The Museum of Ordinary People

Author: Mike Gayle
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
ISBN: 1538740850
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Book Description
In this “pure, unadulterated feel-good” and warmhearted novel, an old set of encyclopedias leads a young woman to a curious museum and one profoundly moving lesson: that every life is an extraordinary life (Kirkus). BookRiot Most Anticipated Beach Reads of 2023 Shondaland Best Books of May Still reeling from the sudden death of her mother, Jess is about to do the hardest thing she's ever done: empty her childhood home so that it can be sold. As she sorts through a lifetime of memories, everything comes to a halt when she comes across something she just can’t part with: an old set of encyclopedias. To the world, the books are outdated and ready to be recycled. To Jess, they represent love and the future that her mother always wanted her to have. In the process of finding the books a new home, Jess discovers an unusual archive of letters, photographs, and curious housed in a warehouse and known as the Museum of Ordinary People. Irresistibly drawn, she becomes the museum's unofficial custodian, along with the warehouse’s mysterious owner. As they delve into the history of objects in their care, they not only unravel heart-stirring stories that span generations and continents, but also unearth long-buried secrets that lie closer to home. Inspired by an abandoned box of mementos, The Museum of Ordinary People is a poignant novel about memory and loss, the things we leave behind, and the future we create for ourselves.

The Everyday in Visual Culture

Author: François Penz
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000569845
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 237

Book Description
This book explores how the comparative analysis of visual cultural artefacts, from objects to architecture and fiction films, can contribute to our understanding of everyday life in homes and cities around the globe. Investigating the multiple facets of the everyday, this interdisciplinary collection generates a new awareness of everyday lives across cultures and challenges our traditional understanding of the everyday by interweaving new thematic connections. It brings together debates around the analysis of the everyday in visual culture more broadly and explores the creation of innovative technological methods for comparative approaches to the study of the everyday, such as film databases, as well as the celebration of the everyday in museums. The volume is organized around four key themes. It explores the slices of everyday lives found in Visual Culture (Part I), Museums (Part II), the City (Part III) and the Home (Part IV). The book explores the growing area of the analysis of everyday life through visual culture both broadly and in depth. By building interdisciplinary connections, this book is ideal for the emerging community of scholars and students stemming from Visual Culture, Film and Media Studies, Architecture Studies and practice, Museum Studies, and scholars of Sociology and Anthropology as well as offering fresh insights into cutting-edge tools and practices for the rapidly growing field of Digital Humanities.

Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives

Author: Goody Niosi
Publisher: Heritage House Publishing Co
ISBN: 9781894384520
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description
The Order of British Columbia was established in 1989 to recognize and honour ordinary citizens who have made a difference in the lives of others. Goody Niosi offers the stories of 17 of these recipients, from well-known people like Rick Hansen and Robert Bateman to lesser-known heroes, including Dr. Michael O'Shaughnessy, who has dedicated his life to AIDS research; Joan Acosta, who created the revolutionary newspaper The Westcoast Reader and helped adults acquire literacy and language skills; and Ric Careless, who has worked hard to ensure that precious wilderness areas are protected for future generations. Also showcased are Geraldine Braak, Dr. Leonel Perra, Dr. A. Hayward Rogers, Dr. Roger Tonkin, Grace Nielson, Hilda Gregory, Mel Cooper, Richard Hunt, Ross Purse, Takao Tanabe, Tim Frick and Merve Wilkinson. The foreword is written by former Supreme Court Justice Allan McEachern.

Public History

Author: Thomas Cauvin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000576442
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Book Description
The second edition of Public History: A Textbook of Practice offers an updated guide to the many opportunities and challenges that public history practitioners can encounter in the field. Historians can play a dynamic and essential role in contributing to public understanding of the past, and those who work in historic preservation, in museums and archives, in government agencies, as consultants, as oral historians, or who manage crowdsourcing projects need very specific skills. This book links theory and practice and provides students and practitioners with the tools to do public history in a wide range of settings. This new edition reflects how much the field of public history has changed in the past few years, with public history now being more established and international. New chapters have therefore been added on the definition, history, and international scope of public history, as well as on specific practices and theories such as historical fictions, digital public history, and shared authority. Split into four sections, this textbook provides approaches, methodologies, and tools for historians and other public history practitioners to play a bigger role in public debates and public productions of historical interpretations: Part I focuses on the past, present, and future of public history. Part II explores public history sources, and offers an overview of the creation, collection, management, and preservation of materials (archives, material culture, oral history, or historical sites). Part III deals with the different ways in which public history practitioners can produce historical narratives through different media (including texts, fictions, audio-visual productions, exhibitions, and performances). Part IV discusses the opportunities and challenges that public history practitioners encounter when working with different collaborators. Whether in public history methods courses or as a resource for practicing public historians, this book lays the groundwork for making meaningful connections between historical sources and popular audiences.

Self-Representation and Digital Culture

Author: N. Thumim
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137265132
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Book Description
Taking a close look at ordinary people 'telling their own story', Nancy Thumim explores self-representations in contemporary digital culture in settings as diverse as reality TV, online storytelling, and oral histories displayed in museums.

