An elaborately crafted and decorated tomahawk from somewhere along the North American east coast: how did it end up in the royal collections in Stockholm in the late seventeenth century? What does it say about the Swedish kingdom's colonial ambitions and desires? What questions does it raise from its present place in a display cabinet in the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm? Colonial Objects in Early Modern Sweden and Beyond is about the tomahawk and other objects like it, acquired in colonial contact zones and displayed by Swedish elites in the seventeenth century. Its first part situates the objects in two distinct but related spaces: the expanding space of the colonial world, and the exclusive space of the Kunstkammer. The second part traces the objects' physical and epistemological transfer from the Kunstkammer to the modern museum system. In the final part, colonial objects are considered at the centre of a heated debate over the present state of museums, and their possible futures.

The author introduces conservation science and management of cultural heritages in museums. In particular, a comprehensive conservation study and practical techniques are described. Aspects such as examination and diagnosis of cultural heritage by scientific data recording of humidity, luminosity, intensity of vibration and shock, among others, are introduced. Preventive and remedial conservation with X-ray imaging and X-ray fluorescence and other risk-control methods are also explained. The author provides basic theories based on a scientific view for the methods introduced in this book. They can be compared with those used at other museums, and readers can employ them to adapt and improve their methods. Today, maintaining smooth internal communication is key for scientists and curators with different academic backgrounds and from different departments working together on conservation projects at the museum. The author addresses the current global trend of preserving rather than repairing cultural heritage at museums and emphasizes its importance.

This book considers key ethical questions in museum policy and practice, particularly those related to issues of collection and display. What does a collection signify in the twenty-first century museum? How does an engagement with immateriality challenge museums concept of ownership, and how does that immateriality translate into the design of exhibitions and museum space? Are museums still about safeguarding objects, and what does safeguarding mean for diverse individuals and communities today? How does the notion of the museum as a performative space challenge our perceptions of the object?

The scholarship represented in this volume is a testament to the range and significance of critical inquiry in museum ethics. Together, the chapters resist a legalistic interpretation, bound by codes and common practice, to advance an ethics discourse that is richly theorized, constantly changing and contingent on diverse external factors. Contributors take stock of innovative research to articulate a new museum ethics founded on the moral agency of museums, the concept that museums have both the capacity and the responsibility to create social change.

This book is based on a special issue of "Museum Management and Curatorship."

Post-Critical Museology considers what the role of the public and the experience of audiences means to the everyday work of the art museum. It does this from the perspectives of the art museum itself as well as from the visitors it seeks. Through the analysis of material gathered from a major collaborative research project carried out at Tate Britain in London the book develops a conceptual reconfiguration of the relationship between art, culture and society in which questions about the art museum s relationship to global migration and the new media ecologies are examined. It suggests that whilst European museums have previously been studied as institutions of collection, heritage and tradition, however modern their focus, it is now better to consider them as distributive networks in which value travels along transmedial and transcultural lines.

Post-Critical Museology is intended as a contribution to progressive museological thinking and practice and calls for a new alignment of academics and professionals in what it announces as post-critical museology. An alignment that is committed to rethinking what an art museum in the twenty-first century could be, as well as what knowledge and understanding its future practitioners might draw upon in a rapidly changing social and cultural context. The book aims to be essential reading in the growing field of museum studies. It will also be of professional interest to all those working in the cultural sphere, including museum professionals, policy makers and art managers.

Focussing on music traditions, these essays explore the policy, ideology and practice of preservation and promotion of East Asian intangible cultural heritage. For the first time, Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan - states that were amongst the first to establish legislation and systems for indigenous traditions - are considered together. Calls to preserve the intangible heritage have recently become louder, not least with increasing UNESCO attention. The imperative to preserve is, throughout the region, cast as a way to counter the perceived loss of cultural diversity caused by globalization, modernization, urbanization and the spread of the mass media. Four chapters - one each on China, Korea, Taiwan and Japan - incorporate a foundational overview of preservation policy and practice of musical intangible cultural heritage at the state level. These chapters are complemented by a set of chapters that explore how the practice of policy has impacted on specific musics, from Confucian ritual through Kam big song to the Okinawan sanshin. Each chapter is based on rich ethnographic data collected through extended fieldwork. The team of international contributors give both insider and outsider perspectives as they both account for, and critique, policy, ideology and practice in East Asian music as intangible cultural heritage.

