Storytelling in Museums

Author: Adina Langer
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538156954
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Book Description
With chapters written by a diverse set of practitioners from across the museum field and around the world, Storytelling in Museums explores the efficacy and ethics of storytelling in museums. The book shows how museums use personal, local, and specific stories to make visitors feel welcome while inspiring them to engage with new ideas and unfamiliar situations. At the same time, the book explores the responsibilities of museum practitioners toward the storytellers included in their narratives and how those responsibilities shift over time and manifest in different contexts. The book’s eighteen chapters represent a conversation among a diverse set of professionals for whom storytelling connotes their daily museum practice. As educators, collectors, curators, designers, marketers, researchers, planners, and collaborators, the authors of this book consider the “real work” of storytelling from every angle. From the inclusion of personal stories in educational programs to the meta-narratives on display in exhibitions, this book balances practical examples with ethical considerations, placing the praxis of storytelling within the larger context of the 21st century museum. The book moves beyond advocacy for storytelling as an essential part of the museum’s toolkit to explore the many ways in which museums use personal stories, and multiple storytelling techniques, to support the larger public narratives embedded in their missions. The contributors demonstrate how museums that emphasize storytelling from multiple angles can serve as a kind of counterpoint to our tendency to fixate on singular images of things we know little about. They encourage museums to both acknowledge that they cannot control the narrative and to embrace their power to contribute to it through the multivalent, multivocal stories they choose to share.

Storytelling Exhibitions

Author: Philip Hughes
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350105953
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Book Description
Storytelling Exhibitions describes the role and practice of modern 'spatial storytellers' and looks at the potential of exhibitions to shape our understanding of the world. It explains how curators, designers, artists and scientists combine to tell powerful stories through exhibition design. Exhibition designer and educator Philip Hughes shows how contemporary tools and technologies - digital reconstruction, 3D scanning and digital archives – interweave with traditional forms of informing, displaying and promoting to create powerful narrative spaces. Whether telling stories of politics, trends, society, war, science or history, Storytelling Exhibitions provides inspiration and guidance on designing installations which change the way we think. Examples included from: Te Papa, Wellington, New Zealand National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, USA Weltmuseum Wien, Austria Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, US Lascaux: Centre International de l'Art Pariétal in Montignac, France Stapferhaus, Lenzburg, Switizerland Micropia, Amsterdam, Netherlands ...and many more

Museum Making

Author: Suzanne Macleod
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136445749
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 488

Book Description
Over recent decades, many museums, galleries and historic sites around the world have enjoyed an unprecedented level of large-scale investment in their capital infrastructure, in building refurbishments and new gallery displays. This period has also seen the creation of countless new purpose-built museums and galleries, suggesting a fundamental re-evaluation of the processes of designing and shaping of museums. Museum Making: Narratives, Architectures, Exhibitions examines this re-making by exploring the inherently spatial character of narrative in the museum and its potential to connect on the deepest levels with human perception and imagination. Through this uniting theme, the chapters explore the power of narratives as structured experiences unfolding in space and time as well as the use of theatre, film and other technologies of storytelling by contemporary museum makers to generate meaningful and, it is argued here, highly effective and affective museum spaces. Contributions by an internationally diverse group of museum and heritage professionals, exhibition designers, architects and artists with academics from a range of disciplines including museum studies, theatre studies, architecture, design and history cut across traditional boundaries including the historical and the contemporary and together explore the various roles and functions of narrative as a mechanism for the creation of engaging and meaningful interpretive environments.

Museums and Forms of Digital Storytelling

Author: Elisa Bonacini
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Book Description

Design is Storytelling

Author: Ellen Lupton
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
ISBN: 9781942303190
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 159

Book Description
A playbook for creative thinking, created for contemporary students and practitioners working across the fields of graphic design, product design, service design and user experience. Design is Storytelling is a guide to thinking and making created for contemporary students and practitioners working across the fields of graphic design, product design, service design, and user experience. By grounding narrative concepts in fresh, concrete examples and demonstrations, this compelling book provides designers with tools and insights for shaping behaviour and engaging users. Compact, relevant and richly illustrated, the book is written with a sense of humour and a respect for the reader's time and intelligence. Design is Storytelling unpacks the elements of narrative into a fun and useful toolkit, bringing together principles from literary criticism, narratology, cognitive science, semiotics, phenomenology and critical theory to show how visual communication mobilizes instinctive biological processes as well as social norms and conventions. The book uses 250 illustrations to actively engage readers in the process of looking and understanding. This lively book shows how designers can use the principles of storytelling and visual thinking to create beautiful, surprising and effective outcomes. Although the book is full of practical advice for designers, it will also appeal to people more broadly involved in branding, marketing, business and communication.

