Museum Meanings Series
Museum Meanings Series
Series Editors: Richard Sandell and Christina Kreps
Museums have undergone enormous changes in recent decades; an ongoing process of renewal and transformation bringing with it changes in priority, practice and role as well as new expectations, philosophies, imperatives and tensions that continue to attract attention from those working in, and drawing upon, wide ranging disciplines.
Museum Meanings presents new research that explores diverse aspects of the shifting social, cultural and political significance of museums and their agency beyond, as well as within, the cultural sphere.
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Museums, Equality and Social Justice
Series: Museum Meanings
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...
Published April 22nd 2012 by Routledge
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Museum Making
Narratives, Architectures, Exhibitions
Series: Museum Meanings
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...
Published February 27th 2012 by Routledge
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Museums in a Troubled World
Renewal, Irrelevance or Collapse?
Series: Museum Meanings
Are Museums Irrelevant? Museums are rarely acknowledged in the global discussion of climate change, environmental degradation, the inevitability of depleted fossil fuels, and the myriad local issues concerning the well-being of particular communities – suggesting the irrelevance of museums as...
Published May 17th 2009 by Routledge
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Heritage and Identity
Engagement and Demission in the Contemporary World
Series: Museum Meanings
Heritage and Identity explores the complex ways in which heritage actively contributes to the construction and representation of identities in contemporary societies, providing a comprehensive account of the diverse conceptions of heritage and identity across different continents and cultures....
Published November 25th 2008 by Routledge
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Museums and Community
Ideas, Issues and Challenges
Series: Museum Meanings
Combining research that stretches across all of the social sciences and international case studies, Elizabeth Crooke here explores the dynamics of the relationship between the community and the museum. Focusing strongly on areas such as Northern Ireland, South Africa, Australia and North...
Published February 7th 2008 by Routledge
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Recoding the Museum
Digital Heritage and the Technologies of Change
Series: Museum Meanings
Why has it taken so long to make computers work for the museum sector? And why are museums still having some of the same conversations about digital technology that they began back in the late 1960s? Does there continue to be a basic ‘incompatibility’ between the practice of the museum and the...
Published November 15th 2007 by Routledge
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Rethinking Evolution in the Museum
Envisioning African Origins
Series: Museum Meanings
Rethinking Evolution in the Museum explores the ways diverse natural history museum audiences imagine their evolutionary heritage. In particular, the book considers how the meanings constructed by audiences of museum exhibitions are a product of dynamic interplay between museum iconography and...
Published November 14th 2007 by Routledge
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Museums and Education
Purpose, Pedagogy, Performance
Series: Museum Meanings
At the beginning of the 21st century museums are challenged on a number of fronts. The prioritisation of learning in museums in the context of demands for social justice and cultural democracy combined with cultural policy based on economic rationalism forces museums to review their educational...
Published October 31st 2007 by Routledge
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Museum Texts
Comunication Frameworks
Series: Museum Meanings
Answering key questions in the study of how museums communicate, Louise Ravelli provides a set of frameworks to investigate the complexities of communication in museums: * What is an appropriate level of complexity for a written label?* Why do some choice in language make a more direct relation to...
Published December 18th 2005 by Routledge
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Reshaping Museum Space
Series: Museum Meanings
Reshaping Museum Space pulls together the views of an international group of museum professionals, architects, designers and academics highlights the complexity, significance and malleability of museum space, and provides reflections upon recent developments in museum architecture and...
Published May 30th 2005 by Routledge
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Pasts Beyond Memory
Evolution, Museums, Colonialism
Series: Museum Meanings
Contributing to current debates on relationships between culture and the social, and the the rapidly changing practices of modern museums as they seek to shed the legacies of both evolutionary conceptions and colonial science, this important new work explores how evolutionary museums developed in...
Published May 19th 2004 by Routledge
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Liberating Culture
Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Museums, Curation and Heritage Preservation
Series: Museum Meanings
Using examples of indigenous models from Indonesia, the Pacific, Africa and native North America, Christina Kreps illustrates how the growing recognition of indigenous curation and concepts of cultural heritage preservation is transforming conventional museum practice. Liberating Culture ...
Published January 29th 2003 by Routledge
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Re-Imagining the Museum
Beyond the Mausoleum
Series: Museum Meanings
Re-Imagining the Museum presents new interpretations of museum history and contemporary museum practices. Through a range of case studies from the UK, North America and Australia, Andrea Witcomb moves away from the idea that museums are always 'conservative' to suggest they have a long history of...
Published December 4th 2002 by Routledge
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Museums, Society, Inequality
Series: Museum Meanings
Museums, Society, Inequality explores the wide-ranging social roles and responsibilities of the museum. It brings together international perspectives to stimulate critical debate, inform the work of practitioners and policy makers, and to advance recognition of the purpose, responsibilities and...
Published January 23rd 2002 by Routledge
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Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture
Series: Museum Meanings
This is a multi-disciplinary study that adopts an innovative and original approach to a highly topical question, that of meaning-making in museums, focusing its attention on pedagogy and visual culture.This work explores such questions as: How and why is it that museums select and arrange...
Published September 27th 2000 by Routledge
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Museum, Media, Message
Series: Museum Meanings
Collecting together a group of talented writers, Museum, Media, Message considers, in depth, the most up-to-date approaches to museum communication including: museums as media; museums and audience; and the evaluation of museums. Addressing the need for museums to develop better knowledge of...
Published December 16th 1998 by Routledge
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Learning in the Museum
Series: Museum Meanings
Learning in the Museum examines major issues and shows how research in visitor studies and the philosophy of education can be applied to facilitate a meaningful educational experience in museums. Hein combines a brief history of education in public museums, with a rigorous examination of how the...
Published March 11th 1998 by Routledge
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Colonialism and the Object
Empire, Material Culture and the Museum
Series: Museum Meanings
Drawing together an international group of scholars from a variety of disciplinary and cultural backgrounds, Colonialism and the Object explores the impact of colonial contact with other cultures on the material culture of both the colonized and the imperial nation. The book includes intensive...
Published December 17th 1997 by Routledge