Historic sites, memorials, national parks, museums we live in an age in which heritage is ever-present. But what does it mean to live amongst the spectral traces of the past, the heterogeneous piling up of historic materials in the present? How did heritage grow from the concern of a handful of enthusiasts and specialists in one part of the world to something which is considered to be universally cherished? And what concepts and approaches are necessary to understanding this global obsession?

Over the decades, since the adoption of the World Heritage Convention, various crises of definition have significantly influenced the ways in which heritage is classified, perceived and managed in contemporary global societies. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to the many tangible and intangible things now defined as heritage, this book attempts simultaneously to account for this global phenomenon and the industry which has grown up around it, as well as to develop a toolkit of concepts with which it might be studied. In doing so, it provides a critical account of the emergence of heritage studies as an interdisciplinary field of academic study. This is presented as part of a broader examination of the function of heritage in late modern societies, with a particular focus on the changes which have resulted from the globalisation of heritage during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Developing new theoretical approaches and innovative models for more dialogically democratic heritage decision making processes, Heritage: Critical Approaches unravels the relationship between heritage and the experience of late modernity, whilst reorienting heritage so that it might be more productively connected with other pressing social, economic, political and environmental issues of our time.

Effective management is becoming increasingly important in all aspects of archaeology. Archaeologists must manage the artefacts thay deal with, their funding, ancient sites, as well as the practice of archaeology itself. Managing Archaeology is a collecton of outstanding papers from experts involved in these many areas. The contributors focus on the principles and practice of management in the 1990s, covering such crucial aeas as the management of contract and field archaeology, heritage management, marketing, law and information technology. The resulting volume is important and informative reading for archaeologists and heritage managers, as well as planners, policy makers and environmental consultants.

Why did writers' private homes become so linked to their work that contemporaries began preserving them as museums? Photojournalism and the Origins of the French Writer House Museum addresses this and other questions by providing an overview of the social forces that brought writers' homes to the forefront of the French imagination at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. This study analyzes representations of the apartments and houses of Corneille, Hugo, Balzac, Dumas, Sand, Zola, Loti, Montesquiou, Mallarme, and Proust, among others, arguing that the writer's home became a contested space and an important part of the French patrimony at this time. This is the first book to emphasize the house museum as an essentially modern construct, and to trace the history of ideas leading to its institutionalization in twentieth-century France. The interdisciplinary study also brings new attention to the importance of photojournalism for fin-de-siecle France - and brings to light fascinating and forgotten examples of 'at home' photography by Dornac and Henri Mairet. Elizabeth Emery provides a fresh and compelling perspective on conjunctions between visual, literary, and material cultures.

Designing for Empathy is a volume of twenty-three essays contributed by multidisciplinary experts, collectively exploring the state of empathy for its design elements that might lead to positive behavior change and a paradigm shift towards unifying, compassionate worldviews and actions. As museums are currently shaping their tools for fostering empathy as an intentional outcome of museum experiences, the idea of empathy-building is shaping them back as socially relevant institutions that increasingly value diversity, accessibility, and equality. This is a non-linear, multi-layered, and multi-dimensional transformation that requires multidisciplinary, cross-industries, and cross-sectors alliances for its sustainability. The potential of this collective transformation effort includes the invention of unconventional, evidence-based, and sustainable solutions that can be scaled up beyond the walls of traditional museums to all kinds of informal learning platforms to help eliminate the empathy-deficit in our world. Designing for Empathy expands our understanding of empathy and its potential for fostering compassionate worldviews and actions through a multidisciplinary exploration in three parts: "The Object of Our Empathy" explores how we define and perceive the "Other," "The Alchemy of Empathy" introduces thirteen design elements of empathy that might lead to transformative learning experiences, and "The Scope and the Spectrum of Empathy" highlights the importance of positioning empathy as a cross-industrial shared value for the benefit of people and the planet. Designing for Empathy will inspire and empower those who are interested in intentionally designing for empathy to cultivate compassionate worldviews and actions that celebrate and preserve the oneness of all people, the environment, and our planet.

