This edited collection explores a subject of great potential for both art historians and museologists - that of the nature of the specimen and how it might be reinterpreted. Through its cross-disciplinary contributions, written by a team of art historians, artists, poets, anthropologists, critics and curators, this book looks at how artistic encounters in museums, ranging from anatomy museums to contemporary cabinets of curiosity, can provoke new modes of thinking about art, science and curating. Museological literature in the past focused on artefacts or objects; this is an original contribution to the field and offers new readings of old issues, inspiring new understandings of the relationships between art, science and curating. Brings together international expertise from art practitioners, historians, creative writers and theorists in France, the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand. Contributions from creative practitioners draw upon their own experience of producing artworks in response to specific scientific collections while historians, anthropologists, critics and writers examine how museums stimulate, incite and otherwise inspire artistic awareness of science and its specimens. One of the most important contributions this book will make is drawing together several threads of research and practice to encourage interdisciplinary discussion. It provides new ways of thinking about the relationships between art, science, museums and their objects. It concentrates on the ways in which scientific collections kindle novel aesthetic strategies and inspire new scholarly interpretations of art, science, curating and epistemology. In so doing it will make a considerable contribution to the fields of art writing, creative practice, art theory, the history of science and curating. This book will appeal to academics, researchers, undergraduates and postgraduates studying fine art, curating, museology, art history, the history of science, creative writing; visual artists, curators, and other creative practitioners. Also of interest to museum audiences. Reading list potential.

One of the most international, culturally diverse cities in the world, London's social and cultural history is steeped in centuries of migration. This book places migrants at the centre of London's story, discussing, exploring and celebrating the contribution that they have made to the city from the medieval period to the present day. Structured geographically around five sections, each of which addresses a different area of London (North, East, Central, South and West) this book features essays from a wide range of contributors, some of which examine how migrants have shaped particular places (socially, architecturally, politically), and some of which analyse how they have been imagined and represented within those places and the city more widely. The inclusion of image-led case studies exploring particular buildings, monuments, artists or institutions offers local examples of how migrant communities have made their marks on London in different ways. Using a mixture of in-depth analysis of texts and cultural artifacts with more synoptic, historical essays, the book builds an overview of the contribution of migrant communities to the history and cultures of London. Taken together, these essays paints a rich, complex picture of cultural London, featuring well-known figures like Shakespeare, Dostoevsky and Van Gogh in addition to lesser-known figures like Ignatius Sancho, a former slave and writer, and contemporary novelist Hanan al-Shaykh. Topics addressed are rich and varied, from an examination of Chinese aesthetics of an artefact at the British museum, to an exploration of representations of black sex workers in 18th C London. Published amidst the fraught politics of Brexit, the revival of nationalist sentiments in the global north, and the Covid-19 pandemic, this book serves as an accessible and timely reminder of the enormous cultural contributions that migrants have made to Britain’s capital.

Museum and Gallery Studies: The Basics is an accessible guide for the student approaching Museum and Gallery Studies for the first time. Taking a global view, it covers the key ideas, approaches and contentious issues in the field. Balancing theory and practice, the book address important questions such as:

What are museums and galleries?

Who decides which kinds of objects are worthy of collection?

How are museums and galleries funded?

What ethical concerns do practitioners need to consider?

How is the field of Museum and Gallery Studies developing?

This user-friendly text is an essential read for anyone wishing to work within museums and galleries, or seeking to understand academic debates in the field.

Table of Contents

Introduction

What this book will do

Who is this book for?

What are museum and gallery studies?

Museum and gallery studies around the world

‘Theory’ and ‘practice’?

Why study museums and galleries?

Culture as ‘soft power’

Conclusion

Further reading

Chapter 1: First principles

What is a museum or gallery? *

‘New museology’

Origins of museums

The Louvre: a turning point

Museum development: nationalism and colonialism

Do all cultures have museums?

Can anyone call any space ‘a museum’?

What is an art gallery? What is an art museum or a museum or art?

How many different kinds of museums and galleries are there?