Stories from small museums

Author: Fiona Candlin
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526166852
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 327

Book Description
During the late twentieth century, the number of museums in the UK dramatically increased. Typically small and independent, the new museums concentrated on local history, war and transport. This book asks who founded them, how and why. In order to find out more, Fiona Candlin, a professor in museology, and Toby Butler, an expert oral historian, travelled around the UK to meet the individuals, families, community groups and special interest societies who established the museums. The rich oral histories they collected provide a new account of recent museum history – one that weaves together personal experience and social change while putting ordinary people at the heart of cultural production. Combining academic rigour with a lively writing style, Stories from small museums is essential reading for students and museum enthusiasts alike.

Ordinary Person's Guide To Empire

Author: Arundhati Roy
Publisher: Penguin Books India
ISBN: 9780144001606
Category : Globalization
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Book Description
In Her Ordinary Person S Guide, Roy S Perfect Pitch And Sharp Scalpel Are, Once Again, A Wonder And A Joy To Behold. No Less Remarkable Is The Range Of Material Subjected To Her Sure And Easy Touch, And The Surprising Information She Reveals At Every Turn Noam Chomsky This Second Volume Of Arundhati Roy S Collected Non-Fiction Writing Brings Together Fourteen Essays Written Between June 2002 And November 2004. In These Essays She Draws The Thread Of Empire Through Seemingly Unconnected Arenas, Uncovering The Links Between America S War On Terror, The Growing Threat Of Corporate Power, The Response Of Nation States To Resistance Movements, The Role Of Ngos, Caste And Communal Politics In India, And The Perverse Machinery Of An Increasingly Corporatized Mass Media. Meticulously Researched And Carefully Argued, This Is A Necessary Work For Our Times. The Scale Of What Roy Surveys Is Staggering. Her Pointed Indictment Is Devastating New York Times Book Review She Raises Many Vital Questions [In This Book], Which We Can Ignore Only At Our Peril Statesman With Fierce Erudition And Brilliant Reasoning, Roy Dwells On Western Hypocrisy And Propaganda, Vehemently Questioning The Basis Of Biased International Politics Asian Age Whether You Agree With Her Or Disagree With Her, Adore Her Or Despise Her, You Ll Want To Read Her Today Reading Arundhati Roy Is How The Peace Movement Arms Itself. She Turns Our Grief And Rage Into Courage Naomi Klein

The Birth of the Museum

Author: Tony Bennett
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136115161
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
In a series of richly detailed case studies from Britian, Australia and North America, Tony Bennett investigates how nineteenth- and twentieth-century museums, fairs and exhibitions have organized their collections, and their visitors. Discussing the historical development of museums alongside that of the fair and the international exhibition, Bennett sheds new light upon the relationship between modern forms of official and popular culture. Using Foucaltian perspectives The Birth of the Museum explores how the public museum should be understood not just as a place of instruction, but as a reformatory of manners in which a wide range of regulated social routines and performances take place. This invigorating study enriches and challenges the understanding of the museum, and places it at the centre of modern relations between culture and government. For students of museum, cultural and sociology studies, this will be an asset to their reading list.

Museums, Collections and Social Repair in Vietnam

Author: Graeme Were
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000779416
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 99

Book Description
Museums, Collections and Social Repair in Vietnam analyses the relationship between museums, collections and social repair in contemporary Vietnam. Drawing on fieldwork in a range of museums in the country, alongside interviews with museum workers and stakeholders, and analyses of museum exhibitions, the book explores how museums help ordinary people overcome loss suffered during conflict. Focusing on key objects in museum collections that elicit strong emotions or feelings, Graeme Were examines their relationship to social repair and transformation, in order to understand what mobilises survivors, families and communities to recover and re-evaluate memory and give prominence to grievances and loss or future hopes and aspirations. Arguing that nationalist frameworks no longer adequately account for the diverse agendas of Vietnamese museums, this book brings into question the dynamics between history and memory; the capacity of the museum to repair injury, loss or suffering; and the limits of historical memory beyond the control of a one-party state. Museums, Collections and Social Repair in Vietnam analyses the role of museums in transforming lives and creating a just future. It will be of interest to academics and students engaged in the study of museums, heritage, Asia, tourism and anthropology.

The Museum of the Future

Author: Karl Borromäus Murr
Publisher: V&R Unipress
ISBN: 3847017055
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Book Description
Peter Sloterdijk sees our digitalized world in a "growing spatial crisis", accompanied by the danger of a "general virtuality of all relationships". Others view the digitalization of the world as opening up a grassroots democratic space that allows everyone access to culture. Against this backdrop, this anthology examines the spatial characteristics of the museum – between physical place and virtual space. The chapters collected here approach the museum space from various disciplinary perspectives, such as philosophy, history, art history, architecture, scenography, museum education and curatorial studies. At the same time, the contributions by international museum experts are assigned to different literary genres – fundamental considerations alternate with think pieces, case studies and interviews.