Museums as Agents for Social Change is the first comprehensive text to examine museum practice in a decolonised moment, moving beyond known roles of object collection and presentation. Drawing on studies of Mutare museum, a regional museum in Eastern Zimbabwe, this book considers how museums with inherited colonial legacies are dealing with their new environments. The book provides an examination of Mutare museum's activism in engaging with topical issues affecting its surrounding community and Chipangura and Mataga demonstrate how new forms of engagement are being deployed to attract new audiences, whilst dealing with issues such as economic livelihoods, poverty, displacement, climate change and education. Illustrating how recent programmes have helped to reposition Mutare museum as a decolonial agent of social change and an important community anchor institution, the book also demonstrates how other museums can move beyond the colonial preoccupation with the gathering of collections, conservation and presentation of cultural heritage to the public. Museums as Agents for Social Change will primarily be of interest to academics and students working in the fields of museum and heritage studies, history, archaeology and anthropology. It should also be appealing to museum professionals around the world who are interested in learning more about how to decolonise their museum.

This book provides an essential resource for educators and museum professionals who wish to develop education focused eMuseums that feature motivational standards-based curriculum for diverse learners. The book is divided into three sections: Section 1. Planning, Developing, and Evaluating eMuseums guides the reader through the stages of planning, creating, and evaluating a user-centered eMuseum. This section provides an overview of the process of planning, creating, and evaluating an eMuseum, giving small and medium sized museums the framework and guidance needed to create an eMuseum. Section 2. Museum and Public School Partnerships: A Step-by-Step Guide for Creating Standards-Based Curriculum Materials in High School Social Studies is the second section. This section includes how to: a) form a partnership, b) create standards-based curriculum materials, and c) provides curriculum material evaluation strategies. Section 3. Developing Accessible Museum Curriculum: A Handbook for Museum Professionals and Educators. Educators in both museums and schools are faced with the task of delivering content to patrons with increasingly diverse interests, skills, and learning needs. This section outlines specific strategies that can be applied to curriculum to expand its application to broader audiences. This section includes: (a) content presentation, (b) content process, and (c) content product. Throughout the book, materials created from the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM) and Kansas State University (KSU) partnership are included as product examples.

The Museums and Collections of Higher Education provides an analysis of the historic connections between materiality and higher education, developed through diverse examples of global practice. Outlining the different value propositions that museums and collections bring to higher education, the historic link between objects, evidence and academic knowledge is examined with reference to the origin point of both types of organisation. Museums and collections bring institutional reflection, cross-disciplinary bridges, digital extension options and participatory potential. Given the two primary sources of text and object, a singular source type predisposes a knowledge system to epistemic stasis, whereas mixed sources develop the potential for epistemic disruption and possible change. Museums and collections, therefore, are essential in the academies of higher learning. With the many challenges confronting humanity, it is argued that connecting intellect with social action for societal change through university museums should be a contemporary manifestation of the social contract of universities. Much has been written about museums and universities, but there is little about university museums and collections. This book will interest museum scholars and practitioners especially those unaware that university museums are at the forefront of museological creativity. It will also be of interest to academics and the growing number of leaders and managers in the modern university.

1. The book presents an interdisciplinary examination of museum practice and constructs a useful theory of museum use as formative societal activity. 2. The book will be of interest to academics and students engaged in the study of museums and social justice. It will also be essential reading for practitioners with an interest in theory and museum transformation. 3. There are very few sole-authored titles that focus on museums and social responsibility and even fewer that focus on the theory behind the social role of museums. The proposed book will fill that gap.

1. This will be the first book to provide a true library, archival and museum (LAM) perspective, as every chapter will focus on all three types of institution and not just one of the three. 2. The book will provide a Scandinavian perspective on LAMs and convergence, but the challenges described are universal. The book will be valuable to students and academics around the world who are working in the Library and Information Science, Archival Science and Museum Studies fields. 3. The proposed book will be unique, as it will be the first to take a true LAM perspective and it will also be the first to provide a Scandinavian perspective on convergence. It will be written and edited by well-respected senior researchers working at institutions of higher education throughout Scandinavia and there is no other book out there that will compete directly with it, as a result.

