Museum As Process

The museum has become a vital strategic space for negotiating ownership of and access to knowledges produced in local settings. Museum as Process presents community-engaged "culture work" of a group of scholars whose collaborative projects consider the social spaces between the museum and community and offer new ways of addressing the challenges of bridging the local and the global. Museum as Process explores a variety of strategies for engaging source communities in the process of translation and the collaborative mediation of cultural knowledges. Scholars from around the world reflect upon their work with specific communities in different parts of the world – Australia, Canada, Ghana, Great Britain, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, South Africa, Taiwan and the United States. Each global case study provides significant insights into what happens to knowledge as it moves back and forth between source communities and global sites, especially the museum. Museum as Process is an important contribution to understanding the relationships between museums and source communities and the flow of cultural knowledge.

All museum activities converge in the public forum of the exhibition – regardless of whether the exhibit is held in the physical museum or is on the Web. Since the first edition of this book in 2002, there has been a world-wide explosion of new galleries and exhibition halls, and new ideas about how exhibitions should look and communicate. The definition of what an exhibition is has changed as exhibitions can now be virtual; non-traditional migratory and pop-up spaces play host to temporary displays; social media has created amazing opportunities for participatory engagement and shifted authority away from experts to the public; and as time-constrained audiences demand more dynamic, interactive, and mobile applications, museum leadership, managers, staff, and designers are rising to these challenges in innovative ways. Drawing on years of experience and top-flight expertise, Barry Lord and Maria Piacente detail the exhibition process in a straightforward way that can be easily adapted by institutions of any size. They explore the exhibition development process in greater detail, providing the technical and practical methodologies museum professionals need today. They’ve added new features and expanded chapters on project management, financial planning and interactive multimedia while retaining the essential content related to interpretive planning, curatorship, and roles and responsibilities. This second edition of the standby Manual of Museum Exhibitions is arranged in four parts: Why – Covering the purpose of exhibits, where exhibit ideas come from, and how to measure success Where – Covering facilities and spaces, going into details including security, and interactive spaces What – A look at both permanent collection displays, and non-collection displays, as well as virtual, participatory, temporary, travelling displays, and retail sales How – Who is involved, planning, curatorship, and content development, design, multimedia, fabrication and installation, financial planning, and project management Over 130 figures and photographs illustrate every step of the exhibit process. No museum can be without this critical, detailed guide to an essential function.

The Future of Museum and Gallery Design explores new research and practice in museum design. Placing a specific emphasis on social responsibility, in its broadest sense, the book emphasises the need for a greater understanding of the impact of museum design in the experiences of visitors, in the manifestation of the vision and values of museums and galleries, and in the shaping of civic spaces for culture in our shared social world. The chapters included in the book propose a number of innovative approaches to museum design and museum-design research. Collectively, contributors plead for more open and creative ways of making museums, and ask that museums recognize design as a resource to be harnessed towards a form of museum-making that is culturally located and makes a significant contribution to our personal, social, environmental, and economic sustainability. Such an approach demands new ways of conceptualizing museum and gallery design, new ways of acknowledging the potential of design, and new, experimental, and research-led approaches to the shaping of cultural institutions internationally. The Future of Museum and Gallery Design should be of great interest to academics and postgraduate students in the fields of museum studies, gallery studies, and heritage studies, as well as architecture and design, who are interested in understanding more about design as a resource in museums. It should also be of great interest to museum and design practitioners and museum leaders.

The Disobedient Museum: Writing at the Edge aims to motivate disciplinary thinking to reimagine writing about museums as an activity where resistant forms of thinking, seeing, feeling, and acting can be produced, and to theorize this process as a form of protest against disciplinary stagnation. Drawing on a range of cultural, theoretical, and political approaches, Kylie Message examines potential links between methods of critique today and moments of historical and disciplinary crisis, and asks what contribution museums might make to these, either as direct actors or through activities that sit more comfortably within their institutional remit. Identifying the process of writing about museums as a form of activism, that brings together and elaborates on cultural and political agendas for change, the book explores how a process of engaged critique might benefit museum studies, what this critique might look like, and how museum studies might make a contribution to discourses of social and political change. The Disobedient Museum is the first volume in Routledge’s innovative ‘Museums in Focus’ series and will be of great interest to scholars and students in the fields of Museum, Heritage, Public History, and Cultural Studies. It should also be essential reading for museum practitioners, particularly those engaged with questions about the role of museums in regard to social activism and contentious contemporary challenges.

This book challenges the museum enterprise in China as a state monopoly and considers it as a new cultural agency that has emerged in the early twenty-first century. Following a constructive and multi-perspectival approach, it discusses the roles of political and cultural-economic agents, museum intermediaries, and museum publics in the interlinked processes of regulation, cultural production and consumption, and the issues of identity and representation faced by the art museums in the Greater Pearl River Delta Region. It broadly traces the art museum from its origin as a tool of nationalism and adoption as a vehicle of modernization in both nationalist and early communist periods, until its role in the present, as it reflects the contested and alternative representations, diverse publics, and fissured identities of the post-economic reform period of China.

Museums have moved from a product to a marketing focus within the last ten years. This has entailed a painful reorientation of approaches to understanding visitors as ‘customers’; new ways of fundraising and sponsorship as government funding decreases; and grappling with using the internet for marketing. This book brings the latest in marketing thinking to bear on the museum sector taking into account both the commercial issues and social mission it involves. Carefully structured to be highly accessible the book offers: * A contemporary and relevant and global approach to museum marketing written by authors in Britain, Australia, the United States, and Asia * An approach that reflects the particular challenges museums of varying sizes face when seeking to market an experience to a diverse set of stakeholders: audience; funders; sponsors and government. * A particular focus on museum marketing in the 'Information Age' * Major case studies at the beginning and end of each section of the book, and smaller case studies within chapters The hugely experienced author team, includes both leading academics and practitioners to ensure the book has broad appeal and is both relevant, innovative and progressive in approach. It will be essential reading for students in museum studies, non-profit marketing, and arts management and marketing. It will also be equally relevant for professionals working in and managing museums and galleries, heritage attractions and ministries of arts.

Exhibitions as Research contends that museums would be more attractive to both researchers and audiences if we consider exhibitions as knowledge-in-the-making rather than platforms for disseminating already-established insights. Analysing the theoretical underpinnings and practical challenges of such an approach, the book questions whether it is possible to exhibit knowledge that is still in the making, whilst also considering which concepts of "knowledge" apply to such a format. The book also considers what the role of audience might be if research is extended into the exhibition itself. Providing concrete case studies of projects where museum professionals have approached exhibition making as a knowledge-generating process, the book considers tools of application and the challenges that might emerge from pursuing such an approach. Theoretically, the volume analyses the emergence of exhibitions as research as part of recent developments within materiality theories, object-oriented ontology and participatory approaches to exhibition-making. Exhibitions as Research will be of interest to academics and students engaged in the study of museology, material culture, anthropology and archaeology. It will also appeal to museum professionals with an interest in current trends in exhibition-making.

An essential resource for all museum professionals as well as trustees, architects, designers, and government agencies involved with the dynamic world of museums and galleries.