation of museums and exhibitions. Thematic topics explored include the forming and nature of interdisciplinary partnerships, the integration of museum learning into higher education, audience engagement, and digital technology. With a particular emphasis on practice in the US, the range of projects discussed includes those at both widely recognized and lesser known institutions, from The Met to the Tohono O'odham Nation Cultural Center in the US, to Ewha University Museum in South Korea, and Palazzo Strozzi in Italy. The role of art and the work of the artist are firmly positioned at the core of many of the relationships explored. Academics, Artists, and Museums advocates for the museum as an experimental 'laboratory' where academia, art and the museum profession can combine to engage new audiences. It is a useful resource for museum professionals, artists, scholars, and students interested in collaboration and innovative practice.

Collecting a selection of essential writings by some of the leading authors in the field, Kevin Moore examines the developments in, and effectiveness of, museum management in a world dominated by new and exciting heritage and leisure attractions.

The selected papers in Museum Management outline the development of museum management to date, the challenges museums currently face, and the key areas of future development in management and marketing practice, and addresses:

• strategic management issues: policy formulation, corporate planning and performance measurement
• human resource management
• financial management
• the importance of marketing.

This volume is an invaluable introduction to the key issues, controversies and debates in the subject. It will be essential reading for all students, museum managers and staff who need to keep up to date with latest developments in this field.

eBook available with sample pages: HB:0415112788

Series Information:
Leicester Readers in Museum Studies

eBook available with sample pages: HB:0415112842

Providing an overview of the marketing principles and tools that pertain to the area of heritage conservation services, this book combines research and practice to offer an alternative to the classical transactional marketing approach. Instead, the author argues for the relationship marketing approach, promoted and adopted by the Nordic School of Service Marketing. Offering a startlingly rare, but logical and practical marketing approach, this book also provides food for thought for academics dealing with managerial and marketing aspects in the field of cultural heritage and cultural heritage services.

Bringing together the most significant papers on the interpretation of objects and collections, this volume examines how people relate to material culture and why they collect things.

Series Information:
Leicester Readers in Museum Studies

Trauma, Cultural Complexes, and Transformation: Folk Narratives and Present Realities contributes to our understanding of how culturally traumatic events affect present day realities, and suggests the potential for healing by combining theories on psychological trauma, cultural complexes, and transformations. It draws on insight from a range of disciplines, including Jungian psychology, literary criticism, folkloristics, neurosciences, quantum physics, and social studies. Evija Volfa Vestergaard maps folk narratives of human encounters with extra-human entities as communications of cultural traumas suffered by tellers who are embedded in particular historical and geographical settings, focusing on the little-explored globally emerging cultures of Latvia and South Africa, alongside the United States of America. These cultural narratives form a bridge to a discourse on the social, political, and economic issues faced by these countries and the world at large. Vestergaard outlines the parallels between dreams and visions of individuals essential in healing, and the mythological legend genre serving the same function for groups and cultures, demonstrating that the aim of these open-ended communications is not only to reveal hidden truth, but also to stir our imagination about potentialities. Healing of traumas demands a world of global relatedness based on nurturing kinship, and such a transformation begins with imagining. Trauma, Cultural Complexes, and Transformation represents essential reading for academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian studies, folklore, psychology, cultural studies and anthropology, as well as Jungian analysts and psychotherapists.

Children are one of the major audiences for museums, but their visits are often seen solely from the point of view of museum learning. In Snapshots of Museum Experience, Will Buckingham draws upon Elee Kirk's research amongst child visitors to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, to take a different approach. Using a method of photo-elicitation with four-and five-year-old child visitors to the museum, the book investigates children's experience of the museum, and in the process undermines many of our assumptions about the interests, needs and demands of child museum visitors. Drawing together the fields of museum studies and childhood studies, the book considers children as active creators of the museum visit. It investigates the way that children navigate and take control of the physical and social spaces of the museum, finding their own idiosyncratic pathways through these spaces. It also explores how elements of the museum 'light up', becoming salient to the child visitor. Finally, it investigates how children make sense through intellectually and imaginatively engaging with these elements of the museum visit. Snapshots of Museum Experience gives a unique insight into the sheer diversity of children's museum experiences and discusses how museums might cater more successfully to the needs of their child visitors. As such, it should be of great interest to academics, researchers and students in the fields of museum studies, visitor studies and childhood studies. It should also be essential reading for museum educators and exhibition designers.

It is widely believed that the practice of ancient Egyptian religion ceased with the end of pharaonic culture and the rise of Christianity. However, an organised reconstruction and revival of the authentic practice of Egyptian, or Kemetic religion has been growing, almost undocumented, for nearly three decades. Profane Egyptologists is the first in-depth study of the now-global phenomenon of Kemeticism. Presenting key players in their own words, the book utilises extensive interviews to reveal a continuum of beliefs and practices spanning eight years of community growth. The existence of competing visions of Egypt, which employ ancient material and academic resources, questions the position of Egyptology as a gatekeeper of Egypt's past. Exploring these boundaries, the book highlights the politised and economic factors driving the discipline's self-conception. Could an historically self-imposed insular nature have harmed Egyptology as a field, and how could inclusive discussion help guard against further isolationism? Profane Egyptologists is both an Egyptological study of Kemeticism, and a critical study of the discipline of Egyptology itself. It will be of value to scholars and students of archaeology and Egyptology, cultural heritage, religion online, phenomenology, epistemology, pagan studies and ethnography, as well as Kemetics and devotees of Egyptian culture.

