The Things about Museums constitutes a unique, highly diverse collection of essays unprecedented in existing books in either museum and heritage studies or material culture studies. Taking varied perspectives and presenting a range of case studies, the chapters all address objects in the context of museums, galleries and/or the heritage sector more broadly. Specifically, the book deals with how objects are constructed in museums, the ways in which visitors may directly experience those objects, how objects are utilised within particular representational strategies and forms, and the challenges and opportunities presented by using objects to communicate difficult and contested matters. Topics and approaches examined in the book are diverse, but include the objectification of natural history specimens and museum registers; materiality, immateriality, transience and absence; subject/object boundaries; sensory, phenomenological perspectives; the museumisation of objects and collections; and the dangers inherent in assuming that objects, interpretation and heritage are 'good' for us.

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.

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.

The Things about Museums constitutes a unique, highly diverse collection of essays unprecedented in existing books in either museum and heritage studies or material culture studies. Taking varied perspectives and presenting a range of case studies, the chapters all address objects in the context of museums, galleries and/or the heritage sector more broadly. Specifically, the book deals with how objects are constructed in museums, the ways in which visitors may directly experience those objects, how objects are utilised within particular representational strategies and forms, and the challenges and opportunities presented by using objects to communicate difficult and contested matters. Topics and approaches examined in the book are diverse, but include the objectification of natural history specimens and museum registers; materiality, immateriality, transience and absence; subject/object boundaries; sensory, phenomenological perspectives; the museumisation of objects and collections; and the dangers inherent in assuming that objects, interpretation and heritage are 'good' for us.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. "A remarkable resource for the field of fashion studies suitable for both newcomers ... [and] seasoned practitioners." - Fashion Historia "A precious source in the study of the subject ... inspiring." - The Journal of Dress History The last decade has seen the growing popularity and visibility of fashion as a cultural product, including its growing presence in museum exhibitions. This book explores the history of fashion displays, highlighting the continuity of past and present curatorial practices. Comparing and contrasting exhibitions from different museums and decades-from the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 to the Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2011, and beyond-it makes connections between museum fashion and the wider fashion industry. By critically analyzing trends in fashion exhibition practice over the 20th and early 21st centuries, Julia Petrov defines and describes the varied representations of historical fashion within British and North American museum exhibitions. Rooted in extensive archival research on exhibitions by global leaders in the field-from the Victoria and Albert and the Bath Fashion Museum to the Brooklyn and the Royal Ontario Museums-the work reveals how fashion exhibitions have been shaped by the values and anxieties associated with fashion more generally. Supplemented by parallel critical approaches, including museological theory, historiography, body theory, material culture, and visual studies, Fashion, History, Museums demonstrates that in an increasingly corporate and mass-mediated world, fashion exhibitions must be analysed in a comparative and global context. Richly illustrated with 70 images, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of fashion history and museology, as well as curators, conservators, and exhibition designers.

From Jack the Ripper to Frankenstein, Halloween customs to Alexander McQueen collections, Fashioning Horror examines how terror is fashioned visually, symbolically, and materially through fashion and costume, in literature, film, and real life. With a series of case studies that range from sensationalist cinema and Slasher films to true crime and nineteenth-century literature, the volume investigates the central importance of clothing to the horror genre, and broadens our understanding of both material and popular culture. Arguing that dress is fundamental to our understanding of character and setting within horror, the chapters also reveal how the grotesque and horrific is at the center of fashion itself, with its potential for instability, disguise, and carnivalesque subversion. Packed with original research, and bringing together a range of international scholars, the book is the first to thoroughly examine the aesthetics of terror and the role of fashion in the construction of horror.