What are museums and galleries for?

Why do societies have museums and galleries?

Public Trust

Heritage

Heritage as institution, adjective or tradition

Elite or ‘everyone’s’ heritage

Conclusion

Further reading

Chapter 2: Collecting and Collections

Curating and collecting

Collecting the past

Reconceptualising the discipline of ‘history’

Acknowledging your own standpoint

Tradition versus history

Collecting ‘the present’ for the future

Collecting historical art

Collecting contemporary art

Collecting the intangible

Collecting the digital

The lives of objects

Acquisitioning and accessioning

Disposal and de-accessioning

Creating Value

Priceless objects and ‘market value’

Regimes of Value: Exchanges and Exclusions

Protecting the nation’s interest: exports of cultural property

Managing and caring for collections

Conservation, preservation or restoration?

Conclusion *

Further reading:

Chapter 3: Visitors and Audiences

Who are museums and galleries for?

Who visits museums and galleries? Understanding visitor profiles and global trends

Understanding the statistics: an example

Does it make a difference if museums are free or charge?

Why do people visit? Understanding visitor motivations.

Audience segmentation

What is the difference between audiences, visitors and communities?

Understanding ‘non-visitors’ motivations

Understanding access, and barriers to access

Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital

Are museums and galleries ‘white spaces’?

Visiting patterns in relationship to staff demographics

Inclusion initiatives and policy agendas

Audience Development

Building new audiences through community engagement

Models of ‘community engagement’

If communities can tell their own histories do we still need curators?

Is working digitally one answer?

Conclusions

Further reading

Chapter 4: The Business of Culture

Who pays for what, for whom, and on whose behalf?

What it costs: capital and revenue

External funding sources: the state, the lottery, charities, donors, business

The museum as entrepreneur: income generation and enterprise

Fundraising, sponsorship, philanthropy, and ‘the gift’

Autonomy and instrumentalisation

Implication of cultural policy

Governance, legal status and funding models

The public interest and the private market

Tourism, leisure and marketing

Regeneration through culture (the ‘Bilbao effect’)

The ‘museum boom’, 1980-2010 – costs and consequences

Conclusions

Further reading

Chapter 5: Display, interpretation and learning

What does ‘display’ mean in a museum or gallery context? *

Classic exhibition genres

Telling and showing histories in space and time

Working with spaces

What are the relationships between display and knowledge?

The gallery as ‘white cube’

The ‘poetics’ and ‘politics’ of display

Taking responsibility?

Co-producing displays and sharing authorship

Can objects ‘speak’?

Making sense of what we see: the active visitor *

Visitor behaviour in gallery settings

From ‘education’ to ‘learning’

Creating accessibility for everyone

Conclusions

Further reading

Chapter 6: Looking forward

Power and politics

Museums as a means to foster mutual understanding

Museums and galleries as social activists

Globalisation

Changing perspectives

Valuing culture

Visitor trends

Further reading

Index…………………

　

　

Museum and Gallery Studies: The Basics is an accessible guide for the student approaching Museum and Gallery Studies for the first time. Taking a global view, it covers the key ideas, approaches and contentious issues in the field. Balancing theory and practice, the book address important questions such as: What are museums and galleries? Who decides which kinds of objects are worthy of collection? How are museums and galleries funded? What ethical concerns do practitioners need to consider? How is the field of Museum and Gallery Studies developing? This user-friendly text is an essential read for anyone wishing to work within museums and galleries, or seeking to understand academic debates in the field.

Vagrants were everywhere in Victorian culture. They wandered through novels and newspapers, photographs, poems and periodicals, oil paintings and illustrations. They appeared in a variety of forms in a variety of places: Gypsies and hawkers tramped the country, casual paupers and loafers lingered in the city, and vagabonds and beachcombers roved the colonial frontiers. Uncovering the rich Victorian taxonomy of nineteenth-century vagrancy for the first time, this interdisciplinary study examines how assumptions about class, gender, race and environment shaped a series of distinct vagrant types. At the same time it broaches new ground by demonstrating that rural and urban conceptions of vagrancy were repurposed in colonial contexts. Representational strategies circulated globally as well as locally, and were used to articulate shifting fantasies and anxieties about mobility, poverty and homelessness. These are traced through an extensive corpus of canonical, ephemeral and popular texts as well as a variety of visual forms.