Design Objects and the Museum brings together leading design historians, curators, educators and archivists to consider the place of contemporary design objects within museums. Contributors draw on a wide range of 20th century and contemporary examples from international museums to consider how design objects have been curated and displayed within and beyond the museum. The book continues contemporary global debates on the ways in which museums of design engage and educate their public. Chapters are grouped into three thematic sections addressing The Canon and Design in the Museum; Positioning Design within and Beyond the Museum; and Interpretation and the Challenge of Design, with chapters exploring museological practice and issues, the roles people play in creating meaning, and the challenges contemporary design presents to interpretation and learning within the museum.

Ceramics and the Museum interrogates the relationship between art-oriented ceramic practice and museum practice in Britain since 1970. Laura Breen examines the identity of ceramics as an art form, drawing on examples of work by artist-makers such as Edmund de Waal and Grayson Perry; addresses the impact of policy making on ceramic practice; traces the shift from object to project in ceramic practice and in the evolution of ceramic sculpture; explores how museums facilitated multisensory engagement with ceramic material and process, and analyses the exhibition as a text in itself. Proposing the notion that 'gestures of showing,' such as exhibitions and installation art, can be read as statements, she examines what they tell us about the identity of ceramics at particular moments in time. Highlighting the ways in which these gestures have constructed ceramics as a category of artistic practice, Breen argues that they reveal gaps between narrative and practice, which in turn can be used to deconstruct the art.

The ICMS Handbook is acknowledged as the international standard text for basic security procedures. It was first published as A Basic Guide to Museum Security, and is now fully revised, enlarged and updated. The manual covers: general principles security, theft and burglary: security personnel; training; collection management and transport; disaster planning; fire and environmental hazards; checklist of security procedures. It is designed to operate in all conditiones adn sizes of museum, not merely those with elaborate electronic security. It stresses that good basic principles are teh key to effective protection from hazard.

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.

A nation's heritage is one of the most potent forces for generating tourism: the Tower of London is the greatest 'visitor attraction' in Britain. But it is pushed into insignificance by comparison with the visitors travelling to Disneyland, Epcot and the other entertainment complexes in the USA; and it will be dwarfed by Euro-Disneyland east of Paris. So how should heritage attractions respond: should they find their own specific audiences and resources? This book, written by a leading hertage specialist, is essential reading for all those concerned both with heritage and leisure managment. International in scope, it examines successfgul examples of heritage management for tourism, and equally some failures. It aims to lay some useful ground rules which should underpin all heritage developments designed to attract tourism on a major scale.

eBook available with sample pages: 020303368X

The history of the Wild West has long been fictionalized in novels, films, and television shows. Catering to these popular representations, towns across America have created tourist sites connecting such tales with historical monuments. Yet these attractions stray from known histories in favor of the embellished past visitors expect to see and serve to craft a cultural memory that reinforces contemporary ideologies. In Mythic Frontiers, Daniel Maher illustrates how aggrandized versions of the past, especially those of the "American frontier," have been used to turn a profit. These imagined historical sites have effectively silenced the violent, oppressive, colonizing forces of manifest destiny and elevated principal architects of it to mythic heights. Examining the frontier complex in Fort Smith, Arkansas-where visitors are greeted at a restored brothel and the reconstructed courtroom and gallows of "Hanging Judge" Isaac Parker feature prominently-Maher warns that creating a popular tourist narrative and disconnecting cultural heritage tourism from history minimizes the devastating consequences of imperialism, racism, and sexism and relegitimizes the privilege bestowed upon white men.

This interdisciplinary book argues that museums can offer a powerful, and often overlooked, arena for both exploring and acting upon the interrelated issues of immigration and social justice. Based on three in-depth European case studies, spanning France, Denmark, and the UK, the research examines programs developed by leading museums to address cultural, economic, social and political inequalities. Where previous studies on museums and immigration have focused primarily on issues of cultural inequalities in collection and interpretation, Museums, Immigrants, and Social Justice adopts a more comprehensive focus that extends beyond the exhibition hall to examine the full range of programs developed by museums to address the of cultural, economic, social and political inequalities facing immigrants. Museums, Immigrants, and Social Justice offers compelling insights on the ability of museums to offer positive contributions to the issues surrounding immigration and social justice at a time when both are pressing issues in Europe. It will be of interest to scholars and students of museum studies, migration studies, sociology, human geography and politics.

Based on original contributions by specialists, this manual covers both the theory and the practice required in the management of museums. It is intended for all museum and art gallery profession staff, and includes sections on new technology, marketing, volunteers and museum libraries.

The Victorian era heralded an age of transformation in which momentous changes in the field of natural history coincided with the rise of new visual technologies. Concurrently, different parts of the British Empire began to more actively claim their right to being acknowledged as indispensable contributors to knowledge and the progress of empire. This book addresses the complex relationship between natural history and photography from the 1850s to the 1880s in Britain and its colonies: Australia, New Zealand and, to a lesser extent, India. Coinciding with the rise of the modern museum, photography's arrival was timely, and it rapidly became an essential technology for recording and publicising rare objects and valuable collections. Also during this period, the medium assumed a more significant role in the professional practices and reputations of naturalists than has been previously recognized, and it figured increasingly within the expanding specialized networks that were central to the production and dissemination of new knowledge. In an interrogation that ranges from the first forays into museum photography and early attempts to document collecting expeditions to the importance of traditional and photographic portraiture for the recognition of scientific discoveries, this book not only recasts the parameters of what we actually identify as natural history photography in the Victorian era but also how we understand the very structure of empire in relation to this genre at that time.