Modernity and the Museum in the Arabian Peninsula

Author: Karen Exell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317279018
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Book Description
Modernity and the Museum in the Arabian Peninsula is dedicated to the recent and rapid high-profile development of museums in the Arabian Peninsula, focusing on the a number of the Arabian Peninsula states: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and theUAE. These Gulf states are dynamically involved in the establishment of museums to preserve and , represent their distinct national culture and heritage, as well as engaging in the regional and global art worlds through the construction of state-of-the-art art museums. Alongside such developments is a rich world of collection and displaying material culture in homes and private museums that is little known to the outside world. Museum Studies literature has struggled to keep pace with such developments and Modernity and the Museum in the Arabian Peninsula is the first book to coherently present: a contemporary overview of the ever-evolving landscape of museums and related heritage projects in the Arabian Peninsula a critical evaluation of the nature of these museum projects within the political and cultural conditions in the Arabian Peninsula suggestions for productive ways forward for museum developments in the Arabian Peninsula Museums Studies students and museum professionals now have a book that fills an important gap in the picture of the museum worldwide. Contextualising this study in the history and politics of the region, from a scholar working within the region, this in-depth overview and critical analysis of museums in the Arabian Peninsula stands alone as an entry into this important topic.

Museums of the Arabian Peninsula

Author: Sarina Wakefield
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429624336
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
Museums of the Arabian Peninsula offers new insights into the history and development of museums within the region. Recognising and engaging with varied approaches to museum development and practice, the book offers in-depth critical analyses from a range of viewpoints and disciplines. Drawing on regional and international scholarship, the book provides a critical and detailed analysis of museum and heritage institutions in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Yemen. Questioning and engaging with issues related to the institutionalisation of cultural heritage, contributors provide original analyses of current practice and challenges within the region. Considering how these challenges connect to broader issues within the international context, the book offers the opportunity to examine how museums are actively produced and consumed from both the inside and the outside. This critical analysis also enables debates to emerge that question the appropriateness of existing models and methods and provide suggestions for future research and practice. Museums of the Arabian Peninsula offers fresh perspectives that reveal how Gulf museums operate from local, regional and transnational perspectives. The volume will be a key reference point for academics and students working in the fields of museum and heritage studies, anthropology, cultural studies, history, politics and Gulf and Middle East Studies.

Museums in Arabia

Author: Karen Exell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317092767
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Book Description
Museum activity has, in recent years, undergone major and rapid development in the Arabian Peninsula, with the regeneration of existing museums as well as the establishment of new ones. Alongside such rapid expansion, questions are inevitably raised as to the new challenges museums face in this region and whether the museum, as a central focus of heritage preservation, also runs the risk of overshadowing local forms of heritage performance and preservation. With contributions from leading academics from a range of disciplines and heritage practitioners with first-hand experience of working in the region, this volume addresses the issues and challenges facing museums in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yemen and the UAE. It focuses on the themes of politics, public engagement and the possibility of a new museum paradigm which might appropriately reflect the interests and culture of the region. The interdisciplinary approaches analyse museum development from both an inside and outside perspective, suggesting that museums do not follow a uniform trajectory across the region, but are embedded within each states’ socio-cultural context, individual government agendas and political realities. Including case study analysis, which brings the more marginal nations into the debates, as well as new empirical data and critical evaluation of the role of the museum in the Arabian Peninsula societies, this book adds fresh perspectives to the study of Gulf heritage and museology. It will appeal to regional and international practitioners and academics across the disciplines of museum studies, cultural studies, and anthropology as well as to anyone with an interest in the Gulf and Middle East.

Cultural Heritage in the Arabian Peninsula

Author: Karen Exell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317156498
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
Heritage projects in the Arabian Peninsula are developing rapidly. Museums and heritage sites are symbols of shifting national identities, and a way of placing the Arabian Peninsula states on the international map. Global, i.e. Western, heritage standards and practices have been utilised for the rapid injection of heritage expertise in museum development and site management and for international recognition. The use of Western heritage models in the Arabian Peninsula inspires two key areas for research which this book examines: the obscuring of indigenous concepts and practices of heritage and expressions of cultural identity; and the tensions between local/community concepts of heritage and identity and the new national identities being constructed through museums and heritage sites at a state level.

