Museums in Focus – serie

Museums as Agents for Social Change is the first comprehensive text to examine museum practice in a decolonised moment, moving beyond known roles of object collection and presentation. Drawing on studies of Mutare museum, a regional museum in Eastern Zimbabwe, this book considers how museums with inherited colonial legacies are dealing with their new environments. The book provides an examination of Mutare museum’s activism in engaging with topical issues affecting its surrounding community and Chipangura and Mataga demonstrate how new forms of engagement are being deployed to attract new audiences, whilst dealing with issues such as economic livelihoods, poverty, displacement, climate change and education. Illustrating how recent programmes have helped to reposition Mutare museum as a decolonial agent of social change and an important community anchor institution, the book also demonstrates how other museums can move beyond the colonial preoccupation with the gathering of collections, conservation and presentation of cultural heritage to the public. Museums as Agents for Social Change will primarily be of interest to academics and students working in the fields of museum and heritage studies, history, archaeology and anthropology. It should also be appealing to museum professionals around the world who are interested in learning more about how to decolonise their museum.

Digital Access and Museums as Platforms draws on interviews with museum practitioners, along with a range of case studies from public and private institutions, in order to investigate the tensions and benefits involved in making cultural collections available using digital technologies. Taking a media and critical studies approach to the museum and raising questions about the role of privately owned search engines in facilitating museum experiences, the book questions who collects what, for whom objects are collected and what purpose these objects and collections serve. Connecting fieldwork undertaken in Australia and New Zealand with the global practices of technology companies, Wilson-Barnao brings attention to an emerging new model of digital ownership and moderation. Considering the synergising of these institutions with media systems, which are now playing a more prominent role in facilitating access to culture, the book also explores the motivations of different cultural workers for constructing the museum as a mediatised location. Digital Access and Museums as Platforms will be of interest to academics and students working in the fields of museum studies, art, culture, media studies and digital humanities. Weighing in on conversations about how technologies are being incorporated into museums, the book should also be useful to practitioners working in museums and galleries around the world.

Racism is a hot topic in museums today, as well as an urgent social issue. Focused on the broad field of multicultural policy, Museums and Racism examines how the Immigration Museum in Melbourne, Australia, has responded to political culture and public debate around racism.Analysis focuses on the conceptualization of the Immigration Museum in the mid-1990s, and on the most recent permanent exhibition to be opened there, in 2011, which coincided with the publication of a new multicultural policy for Australia. The opening of the National Museum of Australia in Canberra in the intervening period is also examined in some detail, as a comparative case study to provide a sense of the broader national social and political context. Message argues that each of the three episodes demonstrates the close relationship between museum and exhibition development on the one hand, and policy, politics, and public opinion on the other hand. Including a discussion of examples from the United States and other relevant contexts, Museums and Racism is key reading for students and scholars of museum studies and cultural studies around the world. The book should also be of great interest to museum practitioners and policymakers in the area of multiculturalism.

Museums and Atlantic Slavery explores how slavery, the Atlantic slave trade, and enslaved people are represented through words, visual images, artifacts, and audiovisual materials in museums in Europe and the Americas. Divided into four chapters, the book addresses four recurrent themes: wealth and luxury; victimhood and victimization; resistance and rebellion; and resilience and achievement. Considering the roles of various social actors who have contributed to the introduction of slavery in the museum in the last thirty years, the analysis draws on selected exhibitions, and institutions entirely dedicated to slavery, as well as national, community, plantation, and house museums in the United States, England, France, and Brazil. Engaging with literature from a range of disciplines, including history, anthropology, sociology, art history, tourism and museum studies, Araujo provides an overview of a topic that has not yet been adequately discussed and analysed within the museum studies field.Museums and Atlantic Slavery encourages scholars, students, and museum professionals to critically engage with representations of slavery in museums. The book will help readers to recognize how depictions of human bondage in museums and exhibitions often fail to challenge racism and white supremacy inherited from the period of slavery.

Museums and Atlantic Slavery explores how slavery, the Atlantic slave trade, and enslaved people are represented through words, visual images, artifacts, and audiovisual materials in museums in Europe and the Americas. Divided into four chapters, the book addresses four recurrent themes: wealth and luxury; victimhood and victimization; resistance and rebellion; and resilience and achievement. Considering the roles of various social actors who have contributed to the introduction of slavery in the museum in the last thirty years, the analysis draws on selected exhibitions, and institutions entirely dedicated to slavery, as well as national, community, plantation, and house museums in the United States, England, France, and Brazil. Engaging with literature from a range of disciplines, including history, anthropology, sociology, art history, tourism and museum studies, Araujo provides an overview of a topic that has not yet been adequately discussed and analysed within the museum studies field.Museums and Atlantic Slavery encourages scholars, students, and museum professionals to critically engage with representations of slavery in museums. The book will help readers to recognize how depictions of human bondage in museums and exhibitions often fail to challenge racism and white supremacy inherited from the period of slavery.