-Focuses on what actually works in development practice, in order to inform and inspire practitioners and students -Impressive global reach, with a wide range of case studies drawn from across Algeria, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, India, Kosovo, Taiwan, USA, South Africa, Malawi, and China -Highlights development projects at the small and large scale and across a range of visual and performing arts

The Routledge Companion to Art and Disability explores disability in visual culture to uncover the ways in which bodily and cognitive differences are articulated physically and theoretically, and to demonstrate the ways in which disability is culturally constructed. This companion is organized thematically and includes artists from across historical periods and cultures in order to demonstrate the ways in which disability is historically and culturally contingent. The book engages with questions such as: How are people with disabilities represented in art? How are notions of disability articulated in relation to ideas of normality, hybridity, and anomaly? How do artists use visual culture to affirm or subvert notions of the normative body? Contributors consider the changing role of disability in visual culture, the place of representations in society, and the ways in which disability studies engages with and critiques intersectional notions of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality. This book will be particularly useful for scholars in art history, disability studies, visual culture, and museum studies.

In this book, Barry and Gail Lord focus their two lifetimes of international experience working in the cultural sector on the challenging questions of why and how culture changes. They situate their discourse on aesthetic culture within a broad and inclusive definition of culture in relation to material, physical and socio-political cultures. Here at last is a dynamic understanding of the work of art, in all aspects, media and disciplines, illuminating both the primary role of the artist in initiating cultural change, and the crucial role of patronage in sustaining the artist. Drawing on their worldwide experience, they demonstrate the interdependence of artistic production, patronage, and audience and the remarkable transformations that we have witnessed through the millennia of the history of the arts, from our ancient past to the knowledge economy of the twenty-first century. Questions of cultural identity, migration, and our growing environmental consciousness are just a few examples of the contexts in which the Lords show how and why our cultural values are formed and transformed. This book is intended for artists, students, and teachers of art history, museum studies, cultural studies, and philosophy, and for cultural workers in all media and disciplines. It is above all intended for those who think of themselves first as audience because we are all participants in cultural change.

This book identifies the-now moribund-Modernist spirit of the twentieth century, with its "make it new" attitude in the arts, and its tendency towards abstraction and the scientific process, as the impetus behind the academic structures of universities and museums, together with the development of discrete scholarly disciplines such as literary theory, sociology, and art history based on quasi-scientific principles. Arguing that the Modernist project is approaching exhaustion and that the insights that it has left to yield are approaching triviality, it explores the Modernist links between the arts and academic pursuits of the West-and their relationship with street protests-in the long twentieth century, considering what might follow this Modernist era. An examination of the broad cultural and intellectual-and now political-trends of our age, and their decline, The End of the Modernist Era in Arts and Academia will appeal to scholars and students of social theory, philosophy, literary studies, and cultural studies.

The history of European nation-building and identity formation is inextricably connected with museums, and the role they play in displaying the acquired spoils and glorious symbols of geopolitical power in order to mobilize public support for expansionist ventures. This book examines the contemporary debate surrounding the museum in postcolonial Europe. Although there is no consensus on the European colonial experience, the process of decolonization in Europe has involved an examination of the museum's place, and ethnic minorities and immigrants have insisted upon improved representation in the genealogies of European nation-states. Museological practices have been subjected to greater scrutiny in light of these political and social transformations. In addition to the refurbishment and restructuring of colonial-era museums, new spaces have also been inaugurated to highlight the contemporary importance of museums in postcolonial Europe, as well as the significance of incorporating the perspective of postcolonial European populations into these spaces. This book includes contributions from leading experts in their fields and represents a comparative trans-historical and transcolonial examination which contextualises and reinterpretates to the legacies and experiences of European museums. This book was published as a special issue of Africa and Black Diaspora: An International Journal.

Narrating Objects, Collecting Stories is a wide-ranging collection of essays exploring the stories that can be told by and about objects and those who choose to collect them. Examining objects and collecting in different historical, social and institutional contexts, an international, interdisciplinary group of authors consider the meanings and values with which objects are imputed and the processes and implications of collecting. This includes considering the entanglement of objects and collectors in webs of social relations, value and change, object biographies and the sometimes conflicting stories that things come to represent, and the strategies used to reconstruct and retell the narratives of objects. The book includes considerations of individual and groups of objects, such as domestic interiors, novelty tea-pots, Scottish stone monuments, African ironworking, a postcolonial painting and memorials to those killed on the roads in Australia. It also contains chapters dealing with particular collectors - including Charles Bell and Beatrix Potter - and representational techniques.