Vagrants were everywhere in Victorian culture. They wandered through novels and newspapers, photographs, poems and periodicals, oil paintings and illustrations. They appeared in a variety of forms in a variety of places: Gypsies and hawkers tramped the country, casual paupers and loafers lingered in the city, and vagabonds and beachcombers roved the colonial frontiers. Uncovering the rich Victorian taxonomy of nineteenth-century vagrancy for the first time, this interdisciplinary study examines how assumptions about class, gender, race and environment shaped a series of distinct vagrant types. At the same time it broaches new ground by demonstrating that rural and urban conceptions of vagrancy were repurposed in colonial contexts. Representational strategies circulated globally as well as locally, and were used to articulate shifting fantasies and anxieties about mobility, poverty and homelessness. These are traced through an extensive corpus of canonical, ephemeral and popular texts as well as a variety of visual forms.

John Peter Askew’s pictures show us the poetry of the everyday. Three years in the editing, WE II is a companion volume to WE which Charlotte Cotton described as “A wonderful book... a beautiful, close, incredibly touching and vast photographic story…” While WE II is an epic portrait across generations of a single family from the easternmost point in Europe, these photographs transcend their particular circumstances. Askew pays attention to our 'best selves', asking us to imagine the possibility of a better, more playful world, and pointing towards who we might yet become. This work, stretching back over a quarter of a century, is a timely and idiosyncratic chronicle, embracing friendship, communality, and kindness.

One of the most international, culturally diverse cities in the world, London's social and cultural history is steeped in centuries of migration. This book places migrants at the centre of London's story, discussing, exploring and celebrating the contribution that they have made to the city from the medieval period to the present day. Structured geographically around five sections, each of which addresses a different area of London (North, East, Central, South and West) this book features essays from a wide range of contributors, some of which examine how migrants have shaped particular places (socially, architecturally, politically), and some of which analyse how they have been imagined and represented within those places and the city more widely. The inclusion of image-led case studies exploring particular buildings, monuments, artists or institutions offers local examples of how migrant communities have made their marks on London in different ways. Using a mixture of in-depth analysis of texts and cultural artifacts with more synoptic, historical essays, the book builds an overview of the contribution of migrant communities to the history and cultures of London. Taken together, these essays paints a rich, complex picture of cultural London, featuring well-known figures like Shakespeare, Dostoevsky and Van Gogh in addition to lesser-known figures like Ignatius Sancho, a former slave and writer, and contemporary novelist Hanan al-Shaykh. Topics addressed are rich and varied, from an examination of Chinese aesthetics of an artefact at the British museum, to an exploration of representations of black sex workers in 18th C London. Published amidst the fraught politics of Brexit, the revival of nationalist sentiments in the global north, and the Covid-19 pandemic, this book serves as an accessible and timely reminder of the enormous cultural contributions that migrants have made to Britain’s capital.

John Peter Askew (*1960, UK) is an artist who works with the camera to create dense, poetic images of domestic life, and of the historical forces that shape who we are. Since 1996 he has photographed the Russian city of Perm, the easternmost city in Europe, as part of a project investigating the state of modern Europe. While We is an extended epic portrait across generations of a single family, the Chulakovs, these photographs transcend their particular circumstances. Askew pays attention to our 'best selves', asking us to imagine the possibility of a better, more playful world, and pointing towards who we might yet become.

With Macromancy, the British photographer Mark Pinder (*1966) presents a photographic essay on the state of the nation that spans three and a half decades. In it, he examines the social, political, and economic changes that Great Britain (and the North East of England in particular) experienced in the years when traditional industries such as coal mining, engineering, and shipbuilding were declining, as well as the social and political tensions that resulted from this, which have led to the situation in which Great Britain finds itself today.