Sharing Authority in the Museum provides a detailed and fully contextualised study of a heritage assemblage over time, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Focussing on Māori objects, predominantly originating from the Ngā Paerangi tribe, housed in Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, the book examines thenuances of cross-cultural interactions between an indigenous community and an anthropological museum.Analysis centres on the legacy of historic ethnographic collecting on indigenous communities and museums, and the impact of different value systems and world views on access to heritage objects. Questions of curatorial responsibilities and authority over access rights are explored. Proposing a method for indigenous engagement to address this legacy, and making recommendations to guide participants when forging relationships based around indigenous cultural heritage, Michelle Horwood shows how to negotiate power and authority within these assemblages. She argues that by doing this and acknowledging and communicating our difficult histories, together we can move from collaborative approaches to shared authority and indigenous self-determination, progressing the task of decolonising the museum.Addressing a salient, complex issue by way of a grounded case study, Sharing Authority in the Museum is key reading for museum practitioners working with ethnographic collections, as well as scholars and students working in the fields of museum, heritage, Indigenous or cultural studies. It should also be of great interest to indigenous communities wishing to take the lessons learned from Ngā Paerangi’s experiences further within their own spheres of museum engagement.

Self-Determined First Nations Museums and Colonial Contestation explores Indigenous practices of curation, object repatriation, and cross-cultural community engagement in a dynamic Koori museum.Grounded in the fact that Gunai Kurnai people have never ceded sovereignty, the text reorients dominant temporal and colonial approaches of museum studies to document and theorise Gunai Kurnai self-presentation and community engagement in the Krowathunkooloong Keeping Place. Researched and co-authored by the Cultural Manager of the Keeping Place, Gunai Kurnai Monero Ngarigo man Robert Hudson, and white Historian Shannon Woodcock, the book traces the temporal, social, and cultural considerations of the Elders who curated the permanent exhibition in the early 1990s. Discussing community management of a collection growing through the ongoing repatriation of tools, art, and Ancestor remains, the text also explores how Robert Hudson engages with visitors to the Keeping Place and local colonial history museums, and theorises the power of Gunai Kurnai work with individuals and institutions in the small museum context. Finally, Hudson and Woodcock demonstrate that the Keeping Place articulates sophisticated Gunai Kurnai-grounded methodologies of museum practice in relation to international critical Indigenous studies scholarship.Self-Determined First Nations Museums and Colonial Contestation provides a vital case study of an Indigenous museum space written from an inside perspective. As such, the book will be essential reading for scholars and students engaged in the study of museums and heritage, Indigenous peoples, decolonisation, race, anthropology, culture, and history.

Self-Determined First Nations Museums and Colonial Contestation explores Indigenous practices of curation, object repatriation, and cross-cultural community engagement in a dynamic Koori museum.Grounded in the fact that Gunai Kurnai people have never ceded sovereignty, the text reorients dominant temporal and colonial approaches of museum studies to document and theorise Gunai Kurnai self-presentation and community engagement in the Krowathunkooloong Keeping Place. Researched and co-authored by the Cultural Manager of the Keeping Place, Gunai Kurnai Monero Ngarigo man Robert Hudson, and white Historian Shannon Woodcock, the book traces the temporal, social, and cultural considerations of the Elders who curated the permanent exhibition in the early 1990s. Discussing community management of a collection growing through the ongoing repatriation of tools, art, and Ancestor remains, the text also explores how Robert Hudson engages with visitors to the Keeping Place and local colonial history museums, and theorises the power of Gunai Kurnai work with individuals and institutions in the small museum context. Finally, Hudson and Woodcock demonstrate that the Keeping Place articulates sophisticated Gunai Kurnai-grounded methodologies of museum practice in relation to international critical Indigenous studies scholarship.Self-Determined First Nations Museums and Colonial Contestation provides a vital case study of an Indigenous museum space written from an inside perspective. As such, the book will be essential reading for scholars and students engaged in the study of museums and heritage, Indigenous peoples, decolonisation, race, anthropology, culture, and history.

