Especially in the last several decades, Museum Studies has expanded
enormously to become an internationally recognized and highly
interdisciplinary academic field. It draws on subjects from across
the humanities and social sciences, including Art History, Cultural
Studies, Ethnography, Cultural Geography, History, Sociology,
Economics, Business, Marketing, and Tourism Studies. (And, beyond
the academy, it has also benefited from significant contributions
made by cultural policy-makers.) While intellectual diversity is a
great strength of Museum Studies, its complex heritage makes it
extremely challenging for the uninitiated to navigate and
comprehend the subject's major works. Indeed, even those who are
very familiar with particular disciplinary domains may be unaware
of other important parallel debates taking place elsewhere. This
new five-volume collection from Routledge, edited by Rhiannon Mason
of the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies,
Newcastle University, responds to that challenge by making readily
available in one panoptical 'mini library' the foundational and the
very best cutting-edge research from the entire range of
disciplines and subjects that contribute towards Museum Studies. In
five volumes, the collection addresses the philosophical,
theoretical, and ethical concerns of museums-alongside the equally
important practical, organizational, and operational issues-to
understand how they operate today. The collection also reflects the
fact that many of the issues faced by contemporary institutions can
only be understood in the context of the philosophy and history of
museums as they have developed since the earliest collections of
the European Renaissance. The major works brought together in
Volume I ('Museums: Histories and Theories') provide a historical
and philosophical context for the development of museums. They
furnish a comprehensive introduction to the ideas of 'the new
museology', which are so crucial to current trends in anglophone
Museum Studies, and provide a conceptual framework for a fuller
understanding of the following volumes. The scholarship gathered in
Volume II ('Museums: Economics and Management') situates museums in
the everyday context within which they operate, and investigates
the different purposes that museums are said to possess by their
various stakeholders, for example, as engines of economic
regeneration, tourism, or 'place branding'. Volume II also focuses
on the financial costs and practicalities of making museums work,
enabling readers to grasp the day-to-day realities of museum work
alongside the more philosophical and ethical issues raised in
Volume I. Volume III ('Museums: Materiality and Practice'),
meanwhile, explores the specifics of museum practice to address
questions such as: how are exhibitions and displays produced? How
is interpretation understood? How are collections managed? And how
are objects deployed and architectural spaces navigated? The pieces
collected here also tackle other areas of museum practice,
including institutional context and staffing. Issues around how
institutions behave and develop an ethos, and how museum staff
nurture their professional skills and careers, are vital to
understanding the broader museum world. As are new trends in
curation, such as community co-production, and the increasing range
of ways in which museums are being reconceptualized beyond their
physical walls, for example, as performance spaces or platforms for
user-generated digital content. Volume IV ('Museums: Visitors,
Audiences, Communities, and Publics') assembles vital research on
our interactions with museums. The materials collected here
introduce users to the many different ways in which a museum's
public can be understood, imagined, and addressed across the whole
gamut of a museum's activities, from its programming and
interpretation to marketing. The volume also takes full cognizance
of recent attempts to expand and diversify museum audiences. The
final volume in the collection ('Museums: Identities,
Controversies, and Difficult Histories') brings together landmark
and contemporary studies to interrogate many of the concerns which
have repeatedly drawn museums into controversy over recent years.
Ways in which museums find themselves caught up in public outrage
and censorship include dealing with thorny issues around identity
politics and sensitive historical events, such as the Holocaust,
colonialism, and slavery. With a detailed and comprehensive
introduction and commentary to each volume, Museum Studies is
destined to be welcomed as an essential work of reference and a
crucial research tool.
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