With the advent of the computer, electronic cataloging of museum collections is becoming a reality. This book is a useful guide to starting a computer cataloging project. It lays out the rudiments of computer retrieval, database organization, and image processing. It does not purport to dictate a particular computer system, since museums have individualized needs, but it offers case studies and examples to help museums make informed decisions. The glossary and bibliography of the book are also helpful. Museum libraries and academic collections supporting museum and computer studies will appreciate this introductory text. ARBA

Written for museum executives, curators, and computer programmers and librarians with museum clients, this book offers a detailed exploration of the use of computers to record and control the physical objects that comprise museum collections. Equally applicable to collections contained in major museums and to those residing in the far more numerous small museums, "Museum Collections and Today's ComputerS" show how computers can be effectively and cost-efficiently used to perform a number of museum activities, including accession, registration, cataloging, inventory control, lending, exhibiting, and research. Throughout, the authors focus on the unique nature of museum collections and the special needs that result from uniqueness.

Why has Asmat art, from a remote and small south-coast West Papuan society, had such a significant and prolonged impact on the world stage? This book explores the way major collections were made and examines the motivations of the collectors, their relationships with those from whom they purchased and the circumstances of the exchange. It also considers the involvement of artists and film-makers, anthropologists, representatives of the civil authorities and missionaries. Asmat artists have maintained their unique appeal through constant stylistic innovation and by engagement with new publics, both locally and internationally, as exemplified by the recent displays of women's weaving alongside the men's carved wooden shields, drums and figures. Despite accelerating social changes, Asmat art continues to thrive as a compelling and transformative Melanesian presence in the global art world. 'Awe-inspiring works of Asmat art loom large in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and in dozens of other great museums around the world. Nick Stanley's engagingly written study provides the best history to date of the making of Asmat art traditions and of their avid acquisition by successive European and north American collectors. Most importantly, the book foregrounds the creativity and imagination of Asmat artists themselves. This is a book that will be welcomed by everyone interested in the arts of the Pacific.' Nicholas Thomas, University of Cambridge

For some time now, museums have been recognized as important institutions of western cultural and social life. The idea of the museum as a ritual site is fairly new and has been applied to the art museums in Europe and the United States so far. This volume expands it by exploring a range of contemporary museums in Europe and Africa. The case studies examine the different ways in which various actors involved in cultural production dramatize and ritualize such sites. It turns out that not only museum specialists, but visitors themselves are engaged in complex performances and experiences that make use of museums in often unexpected ways.

Studies in Archaeological Conservation features a range of case studies that explore the techniques and approaches used in current conservation practice around the world and, taken together, provide a picture of present practice in some of the world-leading museums and heritage organisations. Archaeological excavations produce thousands of corroded and degraded fragments of metal, ceramic, and organic material that are transformed by archaeological conservators into the beautiful and informative objects that fill the cases of museums. The knowledge and expertise required to undertake this transformation is demonstrated within this book in a series of 26 fascinating case studies in archaeological conservation and artefact investigation, undertaken in laboratories around the world. These case studies are contextualised by a detailed introductory chapter, which explores the challenges presented by researching and conserving archaeological artefacts and details how the case studies illustrate the current state of the subject. Studies in Archaeological Conservation is the first book for over a quarter of a century to show the range and diversity of archaeological conservation, in this case through a series of case studies. As a result, the book will be of great interest to practising conservators, conservation students, and archaeologists around the world.

Contemporary Cases in Heritage Tourism: Volume 1 examines 9 international cases under the sections of Managing Heritage Sites, World Heritage Sites, and Heritage Tourism. Cases include: Festivals as Expressions of Heritage: A Viking Case Study, Ethnic Enclaves as Visitor Attractions: Singapore's Little India, Managing Religious Heritage Attractions: The Case of Jerusalem Challenges faced by heritage projects in a rapidly changing society: The case of Wutai Shan, China, Edinburgh WHS: A Heritage Case Study, Indigenous Tourism and Heritage: A Maori Case Study and more. Written by established experts in the field, the volume comprises substantial, in-depth and detailed case studies, written with specific learning objectives in mind. Furthermore, each case is fully referenced in academic style and accompanied by a wealth of supplementary material including discussion questions, further reading and links to websites. Teaching notes, slides, essay questions, exam questions with guide answers, links to further resources are also available from the website (www.goodfellowpublishers.com). All cases within Contemporary Cases in Heritage Tourism: Volume 1 are available for individual download from the Contemporary Cases Online website (see www.goodfellowpublishers.com) or for e-readers (Kindle, Kobo), and can be purchased in a 'pick-and-mix' fashion to suit the needs of the reader. The online cases are packed with hyperlinks to original sources, further readings and websites. Readers can follow these links to obtain further information about the specific concepts, terms, issues and organisations identified in each case. Features of this book and those in the series include: * Topical currency: a series of up-to-date, topical case studies in the allied fields of tourism, heritage, hospitality, leisure, retail, events and sport; * Rich, in-depth treatment of material: extensive case studies with copious illustrative material to draw students in to the cases; * Additional student material: discussion questions, further reading, links to websites; * Tutor resources: teaching notes, slides, essay questions, exam questions with guide answers, links to further resources; * Online purchase: individual cases chapters will be available for purchase individually or in volume packages.