Museums, Narratives, and Critical Histories

Author: Kerstin Barndt
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311078744X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
In response to systemic racism and institutions’ implications in histories of colonialism, nationalism, and exclusion, museum curators have embraced new ways of storytelling to face entangled memories and histories. Critical museum practices have consciously sought to unsettle established forms of representation, break with linear narratives of progress, and experiment with new modes of multivocal, multimedia, and subjective storytelling. The volume features analyses of narratives and narration in museums and heritage institutions today, as well as visions for future museum practices on a local, regional, national, transnational, and global scale. It is divided into three sections: Narrative Theory and Temporality, Ruptures and Repair, and Difficult Memories and Histories. Essays from a variety of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences examine museum practices in history, memorial, anthropological, and art museums across six continents. They develop narratological categories, reflect on immersive and virtual narratives, challenge colonial violence and hegemonic forms of representation, query the performance of heritage, parse exhibition design, and unearth techniques to express narratives of social justice.

Culture Strike

Author: Laura Raicovich
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1839760524
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
A leading activist museum director explains why museums are at the center of a political storm In an age of protest, cultural institutions have come under fire. Protestors have mobilized against sources of museum funding, as happened at the Metropolitan Museum, and against board appointments, forcing tear gas manufacturer Warren Kanders to resign at the Whitney. That is to say nothing of demonstrations against exhibitions and artworks. Protests have roiled institutions across the world, from the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim to the Akron Art Museum. A popular expectation has grown that galleries and museums should work for social change. As Director of the Queens Museum, Laura Raicovich helped turn that New York muni- cipal institution into a public commons for art and activism, organizing high-powered exhibitions that doubled as political protests. Then in January 2018, she resigned, after a dispute with the Queens Museum board and city officials. This public controversy followed the museum’s responses to Donald Trump’s election, including her objections to the Israeli government using the museum for an event featuring Vice President Mike Pence. In this lucid and accessible book, Raicovich examines some of the key museum flashpoints and provides historical context for the current controversies. She shows how art museums arose as colonial institutions bearing an ideology of neutrality that masks their role in upholding conservative, capitalist values. And she suggests ways museums can be reinvented to serve better, public ends.

Simon at the Art Museum

Author: Christina Soontornvat
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 1534437525
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 40

Book Description
A little boy visits an art museum for the first time in this fun, sweet picture book about first experiences and seeing things from new perspectives. Simon is having a great time at the museum with his parents. There are slippery, slidey floors! Pigeons flying around the reflecting pool! And cheesecake in the café! But they’re not really here for any of that. No, Simon has to look at art. And more art. So. Much. Art. There’s so much art that soon Simon needs to take a break and finds somewhere to sit. From his bench, he begins to notice how many different people are visiting the museum and the many different ways they react to the art they see. Some people are alone. Some are in groups. Some people smile. Some shake their heads. Some even shed a tear. And Simon is right in the center of it, watching until he’s inspired to give all the art another try. By the end of the day, he may even find a piece that can rival a slice of cheesecake!

Museum Narrative and Storytelling

Author: Gregory (ed.) Chamberlain
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description

Listening to the Collective Voice

Author: Joan Ramos Flores
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Historical museums
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
History museums and historical society museums value the role of docents and living history interpreters who provide adult visitors with a window to the past. However, if interpretation does not include a variety of perspectives, the connections museum visitors make to the past can be limited. Professional storytellers can draw out the collective voice-the stories of lesser known individuals and underrepresented groups-bringing history to life from multiple vantage points and creating a unique interpretive experience for adults. A survey of thirty-three California history museums and historical society museums revealed that few of these museums are utilizing storytelling programs as history interpretation; none have hosted storytelling programs specifically for adults. This project focuses on how professional storytellers are bringing the collective voice to listeners, and how these programs can benefit adult visitors to history museums. This project introduces the museum field to the storytelling profession and to storytellers who create history stories based on personal accounts and academic scholarship. Adults have enjoyed history-based storytelling programs in venues outside of museums. Library and college storytelling programs for adults serve to illustrate how history-based storytelling can be applied to the museum setting. As an interpretive tool, storytelling can challenge the minds and touch the hearts of listeners while provoking audiences to think in new ways about history. A history- based storytelling program for adults has the potential to bring a diversity of voices to the museum experience and embrace controversial issues in our society. For these reasons, storytelling programs for adults deserve wider implementation by history museums and historical society museums.