This book traces the development of scientific conservation and technical art history. It takes as its starting point the final years of the nineteenth century, which saw the establishment of the first museum laboratory in Berlin, and ground-breaking international conferences on art history and conservation held in pre-World War I Germany. It follows the history of conservation and art history until the 1940s when, from the ruins of World War II, new institutions such as the Istituto Centrale del Restauro emerged, which would shape the post-war art and conservation world. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, conservation history, historiography, and history of science and humanities.

The book, uniquely, provides archaeologists and heritage professionals with an introduction to the ways in which mental health researchers view and measure wellbeing, helping archaeologists and other heritage professionals to move beyond the anecdotal when evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of such initiatives. Importantly, this book also serves to highlight to mental health researchers the many ways in which archaeology and heritage can be, and are being, harnessed to support non-medical therapeutic interventions to improve wellbeing. Authentic engagement with the historic environment can also provide powerful tools for community health and wellbeing, and this book offers examples of the diverse communities that have benefited from its capacity to promote wellbeing and wellness. Archaeology, Heritage, and Wellbeing is for students and researchers of archaeology and psychology interested in wellbeing, as well as researchers and professionals involved in health and social care, social prescribing, mental health and wellbeing, leisure, tourism, and heritage management.

Today, the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden is internationally known for its outstanding archaeological collections. Yet its origins lie in an insignificant assortment of artefacts used for study by Leiden University. How did this transformation come about? Ruurd Halbertsma has delved into the archives to show that the appointment of Caspar Reuvens as Professor of Archaeology in 1818 was the crucial turning point. He tells the dramatic story of Reuvens' struggle to establish the museum, with battles against rival scholars, red tape and the Dutch attitude of neglect towards archaeological monuments. This book throws new light on the process of creating a national museum, and the difficulties of convincing society of the value of the past.

This book focuses on the numerous examples of creativity produced by POWs and civilian internees during their captivity, including: paintings, cartoons, craftwork, needlework, acting, musical compositions, magazine and newspaper articles, wood carving, and recycled Red Cross tins turned into plates, mugs and makeshift stoves, all which have previously received little attention. The authors of this volume show the wide potential of such items to inform us about the daily life and struggle for survival behind barbed wire. Previously dismissed as items which could only serve to illustrate POW memoirs and diaries, this book argues for a central role of all items of creativity in helping us to understand the true experience of life in captivity. The international authors draw upon a rich seam of material from their own case studies of POW and civilian internment camps across the world, to offer a range of interpretations of this diverse and extraordinary material.

A Graveyard Preservation Primer has proven itself to be a time-tested resource for those who are seeking information regarding the protection and preservation of historic graveyards. It was first written to help stewards of early burial grounds responsibly and effectively preserve their graveyards. Much information found in the first edition of the book remains valid today. Still, much has changed in the twenty-five years since its first publication, and the new edition reflects these changes. Attitudes and the understanding of historic graveyards as an important cultural resource have grown and developed over the years. Likewise, changes in treatments have also taken place. Perhaps the most dramatic change in burial ground preservation is in the world of technology. Changes in computers and the way we use them have also changed preservation practices in historic graveyards. Discussion of technological changes in the new edition includes those in mapping, surveying, photography, archaeology, and other areas of evaluation and planning. Consideration is given, too, to maintenance and conservation treatments, including both traditional and newer treatments for stone, concrete, and metals. Metals were not discussed in the earlier editions, and protection and preservation of the landscape as it relates to graveyards is an expanded focus of this book. The historic preservation of cemeteries and burial grounds is an aspect within the discipline of historic preservation that is unknown to many. Those whose responsibility is the care of these historic sites may be unfamiliar with appropriate approaches to such areas as documentation, planning, maintenance, and conservation. Unwitting personnel can do irreparable harm to these important cultural resources. The Primer is an effort to protect historic cultural resources by breaching the gap between maintenance staff, cemetery boards, friends' groups, and graveyard preservation professionals by offering readily available, responsible information regarding graveyard protection and preservation. It is also designed to assist those who would undertake a preservation project in the reclaiming of a neglected or abandoned historic cemetery. The book is generously illustrated with diagrams and photos illustrating procedures and gravemarker and graveyard forms, styles, and materials. The appendix section is completely updated and expanded, offering a worthwhile resource in itself.

