Museum Trouble

Museum Trouble PDF

Author: Ruth Hoberman

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2011-06-10

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 0813931363

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By 1901, the public museum was firmly established as an important national institution in British life. Its very centrality led to its involvement in a wide range of debates about art, knowledge, national identity, and individual agency. Ruth Hoberman argues that these debates concerned writers as well. Museum Trouble focuses on fiction written between 1890 and 1914 and the ways in which it engaged the issues dramatized by and within the museum. Those issues were many. Art critics argued about what kind of art to buy on behalf of the nation, how to display it, and whether salaried professionals or aristocratic amateurs should be in charge. Museum administrators argued about the best way to exhibit scientific and cultural artifacts to educate the masses while serving the needs of researchers. And novelists had their own concerns about an increasingly commercialized literary marketplace, the nature of aesthetic response, the impact of evolution and scientific materialism, and the relation of the individual to Britain’s national and imperial identity. In placing the many crucial museum scenes of Edwardian fiction in the context of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century cultural discourse, Museum Trouble shows how this turn-of-the-century literature anticipated many of the concerns of the modernist writers who followed.

Culture Strike

Culture Strike PDF

Author: Laura Raicovich

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2021-12-14

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1839760524

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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.

Museums in a Troubled World

Museums in a Troubled World PDF

Author: Robert R. Janes

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-05-12

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1134041691

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Are Museums Irrelevant? Museums are rarely acknowledged in the global discussion of climate change, environmental degradation, the inevitability of depleted fossil fuels, and the myriad local issues concerning the well-being of particular communities – suggesting the irrelevance of museums as social institutions. At the same time, there is a growing preoccupation among museums with the marketplace, and museums, unwittingly or not, are embracing the values of relentless consumption that underlie the planetary difficulties of today. Museums in a Troubled World argues that much more can be expected of museums as publicly supported and knowledge-based institutions. The weight of tradition and a lack of imagination are significant factors in museum inertia and these obstacles are also addressed. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, combining anthropology ethnography, museum studies and management theory, this book goes beyond conventional museum thinking. Robert R. Janes explores the meaning and role of museums as key intellectual and civic resources in a time of profound social and environmental change. This volume is a constructive examination of what is wrong with contemporary museums, written from an insider’s perspective that is grounded in both hope and pragmatism. The book’s conclusions are optimistic and constructive, and highlight the unique contributions that museums can make as social institutions, embedded in their communities, and owned by no one.

Museum Management

Museum Management PDF

Author: Kevin Moore

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9780415112796

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This invaluable introduction to key issues, controversies and debates collects essential writings by some of the leading authors in the field, and examines museum management in a world dominated by new and exciting heritage and leisure attractions.

People In Trouble

People In Trouble PDF

Author: Wilhelm Reich

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 1978-04

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0374510350

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First published by Reich in 1953, People in Trouble is an autobiographical work in which Reich describes the development of his sociological thinking from 1927 to 1937. In simple narrative form he recounts his personal experiences with major social and political events and ideas, and reveals how these experiences gradually led him to an awareness of the deep significance of the human character structure in shaping and responding to the social process. The importance of Karl Marx's work and its distortion by communist politicians plays an important role in Reich's account, as does the political activity in the International Psychoanalytic Association which led to his expulsion from that organization in 1934. The Norwegian press campaign against his biological experiments is also discussed. People in Trouble is the story of one man's courageous struggle to understand the political activity of his fellow men.

Museum Branding

Museum Branding PDF

Author: Margot Wallace

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2024-08-06

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1538185520

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Museums have unequaled brands in the world of learning and culture. They have earned the recognition and loyalty of their many audiences. The challenge is sustaining image, loyalty and support as audiences shift, grow, and change. Museum Branding: Reimagining the Museum is a forward-looking survey of museums as they navigate the present, and plan for the future, holding steady to their heritage. It looks at brands that have refreshed their identity, reframed their missions, and reconfirmed their right to audience loyalty and support. Museums of all sizes, genres, and geography – over forty of them – exemplify audience-centered branding practices outlined in nineteen chapters that include Collection and Exhibitions, Archives, Fundraising and Development, Partnerships, Talks and Speakers, and Videos. The chapter on Data adds a new perspective to branding literature. The chapter on Discussion Groups builds on the branding sustained and advanced by successful virtual programs. The Chapter on Research and Development gives essential priority developing relationships with prospective members, donors and supporters. The chapter on Publications shows the smart extension of branding into many platforms. An extensive index recognizes the value of this tool for searching specific concepts and museums.

Museum Practices and the Posthumanities

Museum Practices and the Posthumanities PDF

Author: Fiona R. Cameron

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-10-24

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 1351814559

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This book critiques modern museologies and curatorial practices that have been complicit in emerging existential crises. It confidently presents novel, more-than-human curatorial visions, methods, frameworks, policies, and museologies radically refiguring the epistemological foundations of curatorial, museological thinking, and practice for a habitable planet. Modern curatorial and museological practices are dominated by modern humanism in which capital growth, social, technological advancement, hubris, extraction, speciest logics, and colonial domination predominate, often without reflection. While history, science, and technology museums and their engagement with non-human worlds have always been ecological as an empirical reality, the human-centred frameworks and forms of human agency that institutions deploy tend to be non-cognizant of this reality. Museum Practices and the Posthumanities: Curating for Planetary Habitability reveals how these practices are ill-equipped to deal with the contemporary world of rapid digital transformations, post-Covid living, climate change, and its impacts among other societal changes, and it shows how museums might best meet these challenges by thinking with and in more-than-human worlds. This book is aimed at museological scholars and museum professionals, and it will provide them with the inspiration to conduct research on and curate from a different ecological reference point to promote a world good enough for all things to thrive in radical co-existence.