The Civic Value of Museums
Author: Thomas Ritchie Adam
Publisher:
Published: 1937
Total Pages: 140
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Discusses the evolution, structure, and function of the human and animal skeletal systems.
Lanterna Rally
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The Civic Value of Museums
The Art Museum as Educator
Author: Barbara Y. Newsom
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2023-12-22
Total Pages: 2255
ISBN-13: 0520309537
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.
The Value of Museums
Author: John H. Falk
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2021-10-11
Total Pages: 253
ISBN-13: 1538149222
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Written by one of the world’s leading authorities on the public use of museums, The Value of Museums: Enhancing Societal Well-Being provides a timely and compelling way for museum professionals to better understand and explain the benefits created by museum experiences. The key insight this book advances is that museum experiences successfully support a major driver of human behavior – the desire for enhanced well-being. Knowingly or not, the business of museums has always been to support and enhance the public’s personal, intellectual, social and physical well-being. Over the years, museums have excelled at this task, as evidenced by the almost indelible memories museum experiences engender. People report that museum experiences make them feel better about themselves, more informed, happier, healthier and more enriched; all outcomes directly related to enhanced well-being. Historically, benefits such as enhanced well-being were seen as vague and intangible, but Falk shows that enhanced well-being, when properly conceptualized, can not only be defined and measured, but also can be monetized. However, as many in the museum world are painfully aware, what worked yesterday for museums may not work in the future as recessions and pandemics rapidly alter the landscape. Although insights about past experiences are interesting, what is needed now is a roadmap for the future. Fortunately for museums, the public’s need for enhanced well-being will not be disappearing any time soon; enhanced well-being is now, and will always be, a fundamental and on-going human need. What has and will change, though, is how people choose to satisfy their well-being-related needs. The Value of Museums provides tangible suggestions for how museum professionals can build on their legacy of success at supporting the public’s well-being, adapting to changing times, and remaining relevant and sustainable in the future.
The Civic Mission of Museums
Author: Anthony Pennay
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2020-12-15
Total Pages: 151
ISBN-13: 1538131862
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Museums have long sought to maintain relevance in the daily lives of their communities. Over the past several decades, museums have shifted, as a field, from a focus on collections to a focus on connecting with audiences. More recently, museums must confront political polarization and a decreasing sense of trust in nearly every public institution. As a result, few institutions are better positioned to serve the country than museums. In fact, polls show that museums rank among the most trusted institutions in the country, regardless of political belief. During tumultuous times, this trust means that museums have a unique and important responsibility to fulfill their civic mission. A century ago, John Cotton Dana argued that the most important thing a museum can do is “produce a public benefit.” The Civic Mission of Museums argues that museums play an essential role in the cultivation of engaged and informed citizens. The book outlines a spectrum of civic learning that includes: civic knowledge, civic mindset, civic skillset, and civic action. It offers concrete examples of impactful civic programming, exhibits, and public engagement from a diverse set of museums. It ends with a practical toolkit, gleaned from across the country, for museum professionals to utilize.
Museum Rhetoric
Author: M. Elizabeth Weiser
Publisher: Penn State Press
Published: 2017-10-16
Total Pages: 233
ISBN-13: 0271080221
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In today’s diverse societies, museums are the primary institutions within the public sphere in which individuals can both engage critical thought and celebrate community. This volume uses the lens of rhetoric to explore the role these societal repositories play in establishing and altering cultural heritage and national identity. Based on fieldwork conducted in over sixty museums in twenty-two countries across six continents, Museum Rhetoric explores how heritage museum exhibits persuade visitors to unite their own sense of identity with that of the broader civic society and how the latter changes in response. Elizabeth Weiser examines what compels communities, organizations, and nations to create museum spaces, and how museums operate as sites of both civic engagement and rhetorical persuasion. Moving beyond rhetorical explorations of museums as “memory sites,” she shows how they intentionally straddle the divides between style and content, intellect and affect, and unity and diversity, and why their portrayal of the past matters to civic life—and particularly studies of nationalism—in the present and future. Deeply researched and artfully argued, Museum Rhetoric sheds light on the public impact of cultural and aesthetic heritage and opens avenues of inquiry for scholars of museum studies and public history.
Mastering Civic Engagement
Author:
Publisher: American Alliance of Museums Press
Published: 2002
Total Pages: 124
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This call to action from AAM's Museums and Community Initiative challenges museums to pursue their potential as active, visible players in community life. Essays and reflections offer food for thought on the complex process of changing the terms of engagement between communities and museums.
The Great Good Place
Author: Ray Oldenburg
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 1999-08-18
Total Pages: 377
ISBN-13: 0786752416
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The landmark survey that celebrates all the places where people hang out--and is helping to spawn their revival A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice "Third places," or "great good places," are the many public places where people can gather, put aside the concerns of home and work (their first and second places), and hang out simply for the pleasures of good company and lively conversation. They are the heart of a community's social vitality and the grassroots of a democracy. Author Ray Oldenburg portrays, probes, and promotes th4ese great good places--coffee houses, cafes, bookstores, hair salons, bars, bistros, and many others both past and present--and offers a vision for their revitalization. Eloquent and visionary, this is a compelling argument for these settings of informal public life as essential for the health both of our communities and ourselves. And its message is being heard: Today, entrepreneurs from Seattle to Florida are heeding the call of The Great Good Place--opening coffee houses, bookstores, community centers, bars, and other establishments and proudly acknowledging their indebtedness to this book.
The Educational Value of Museums
Museum Activism
Author: Robert R. Janes
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-01-10
Total Pages: 406
ISBN-13: 1351251023
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Only a decade ago, the notion that museums, galleries and heritage organisations might engage in activist practice, with explicit intent to act upon inequalities, injustices and environmental crises, was met with scepticism and often derision. Seeking to purposefully bring about social change was viewed by many within and beyond the museum community as inappropriately political and antithetical to fundamental professional values. Today, although the idea remains controversial, the way we think about the roles and responsibilities of museums as knowledge based, social institutions is changing. Museum Activism examines the increasing significance of this activist trend in thinking and practice. At this crucial time in the evolution of museum thinking and practice, this ground-breaking volume brings together more than fifty contributors working across six continents to explore, analyse and critically reflect upon the museum’s relationship to activism. Including contributions from practitioners, artists, activists and researchers, this wide-ranging examination of new and divergent expressions of the inherent power of museums as forces for good, and as activists in civil society, aims to encourage further experimentation and enrich the debate in this nascent and uncertain field of museum practice. Museum Activism elucidates the largely untapped potential for museums as key intellectual and civic resources to address inequalities, injustice and environmental challenges. This makes the book essential reading for scholars and students of museum and heritage studies, gallery studies, arts and heritage management, and politics. It will be a source of inspiration to museum practitioners and museum leaders around the globe.