We live in a "museum age," and sport museums are part of this phenomenon. In this book, leading international sport history scholars examine sport museums including renowned institutions like the Olympic Museum in the Swiss city of Lausanne, the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum in Baltimore, the Marylebone Cricket Club Museum in London, the Croke Park Museum in Dublin, and the Whyte Museum in Banff. These institutions are examined in a broad context of understanding sport museums as an identifiable genre in the "museum age", and more specifically in terms of how the sporting past is represented in these museums. Historians explain, debate and critique sport museums with the intention of understanding how this important form of public history represents sport for audiences who see museums as institutions that are inherently reliable and trustworthy.

Jews are part and parcel of American history. From colonial port cities to frontier outposts, from commercial and manufacturing centers to rural villages, and from metropolitan regions to constructed communities, Jews are found everywhere and throughout four centuries of American history. From the early 17th century to the present, the story of American Jews has been one of immigration, adjustment, and accomplishment, sometimes in the face of prejudice and discrimination. This, then, is a narrative of minority-majority relations, of evolving norms and traditions, of ongoing conversations about community and culture, identity and meaning. Interpreting American Jewish History at Museums and Historic Sites begins with a broad overview of American Jewish history in the context of a religious culture than extends back more than 3,000 years and which manifests itself in a variety of distinctive American forms. This is followed by five chapters, each looking at a major theme in American Jewish history: movement, home life, community, prejudice, and culture. The book also describes and analyzes projects by history organizations, large and small, to interpret American Jewish life for general public audiences. These case studies cover a wide range of themes, approaches, formats. The book concludes with a history of Jewish collections and Jewish museums in North America and a chapter on "next practice" that promote adaptive thinking, continuous innovation, and programs that are responsive to ever-changing circumstances.

In this pioneering book, Christopher Whitehead provides an overview and critique of art interpretation practices in museums and galleries. Covering the philosophy and sociology of art, traditions in art history and art display, the psychology of the aesthetic experience and ideas about learning and communication, Whitehead advances major theoretical frameworks for understanding interpretation from curators and visitors perspectives. Although not a manual, the book is deeply practical. It presents extensively researched European and North American case studies involving interviews with professionals engaged in significant cutting-edge interpretation projects. Finally, it sets out the ethical and political responsibilities of institutions and professionals engaged in art interpretation.

Exploring the theoretical and practical dimensions of art interpretation in accessible language, this book covers:

• The construction of art by museums and galleries, in the form of collections, displays, exhibition and discourse;
• The historical and political dimensions of art interpretation;
• The functioning of narrative, categories and chronologies in art displays;
• Practices, discourses and problems surrounding the interpretation of historical and contemporary art;
• Visitor experiences and questions of authorship and accessibility;
• The role of exhibition texts, new interpretive technologies and live interpretation in art museum and gallery contexts.

Thoroughly researched with immediately practical applications, Interpreting Art in Museums and Galleries will inform the practices of art curators and those studying the subject.

Sculpture and the Museum is the first in-depth examination of the varying roles and meanings assigned to sculpture in museums and galleries during the modern period, from neo-classical to contemporary art practice. It considers a rich array of curatorial strategies and settings in order to examine the many reasons why sculpture has enjoyed a position of such considerable importance - and complexity - within the institutional framework of the museum and how changes to the museum have altered, in turn, the ways that we perceive the sculpture within it. In particular, the contributors consider the complex issue of how best to display sculpture across different periods and according to varying curatorial philosophies. Sculptors discussed include Canova, Rodin, Henry Moore, Flaxman and contemporary artists such as Rebecca Horn, Rachel Whiteread, Mark Dion and Olafur Eliasson, with a variety of museums in America, Canada and Europe presented as case studies. Underlying all of these discussions is a concern to chart the critical importance of the acquisition, placement and display of sculpture in museums and to explore the importance of sculptures as a forum for the expression of programmatic statements of power, prestige and the museum's own sense of itself in relation to its audiences and its broader institutional aspirations.

The Museum of Mankind was an innovative and popular showcase for minority cultures from around the non-Western world from 1970 to 1997. This memoir is a critical appreciation of its achievements in the various roles of a national museum, of the personalities of its staff and of the issues raised in the representation of exotic cultures. Issues of changing museum theory and practice are raised in a detailed case-study that also focuses on the social life of the museum community. This is the first history of a remarkable museum and a memorable interlude in the long history of one of the world's oldest and greatest museums. Although not presented as an academic study, it should be useful for museum and cultural studies as a well as a wider readership interested in the British Museum.