Interpreting Objects in the Hybrid Museum examines the recent trend for converged collecting institutions and uses its investigation as a catalyst for critical reflection by all stakeholders on the risks, as well as advantages, of integration for cultural engagement. Drawing on three case studies of restructured cultural organisations in Australia and New Zealand, Robinson provides valuable insights into the conceptual and practical ways in which hybridised collecting institutions operate. Reflecting on the ultimate value of converged institutions for the communities they serve, the book uncovers the dangers of misalignment between bureaucratic decision-making and the creation of cultural meaning. Actively contesting policy assumptions about the benefits of integrating museums with other kinds of cultural institutions, the book’s analysis of empirical evidence provides an important counterbalance by exposing the impacts of supposedly benign structural changes to museum organisations on fundamental processes of research, documentation and contextualisation of collections. Interpreting Objects in the Hybrid Museum highlights the consequences of policy decisions on the distinctive interpretive role of museums. As such, the book should be of interest to a range of academic and professional audiences, including scholars and students in the fields of museum and heritage studies, library and archival science, cultural studies and politics. It should also be essential reading for cultural heritage practitioners working across the museum, heritage, library, archive and gallery sectors.

Repatriation of Indigenous Cultural Heritage examines how returned materials - objects, photographs, audio and manuscripts - are being received and reintegrated into the ongoing social and cultural lives of Aboriginal Australians. Combining a critical examination of the making of these collections with an assessment of their contemporary significance, the book exposes the opportunities and challenges involved in returning cultural heritage for the purposes of maintaining, preserving or reviving cultural practice. Drawing on ethnographic work undertaken with Aboriginal communities and the institutions that hold significant collections, the author reveals important new insights about the impact of return on communities. Technological advances, combined with the push towards decolonising methodologies in Indigenous research, have resulted in considerable interest in ensuring that collections of cultural value are returned to Indigenous communities. Gibson challenges the rhetoric of museum repatriation, arguing that, while it has been tremendously important to advancing Indigenous interest, it is too often over-simplified. Repatriation of Indigenous Cultural Heritage offers a timely, critical perspective on current museum practice and its place within processes of cultural production and transmission. The book is sure to resonate in other international contexts where questions about Indigenous re-engagement and decolonisation strategies are being debated and will be of interest to students and scholars of Museum Studies, Indigenous Studies and Anthropology.

Repatriation of Indigenous Cultural Heritage examines how returned materials - objects, photographs, audio and manuscripts - are being received and reintegrated into the ongoing social and cultural lives of Aboriginal Australians. Combining a critical examination of the making of these collections with an assessment of their contemporary significance, the book exposes the opportunities and challenges involved in returning cultural heritage for the purposes of maintaining, preserving or reviving cultural practice. Drawing on ethnographic work undertaken with Aboriginal communities and the institutions that hold significant collections, the author reveals important new insights about the impact of return on communities. Technological advances, combined with the push towards decolonising methodologies in Indigenous research, have resulted in considerable interest in ensuring that collections of cultural value are returned to Indigenous communities. Gibson challenges the rhetoric of museum repatriation, arguing that, while it has been tremendously important to advancing Indigenous interest, it is too often over-simplified. Repatriation of Indigenous Cultural Heritage offers a timely, critical perspective on current museum practice and its place within processes of cultural production and transmission. The book is sure to resonate in other international contexts where questions about Indigenous re-engagement and decolonisation strategies are being debated and will be of interest to students and scholars of Museum Studies, Indigenous Studies and Anthropology.

Collecting Activism, Archiving Occupy Wall Street explores the material collections produced by participants of Occupy Wall Street in 2011 that bear witness to the experience and agency of ‘the 99%’.Examining processes of collection development as a lens through which to investigate the sociology of protest and reform movements, the book questions what contribution a dual study of the material culture of dissent and the production of a collection hosting the material culture of dissent might offer to a range of disciplines and practices. It asks if and how a collections-based study can test the propositions, tactics, and limits of activism from archival, museological, and political perspectives.Collecting Activism, Archiving Occupy Wall Street draws from interdisciplinary fields, including museum studies, collection studies, archive studies, cultural studies, and public history. It will be a valuable resource for scholars and practitioners engaged with contemporary cause-based collecting, activist archiving, public history, and the cultural politics and sociology of social reform movements. It models strategies for ‘activating’ historical archives and collections-based data, and for engaging with autoethnographic records to represent and analyze the material residue of protest and reform movements today.

Science Museums in Transition: Unheard Voices considers how museums can adapt their exhibits, programs, and organizational structures to the diversity of ideas, people, and cultures that speak to modern science.This collection contains individual expressions by museum insiders addressing a range of particular perspectives – Native American, African American, Latinx, Islamic, Israeli, Danish, white North American. These reflections provide guidance to the museum community as to how their institutions can become more thoughtful, more welcoming to diverse audiences, and more cognizant of the ways that different people incorporate science into their daily lives. As a whole, the book emphasizes the need for museums to engage in dialogue with their visitors – not merely to present them with information – and to offer the opportunities to share experiences, exchange perspectives, and thereby advance science learning through a dynamic and collective process.Science Museums in Transition is intended to further discussion on how museums address the political and social ramifications of science and, as such, should be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students working in the fields of museum studies, science, anthropology, education and history. It should also be essential reading for museum professionals around the globe.