Reimagining Museums

Author: Pamela Erskine-Loftus
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781907697647
Category : Museum exhibits
Languages : en
Pages : 701

Book Description
The Gulf States have activated the most explosive museum building boom per capita in history. And with it a fundamental rethinking of museums' role. Currently museums see themselves as a place rather than a process - but there is nothing inherent to the ICOM museum definition which requires a museum to function, engage, or operate in the way Western museums do... Economic growth in the Gulf States of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Oman and Saudi Arabia is happening at extreme speed, with results both familiar and spectacular: ultra-modern cities, major new tourism destinations, and unprecedented global economic engagement through huge sovereign wealth funds investing worldwide. Mirroring this development, the last five years have also witnessed extensive and rapid growth in museum activity, with the regeneration of existing museums, the founding of major new ones, and the creation of international satellites. Reimagining Museums is the first book to examine the emerging - and innovative - globally-significant museum developments taking place in this fascinating and increasingly influential region. Ultimately its contents aim to inspire museum practice both in the region and around the world. Publisher's blurb.

Representing the Nation

Author: Pamela Erskine-Loftus
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317429869
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
The 1970s saw the emergence and subsequent proliferation across the Arabian Peninsula of ‘national museums’, institutions aimed at creating social cohesion and affiliation to the state within a disparate population. Representing the Nation examines the wide-ranging use of exhibitionary forms of national identity projection via consideration of their motivations, implications (current and future), possible historical backgrounds, official and unofficial meanings, and meanings for both the user/visitor and the multiple creators. The book responds to, due to the importance placed on tradition, heritage and national identity across all the states of the Peninsula, and the growth of re-imagined and new museums, the need for far greater discussion and research in these areas.

Museums of the Arabian Peninsula

Author: Sarina Wakefield
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429624778
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 244

The Global Spectacular

Author: Karen Exell
Publisher: Lund Humphries Publishers Limited
ISBN: 9781848222496
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
"This book provides, for the first time, a visual documentation of the wave of 'starchitect' designed museums under construction in certain Arabian Peninsula states, in China, and emerging economies, such as Azerbaijan and India. It offers a sustained architectural critique of the style of these new museums and suggests they represent a new dynamic in the production of cultural spaces. Karen Exell argues projects and finished buildings by the likes of Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry and Norman Foster+Associates are less connected to regional cultural production than to globalized capitalist modernity, and contrasts this globalised aesthetic with the architecture of smaller museums that responds to more traditional regional materials and construction methods. These projects are less well known, but no less striking in their thoughtful and richly contextualised architectural approach, and reveal a nuanced interpretation of the role and function of contemporary museums. For anyone seeking to understand the profusion of grand architectural projects within the cultural sector of emerging economies, The Global Spectacular provides invaluable insight into the varying socio-economic contexts driving their development and poses vital questions about their likely impact."--Page 4 of cover.

The Nance Museum

Author: Paul J. Nance
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Book Description

Roads of Arabia

Author: Musée du Louvre
Publisher: Somogy Art Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 616

Book Description
Documenting the recent studies conducted on a highly original, beautiful, and long-neglected site by excavation teams, this exploration reveals the hidden treasures of a near-eastern civilization. More than 350 art masterpieces, mostly unknown to a foreign public and dating from prehistoric times to modern days, introduce the life and culture of a land of exchanges located at the crossroad of major civilizations--including the Mediterraneans, Mesopotamians, and Indians--which today constitutes Saudi Arabia. The numerous testimonies include the necropolis of Hegra, a smaller version of Petra inscribed on the UNESCO World heritage list; Mecqua, the fortress of Teima, which shows strong Mesopotamian and Egyptian influence; and the Dedan site, which is characterized by monumental sculpture of Ptolemaic inspiration. Precious dishes and jewelry, monumental sculptures, temples, and palaces ornate with frescoes fill the pages of this sumptuous examination.