Museums And Design For Creative Lives

Museums and Design for Creative Lives questions what we sacrifice when we allow economic imperatives to shape public museums, whilst also considering the implications of these new museum realities. It also asks: how might we instead design for creative lives? Drawing together 28 case studies of museum design spanning 70 years, the book explores the spatial and social forms that comprise these successful examples, as well as the design methodologies through which they were produced. Re-activating a well-trodden history of progressive museum design and raising awareness of the involvement of the built forms in how we feel, think and act, MacLeod provides strategies and methods to actively counter the economisation of museums and a call to museum makers to work beyond the economic and advance this deeply human history of museum making. Museums and Design for Creative Lives will be of great interest to academics and students in museum studies, gallery studies, heritage studies, arts management, communication and architecture and design departments, as well as those interested in understanding more about design as a resource in museums. The book provides a valuable resource for museum leaders and practitioners.

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.

Museums and creativity: a study into the role of museums in design education (Powerhouse Museum research series)

Histories of Exhibition Design in the Museum: Makers, Process, and Practice offers a new model for understanding exhibition design in museums as a human and material process. It presents diverse case studies from around the world, from the nineteenth century to the recent past. It moves beyond the power of the finished exhibition over both objects and visitors to highlight historic exhibition making as an ongoing task of adaptation, experimentation, and interaction that involves intellectual, creative, and technical choices. Attentive to hierarchies of ethnicity, race, class, gender, sexuality, and ableism that have informed exhibition design and its histories, the volume highlights the labour involved in making museum exhibitions. It presents design as filled with personal and professional demands on the body, senses, and emotions. Contributions from historians, anthropologists, and exhibition makers focus on histories of identity, collaboration, and hierarchy ‘behind the scenes’ of the museum. They argue for an emphasis on the everyday objects of museum design and the importance of a diverse range of actors within and beyond the museum, from carpenters and label writers to volunteers and local communities. Histories of Exhibition Design in the Museum offers scholars, students, and professionals working across the museum and design sectors insight into how past methods still influence museums today. Through a postcolonial and decolonial lens, it reveals the lineage of current processes and supports a more informed contemporary practice.

Recent decades have witnessed an explosion of museum building around the world and the subsequent publication of multiple texts dedicated to the subject. Museum Architecture: A new biography focuses on the stories we tell of museum buildings in order to explore the nature of museum architecture and the problems of architectural history when applied to the museum and gallery. Starting from a discussion of the key issues in contemporary museum design, the book explores the role of architectural history in the prioritisation of specific stories of museum building and museum architects and the exclusion of other actors from the history of museum making. These omissions have contemporary relevance and impact directly on the ways in which the physical structures of museums are shaped. Theoretically, the book places a particular emphasis on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Henri Lefebvre in order to establish an understanding of buildings as social relations; the outcome of complex human interactions and relationships. The book utilises a micro history, an in-depth case study of the ‘National Gallery of the North’, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, to expose the myriad ways in which museum architecture is made. Coupled with this detailed exploration is an emphasis on contemporary museum design which utilises the understanding of the social realities of museum making to explore ideas for a socially sustainable museum architecture fit for the twenty-first century.

New Museum Design provides a critical and compelling selective survey of contemporary international museum design since 2010. It provides an accessible and analytic review of the architectural landscape of museum and gallery design in the 2010s. The book comprises twelve case study museum and gallery projects from across Europe, Asia, North America, Africa, the Middle East and Australia. Each built example is interrogated through an essay and a series of beautiful supporting illustrations and drawings. Where appropriate architectural analysis is cross-scale, extending from consideration of the artefact’s encounter with museum space at the most intimate scale, through detailed architectural readings, to the wider perspective of urban/landscape response. Similarly, the book is not confined in its thematic or architectural ‘typological’ scope, including museums and art galleries, as well as remodellings, extensions and new build examples. New Museum Design provides a critical snapshot of contemporary international museum architecture, in order to: better understand reasons for the state of current practice; reveal and explore on-going themes and approaches in the field; and to point towards seminal future design directions. This book is essential reading for any student or professional interested in museum design.

How can museum educators and higher education tutors enhance the way HE students use museums? There are many examples in the UK of museums and universities working together in productive and innovative ways, but these relationships tend to be based on individual enthusiasm and opportunistic arrangements. Despite the growing importance of museum education departments, higher education tends to be overlooked by museums. This book looks at the interaction between design students and museums, and explores issues, projects and emerging ideas about how museums can better support HE students. It illustrates the general lessons that can be learnt, both strategic and practical, which can help to bring about long-term and constructive relationships between museums and universities in order to enable effective student learning.

Only a decade ago, the notion that museums, galleries and heritage organisations might engage in activist practice, with explicit intent to act upon inequalities, injustices and environmental crises, was met with scepticism and often derision. Seeking to purposefully bring about social change was viewed by many within and beyond the museum community as inappropriately political and antithetical to fundamental professional values. Today, although the idea remains controversial, the way we think about the roles and responsibilities of museums as knowledge based, social institutions is changing. Museum Activism examines the increasing significance of this activist trend in thinking and practice. At this crucial time in the evolution of museum thinking and practice, this ground-breaking volume brings together more than fifty contributors working across six continents to explore, analyse and critically reflect upon the museum’s relationship to activism. Including contributions from practitioners, artists, activists and researchers, this wide-ranging examination of new and divergent expressions of the inherent power of museums as forces for good, and as activists in civil society, aims to encourage further experimentation and enrich the debate in this nascent and uncertain field of museum practice. Museum Activism elucidates the largely untapped potential for museums as key intellectual and civic resources to address inequalities, injustice and environmental challenges. This makes the book essential reading for scholars and students of museum and heritage studies, gallery studies, arts and heritage management, and politics. It will be a source of inspiration to museum practitioners and museum leaders around the globe.