1. The Handbook offers the first modern, comprehensive overview of subjects relevant to the conservation and preservation of books. 2. The chapters in the book will provide an in-depth understanding of the materiality of books, whilst also encouraging readers to reflect on the practical considerations involved in their analysis and treatment. It will thus be an essential resource for book conservators, conservation students and academics, heritage scientists, curators, librarians, and other collections care professionals around the world. 3. There is no competition: the last book on this subject was published in 1996. This is the first modern (and possibly the first truly international) book to be published on this topic.

1. The book demonstrates how art, history and cultural heritage can help to create a climate-literate public that responds to environmental issues and climate change in an informed way. 2. Sutton shows how arts and humanities approaches to environmental and climate change can engage a far wider public in learning, conversation and action than science can alone. This will make the book most interesting to readers looking for ways to broaden engagement with environmental and climate issues. The ideas shared within the book should also act as inspiration for a broad spectrum of practitioners, particularly those writing, designing, and curating public engagement materials in museums and for the media. 3. Unlike competing titles, the proposed book references the growing body of broad-reaching material (instead of focusing on single-topic research (archaeology), or a single genre of museums (science or natural history)). Unlike other titles, it also collects usually isolated and distinctive examples into one publication.

The Brain-Friendly Museum proposes an innovative approach to experiencing and enjoying the museum environment in new ways, based on the systematic application of cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Providing practical guidance on navigating and thinking about museums in different ways, the book is designed to help develop more fulfilling visitor experiences. It explores our cognitive processes and emotions, and how they can be used to engage with and enjoy the museum environment, regardless of the visitor's background, language, or culture. The book considers core cognitive processes, including memory, attention, and perception, and how they can successfully be applied to the museum environment, for example, in creating more effective displays. Using evidence-based examples throughout, the book advocates for a wellbeing approach improving visitor experience, and one that is grounded in research from psychology and neuroscience. This book is a must-read for all museum practitioners and psychologists interested in the relationship between cultural heritage, psychology, and neuroscience. It will also be of great interest to art therapists, neuroscientists, university students, museum stakeholders, and museum lovers.

By juxtaposing theoretical and legal frameworks and conceptual contexts alongside a wide distribution of geographical and temporal case studies, this book throws light upon the risks, and the realizations, of art and heritage destruction. Exploring the variety of forces that drive the destruction of heritage, the volume also contains contributions that consider what forms heritage destruction takes and in which contexts and circumstances it manifests. Contributors, including local scholars, also consider how these drivers and contexts change, and what effect this has on heritage destruction and how we conceptualise it. Overall, the book establishes the importance of the need to study the destruction of art and cultural heritage within a wider framework that encompasses not only theory, but also legal, military, social, and ontological issues. The Routledge Handbook of Heritage Destruction will contribute to the development of a more complete understanding and analysis of heritage destruction The Handbook will be useful to academics, students and professionals with an interest in heritage, conservation and preservation, history and art history, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy and law.

For some time now, museums have been recognized as important institutions of western cultural and social life. The idea of the museum as a ritual site is fairly new and has been applied to the art museums in Europe and the United States so far. This volume expands it by exploring a range of contemporary museums in Europe and Africa. The case studies examine the different ways in which various actors involved in cultural production dramatize and ritualize such sites. It turns out that not only museum specialists, but visitors themselves are engaged in complex performances and experiences that make use of museums in often unexpected ways.

