Making Museums Matter

Making Museums Matter PDF Author: Stephen E. Weil
Publisher: Smithsonian Books (DC)
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Book Description
Weil has long been considered one of the museum community's most insightful commentators. In this volume of 29 essays, his overarching concern is that museums be able to 'earn their keep' in an environment of potentially shrinking resources.

Museums Matter

Museums Matter PDF Author: James Cuno
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226126803
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 166

Book Description
The concept of an encyclopedic museum was born of the Enlightenment, a manifestation of society’s growing belief that the spread of knowledge and the promotion of intellectual inquiry were crucial to human development and the future of a rational society. But in recent years, museums have been under attack, with critics arguing that they are little more than relics and promoters of imperialism. Could it be that the encyclopedic museum has outlived its usefulness? With Museums Matter, James Cuno, president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, replies with a resounding “No!” He takes us on a brief tour of the modern museum, from the creation of the British Museum—the archetypal encyclopedic collection—to the present, when major museums host millions of visitors annually and play a major role in the cultural lives of their cities. Along the way, Cuno acknowledges the legitimate questions about the role of museums in nation-building and imperialism, but he argues strenuously that even a truly national museum like the Louvre can’t help but open visitors’ eyes and minds to the wide diversity of world cultures and the stunning art that is our common heritage. Engaging with thinkers such as Edward Said and Martha Nussbaum, and drawing on examples from the politics of India to the destruction of the Bramiyan Buddhas to the history of trade and travel, Cuno makes a case for the encyclopedic museum as a truly cosmopolitan institution, promoting tolerance, understanding, and a shared sense of history—values that are essential in our ever more globalized age. Powerful, passionate, and to the point, Museums Matter is the product of a lifetime of working in and thinking about museums; no museumgoer should miss it.

Museum Matters

Museum Matters PDF Author: Miruna Achim
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 081653957X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Book Description
Museum Matters tells the story of Mexico's national collections through the trajectories of its objects. The essays in this book show the many ways in which things matter and affect how Mexico imagines its past, present, and future.

Making Museums Matter

Making Museums Matter PDF Author: Stephen Weil
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution
ISBN: 158834357X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Book Description
In this volume of 29 essays, Weil's overarching concern is that museums be able to “earn their keep”—that they make themselves matter—in an environment of potentially shrinking resources. Also included in this collection are reflections on the special qualities of art museums, an investigation into the relationship of current copyright law to the visual arts, a detailed consideration of how the museums and legal system of the United States have coped with the problem of Nazi-era art, and a series of delightfully provocative training exercises for those anticipating entry into the museum field.

Positioning Your Museum as a Critical Community Asset

Positioning Your Museum as a Critical Community Asset PDF Author: Robert P. Connolly
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442275715
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Book Description
In this how-to guide, practitioners at cultural heritage venues share their experiences in building sustainable relationships with their geographic and demographic communities. The volume includes practical discussions of activity types that museums can employ to build relationships with their communities including education, advocacy, co-creative, while serving as a community asset and resource. Case studies include direct application of successes and lessons learned with an emphasis on small to medium sized institutions with limited staff and budgets. Highlights include: Thematic discussions on topics such as building an advocacy network between the museum and community; developing cultural heritage institutions as critical and essential components of educational systems; museum response to community expressed needs through a co-creative approach; the varied means for developing community members as cultural heritage stakeholders; and positioning the cultural heritage institution as an integral community asset. Twenty case studies directly apply the thematic discussions in small to medium-sized museum contexts. Extensive list of resources including digital links to forms, workbooks, and guides produced in the case studies. A list of national organizations and an extensive bibliography on community museum engagement. Specifically addressed to smaller institutions with limited budgets and limited or no full-time staff, the volume includes cost-effective projects that can be completed for $1,500 or less.

Reinventing the Museum

Reinventing the Museum PDF Author: Gail Anderson
Publisher: Altamira Press
ISBN: 9780759119642
Category : Cultural property
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Reinventing the Museum presents iconic essays from the 20th century and the latest thinking of the 21st century on ideology, public engagement, and new frameworks. Its 44 seminal articles and selected bibliography guide students through nearly a century of museum thought and theory.

Museums in Motion

Museums in Motion PDF Author: Edward Porter Alexander
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 9780759105096
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
In 1979, Edward P. Alexander's Museums in Motion was hailed as a much-needed addition to the museum literature. In combining the history of museums since the eighteenth century with a detailed examination of the function of museums and museum workers in modern society, it served as an essential resource for those seeking to enter to the museum profession and for established professionals looking for an expanded understanding of their own discipline. Now, Mary Alexander has produced a newly revised edition of the classic text, bringing it the twenty-first century with coverage of emerging trends, resources, and challenges. New material also includes a discussion of the children's museum as a distinct type of institution and an exploration of the role computers play in both outreach and traditional in-person visits.

Things American

Things American PDF Author: Jeffrey Trask
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812205650
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

Book Description
American art museums of the Gilded Age were established as civic institutions intended to provide civilizing influences to an urban public, but the parochial worldview of their founders limited their democratic potential. Instead, critics have derided nineteenth-century museums as temples of spiritual uplift far removed from the daily experiences and concerns of common people. But in the early twentieth century, a new generation of cultural leaders revolutionized ideas about art institutions by insisting that their collections and galleries serve the general public. Things American: Art Museums and Civic Culture in the Progressive Era tells the story of the civic reformers and arts professionals who brought museums from the realm of exclusivity into the progressive fold of libraries, schools, and settlement houses. Jeffrey Trask's history focuses on New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, which stood at the center of this movement to preserve artifacts from the American past for social change and Americanization. Metropolitan trustee Robert de Forest and pioneering museum professional Henry Watson Kent influenced a wide network of fellow reformers and cultural institutions. Drawing on the teachings of John Dewey and close study of museum developments in Germany and Great Britain, they expanded audiences, changed access policies, and broadened the scope of what museums collect and display. They believed that tasteful urban and domestic environments contributed to good citizenship and recognized the economic advantages of improving American industrial production through design education. Trask follows the influence of these people and ideas through the 1920s and 1930s as the Met opened its innovative American Wing while simultaneously promoting modern industrial art. Things American is not only the first critical history of the Metropolitan Museum. The book also places museums in the context of the cultural politics of the progressive movement—illustrating the limits of progressive ideas of democratic reform as well as the boldness of vision about cultural capital promoted by museums and other cultural institutions.

Matters of Belonging

Matters of Belonging PDF Author: Wayne Modest
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789088907784
Category : Belonging (Social psychology)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This publication examines creative and collaborative practices within ethnographic and world cultures museums across Europe as part of their responses to ongoing public and scholarly critique.

Do Museums Still Need Objects?

Do Museums Still Need Objects? PDF Author: Steven Conn
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812221559
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
In this broadly conceived study Steven Conn examines the development of American museums across the twentieth century with a historian's attention and a critic's eye. He focuses on an array of museum types and asks illuminating questions about the relationship between museums and American cultural life.
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