Transforming Author Museums

Literary museums today must respond to new challenges; the traditional image of the author’s home museum as a sacred place of literary pilgrimage centered around a national hero has been questioned, and literary museums have begun to develop new strategies centered not only on biography, but also literary texts, imagined spaces, different readers, historical contexts, architectural concepts, and artistic interventions. As this volume shows, the changing of spaces asks how literary museums create new ways of interlinking real and literary spaces, texts, objects, readers, and tourists.

"Inclusion” is a word, a concept, a value, a set of practices, but what should it mean for museum staff and leaders as they envision new ways of being a museum in an emergent future? Political and environmental upheavals, and now a global pandemic, are transforming the museum landscape forever. How can our paradigm for understanding inclusion continue to transform as well? This book offers a new paradigm for understanding inclusion grounded in a retrospective of museum worker efforts to test the limits of inclusion, a reflection on inclusion’s advantages and limitations in practice, as well as the integral concerns of racial equity and social justice. Questions throughout the book invite readers to reflect on how their own experiences can add to, and expand on, new ways of thinking about inclusion in museums. Museum workers and lovers can use this book as a tool for engaging with “inclusion” anew, and as a terrain for collaborative inquiry and world-building that can help us imagine and realize new potential for museums in the future.

In his book, Graham Black argues that museums must transform themselves if they are to remain relevant to 21st century audiences – and this root and branch change would be necessary whether or not museums faced a funding crisis. It is the result of the impact of new technologies and the rapid societal developments that we are all a part of, and applies not just to museums but to all arts bodies and to other agents of mass communication. Through comment, practical examples and truly inspirational case studies, this book allows the reader to build a picture of the transformed 21st century museum in practice. Such a museum is focused on developing its audiences as regular users. It is committed to participation and collaboration. It brings together on-site, online and mobile provision and, through social media, builds meaningful relationships with its users. It is not restricted by its walls or opening hours, but reaches outwards in partnership with its communities and with other agencies, including schools. It is a haven for families learning together. And at its heart lies prolonged user engagement with collections, and the conversations and dialogues that these inspire. The book is filled to the brim with practical examples. It features: an introduction that focuses on the challenges that face museums in the 21st century an analysis of population trends and their likely impact on museums boxes showing ideas, models and planning suggestions to guide development examples and case studies illustrating practice in both large and small museums an up-to-date bibliography of landmark research, including numerous websites Sitting alongside Graham Black’s previous book, The Engaging Museum, we now have a clear vision of a museum of the future that engages, stimulates and inspires the publics it serves, and plays an active role in promoting tolerance and understanding within and between communities.

What if museums could harness the emotional and intellectual connections people have to personal and everyday objects to create richer visitor experiences? In this book, Elizabeth Wood and Kiersten Latham present the Object Knowledge Framework, a tool for using objects to connect museum visitors to themselves, to others, and to their world. They discuss the key concepts underpinning our lived experience of objects and how museums can learn from them. Then they walk readers through concrete methods for transforming visitor-object experiences, including exercises and strategies for teams developing exhibit themes, messages, and content, and participatory experiences.

MUSEUM TRANSFORMATIONS DECOLONIZATION AND DEMOCRATIZATION Edited By ANNIE E. COOMBES AND RUTH B. PHILLIPS Museum Transformations: Decolonization and Democratization addresses contemporary approaches to decolonization, greater democratization, and revisionist narratives in museum exhibition and program development around the world. The text explores how museums of art, history, and ethnography responded to deconstructive critiques from activists and poststructuralist and postcolonial theorists, and provided models for change to other types of museums and heritage sites. The volume's first set of essays discuss the role of the museum in the narration of difficult histories, and how altering the social attitudes and political structures that enable oppression requires the recognition of past histories of political and racial oppression and colonization in museums. Subsequent essays consider the museum's new roles in social action and discuss experimental projects that work to change power dynamics within institutions and leverage digital technology and new media.

A detailed look at how South Africa's museum present the nation's past, and how they can serve as a lens for examining changes in South African society at large.

In his book, Graham Black argues that museums must transform themselves if they are to remain relevant to 21st century audiences – and this root and branch change would be necessary whether or not museums faced a funding crisis. It is the result of the impact of new technologies and the rapid societal developments that we are all a part of, and applies not just to museums but to all arts bodies and to other agents of mass communication. Through comment, practical examples and truly inspirational case studies, this book allows the reader to build a picture of the transformed 21st century museum in practice. Such a museum is focused on developing its audiences as regular users. It is committed to participation and collaboration. It brings together on-site, online and mobile provision and, through social media, builds meaningful relationships with its users. It is not restricted by its walls or opening hours, but reaches outwards in partnership with its communities and with other agencies, including schools. It is a haven for families learning together. And at its heart lies prolonged user engagement with collections, and the conversations and dialogues that these inspire. The book is filled to the brim with practical examples. It features: an introduction that focuses on the challenges that face museums in the 21st century an analysis of population trends and their likely impact on museums boxes showing ideas, models and planning suggestions to guide development examples and case studies illustrating practice in both large and small museums an up-to-date bibliography of landmark research, including numerous websites Sitting alongside Graham Black's previous book, The Engaging Museum, we now have a clear vision of a museum of the future that engages, stimulates and inspires the publics it serves, and plays an active role in promoting tolerance and understanding within and between communities.

This third volume in a bestselling series on culture, society, and museums examines the effects of globalization on contemporary museum, heritage, and exhibition practices.