The Preparator's Handbook: A Practical Guide for Preparing and Installing Collection Objects is an invaluable resource for emerging museum professionals or anyone working in galleries and collections with little-to-no previous preparatory experience or training. This handbook explores, explains, and illustrates the basics for the preparation and installation professionals. - practical, step-by-step guides that outline museum-standard procedures for most types of collection objects, including works on paper, archival volumes, and historic artifacts. - templates and guides for presentation, preservation, and collection storage - illustrated inventories of standard and specialized tools, materials and hardware - the basics of lighting, audio, and video in installations. - unique case-studies from working professionals for a wide-range of objects and installations including examples from the Field Museum, the Corning Museum of Glass, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. - Over 50 illustrations and photographs that accompany the written text. This practical book is the first of its kind: a guide for novice or amateur collection and gallery professionals as well as an academic textbook for museum studies and fine art students.

In this comparative, international study Marilena Alivizatou investigates the relationship between museums and the new concept of "intangible heritage." She charts the rise of intangible heritage within the global sphere of UN cultural policy and explores its implications both in terms of international politics and with regard to museological practice and critical theory. Using a grounded ethnographic methodology, Alivizatou examines intangible heritage in the local complexities of museum and heritage work in Oceania, the Americas and Europe. This multi-sited, cross-cultural approach highlights key challenges currently faced by cultural institutions worldwide in understanding and presenting this form of heritage.

Shaila Bhatti's immersive study of the Lahore Museum in Pakistan is one of the first books to offer an in-depth historical and ethnographic analysis of a South Asian museum. Bhatti thus presents an alternative example of visitor experience and museum practice to that of the West, which has been the dominant museological model to date. This examination of the Lahore Museum's objects, staff, and visitors (past and present) provides an informative case study that reveals local perceptions and uses of museums in non-Western societies to be fraught with social, political, and cultural implications and appropriations. Through Lahore, Bhatti examines the history of exchange between Britian and South Asia and advances our current understanding of what constitutes postcolonial museum interpretation and its public.

Museum Objects provides a set of readings that together create a distinctive emphasis and perspective on the objects which lie at the heart of interpretive practice in museums, material culture studies and everyday life. This reader brings together classic and up to date texts on the nature and definition of the object itself, the senses and embodied experience of objects. No other volume brings together such perspectives in this way, and no other volume includes such a focus on the museum context.

Museum Objects incorporates both theorised and more practical readings from a range of international academic and contextual perspectives. The overall result is a definitive set of readings that offers a comprehensive understanding of objects and their place within the museum context.

This book investigates the activities undertaken by the variety of actors that contribute to accomplishing cultural policy in Europe. These range from policy formulation and administration at the national and local levels, to artistic and cultural production activities to institutional governance. Arts and culture are an essential component to individual and collective quality of life. States, regions and municipalities increasingly recognize this intrinsic importance, as well as the instrumental values of the arts and culture. This has led to an increased interest in cultural policy, usually focusing on the policy process and policy effects. How cultural policy is accomplished is a matter of correspondingly increased importance, but less researched and understood. This volume shows how accomplishing cultural policy encompasses a vast expanse of activities, all unique but bound together as part of the continuous process of producing publicly subsidized art and culture for social and aesthetic purposes. The chapters also explore a range of thematic tensions that commonly arise in accomplishing cultural policy, such as the commercialization of arts and culture and counter-reactions; the challenges and means of promoting inclusiveness; the politics and effects of funding of the arts and culture; and good governance and vested interests in the arts and culture. Read together, these vivid case studies present a broad and unique picture of the wider and interconnected accomplishing process by expounding on the middle-ground between the policy formulation process and artistic and cultural production. Adding a novel conceptual formulation to studies of cultural policy, this book will appeal to practitioners, scholars and advanced students with interests in the sociology of the arts and culture, arts and culture management, cultural policy and cultural governance.

If a museum is trying to improve visitor satisfaction, grow and diversify their audience, or engage with their community, they must focus on the experience visitors have inside the museum. Unfortunately, some people don't visit museums because they have had a previous negative experience, or they simply don't feel museums are for people like them. Not only do we need to win back those who we haven't welcomed properly in the past, we need to be sure we don't turn off any more potential visitors. Once you've decided to prioritize the visitor experience, you may discover that you don't have the tools you need to truly implement change for your visitors. An Executive Director may support the concept but doesn't have the time or specific expertise to implement a new program. A Visitor Services Manager may have been promoted from the front line and has great customer service and coaching skills but doesn't have experience crafting institutional change. Creating Great Visitor Experiences: A Guide for Museum Professionals can help these museum professionals design a program that is specific to their institution. Its Table of Contents shows how the book offers a step-by-step guide to doing just that: Chapter 1: Focus on the Visitor Experience Chapter 2: Understanding Museum Visitors and the Impact of the Visitor Experience Chapter 3: Learning About Your Visitors Chapter 4: Visitor Mapping: Charting Visitor Routes Through Your Institution Chapter 5: Start with the Basics: Making the Museum Itself Welcoming Chapter 6: Articulating What Service Means to You Chapter 7: Determining the Structure of Your Front-Line Team Chapter 8: Merging Security and Service Chapter 9: Hiring Your Dream Team Chapter 10: Training to Develop a Dynamic Service Team Chapter 11: Building Strong Morale and a Professional Front-Line Team Chapter 12: Developing a Culture of Service Throughout the Museum Use this authoritative, practical guide from the American Alliance of Museums to help your museum create great visitor experiences.

The last two decades have seen concerns for equality, diversity, social justice and human rights move from the margins of museum thinking and practice, to the core. The arguments -- both moral and pragmatic -- for engaging diverse audiences, creating the conditions for more equitable access to museum resources, and opening up opportunities for participation, now enjoy considerable consensus in many parts of the world. A growing number of institutions are concerned to construct new narratives that represent a plurality of lived experiences, histories and identities which aim to nurture support for more progressive, ethically-informed ways of seeing and to actively inform contemporary public debates on often contested rights-related issues. At the same time it would be misleading to suggest an even and uncontested transition from the museum as an organisation that has been widely understood to marginalise, exclude and oppress to one which is wholly inclusive. Moreover, there are signs that momentum towards making museums more inclusive and equitable is slowing down or, in some contexts, reversing.Museums, Equality and Social Justice aims to reflect on and, crucially, to inform debates in museum research, policy and practice at this critical time. It brings together new research from academics and practitioners and insights from artists, activists, and commentators to explore the ways in which museums, galleries and heritage organisations are engaging with the fast-changing equalities terrain and the shifting politics of identity at global, national and local levels and to investigate their potential to contribute to more equitable, fair and just societies.

Over recent decades, many museums, galleries and historic sites around the world have enjoyed an unprecedented level of large-scale investment in their capital infrastructure, in building refurbishments and new gallery displays. This period has also seen the creation of countless new purpose-built museums and galleries, suggesting a fundamental re-evaluation of the processes of designing and shaping of museums.

Museum Making: Narratives, Architectures, Exhibitions examines this re-making by exploring the inherently spatial character of narrative in the museum and its potential to connect on the deepest levels with human perception and imagination. Through this uniting theme, the chapters explore the power of narratives as structured experiences unfolding in space and time as well as the use of theatre, film and other technologies of storytelling by contemporary museum makers to generate meaningful and, it is argued here, highly effective and affective museum spaces. Contributions by an internationally diverse group of museum and heritage professionals, exhibition designers, architects and artists with academics from a range of disciplines including museum studies, theatre studies, architecture, design and history cut across traditional boundaries including the historical and the contemporary and together explore the various roles and functions of narrative as a mechanism for the creation of engaging and meaningful interpretive environments.

Preventive Conservation in Museums makes available and comprehensible the diverse literature and ideas of preventive conservation to an audience with a limited scientific background, principally those studying museum studies or engaged in the museum profession. It bridges the gap between the basic museum generated literature and technical and detailed conservation literature.

The area of preventative conservation has developed greatly in recent years and has adopted a far more holistic approach. The development of the concepts of risk analysis, management of conservation and how preventative conservation relates to the importance of traditional beliefs and approaches to artefacts have all made an impact on the subject in recent years along with the advance of instrumentation over the last thirty years. The next generation of ideas that will affect preventive conservation practice are just starting to emerge, including: detailed modelling of the environments of buildings and the sustainability of the artefactual and building heritage.

Preventive Conservation in Museums highlights the wide variety of threats, develops the concept of an holistic appreciation of these threats, and too appreciates the need to prioritise the appropriate forms of response. It uses a careful balance of sources, some technical, some theoretical, some practical as well as case studies to explore threats and their mitigation. For all those people involved in preventive conservation, be they students or professionals, this volume will be an invaluable summary of the past, present and future of the discipline.