Not satisfied with the assertion that museums have taken great strides in becoming representative, relevant and open in their preoccupations, A Museum in Public contends that the supposedly public nature of their institutional role continues to be a rhetorical one. This book critically examines museums as institutions of the public sphere, questioning what assumptions are made about the publicness of their operations. Using as a case study the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Canada’s largest museum, the book interrogates the public nature and political dynamics of the ROM as it completed a multi-million dollar architectural project and adopted a new vision of the museum. Providing an engaged cultural analysis of how publicness is reflected in the attitudes and behaviours of management, staff and visitors, Ashley claims that museums often function as a boundary zone between the needs and concerns of the public and ideas of publicness that serve corporate and managerial interests and practices. Asking the reader to seriously consider whether the ideals of contact zone and engagement are practically possible within an administrative setting, the book offers insights into how museums might achieve political publicness through transparent, open and democratic communicative action.A Museum in Public raises questions at the intersection of disciplines and, as a result, will appeal to academics, researchers and postgraduates in a number of fields, including: museum studies, heritage studies, cultural studies, cultural policy, public policy, political science, sociology, geography, architecture, art history, public history, tourism studies, and cultural management.

Global Trends in Museum Diplomacy traces the transformation of museums from publicly or privately funded heritage institutions into active players in the economic sector of culture. Exploring how this transformation reconfigured cultural diplomacy, the book argues that museums have become autonomous diplomatic players on the world stage.The book offers a comparative analysis across a range of case studies in order to demonstrate that museums have gone global in the era of neoliberal globalisation. Grincheva focuses first on the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, which is well known for its bold revolutionising strategies of global expansion: museum franchising and global corporatisation. The book then goes on to explore how these strategies were adopted across museums around the world and analyses two cases of post-Guggenheim developments in China and Russia: the K11 Art Mall in Hong Kong and the International Network of Foundations of the State Hermitage Museum in Russia. These cases from more authoritarian political regimes evidence the emergence of alternative avenues of museum diplomacy that no longer depend on government commissions to serve immediate geo-political interests. Global Trends in Museum Diplomacy will be a valuable resource for students, scholars and practitioners of contemporary museology and cultural diplomacy. Documenting new developments in museum diplomacy, the book will be particularly interesting to museum and heritage practitioners and policymakers involved in international exchanges or official programs of cultural diplomacy.

The Disobedient Museum: Writing at the Edge aims to motivate disciplinary thinking to reimagine writing about museums as an activity where resistant forms of thinking, seeing, feeling, and acting can be produced, and to theorize this process as a form of protest against disciplinary stagnation.Drawing on a range of cultural, theoretical, and political approaches, Kylie Message examines potential links between methods of critique today and moments of historical and disciplinary crisis, and asks what contribution museums might make to these, either as direct actors or through activities that sit more comfortably within their institutional remit. Identifying the process of writing about museums as a form of activism, that brings together and elaborates on cultural and political agendas for change, the book explores how a process of engaged critique might benefit museum studies, what this critique might look like, and how museum studies might make a contribution to discourses of social and political change.The Disobedient Museum is the first volume in Routledge’s innovative ‘Museums in Focus’ series and will be of great interest to scholars and students in the fields of Museum, Heritage, Public History, and Cultural Studies. It should also be essential reading for museum practitioners, particularly those engaged with questions about the role of museums in regard to social activism and contentious contemporary challenges.

Queering the Museum develops a queer analysis of the ways in which museums construct themselves, their core business, and their publics through the, often unconscious, use of inherited ways of knowing and doing. Providing a critique of both the practices and conventions associated with the modern public museum, and the ontological assumptions that inform them, the authors consider recent discourse around inclusion in museums and explore the ways this has been taken up in practice. Highlighting the limits of particular approaches to inclusion, and the failure to move away from a traditional museological paradigm, the book outlines an alternative critical museological approach that the authors refer to as ‘queer’. Providing readers with the critical tools necessary for a profound rethinking of museum practice, the book also responds to and problematises the growing call for social inclusion. Queering the Museum will appeal to academics, students, and museum and arts sector practitioners with an interest in critical theory or queer practice. It will be of particular interest to those working in the fields of museum studies, sociology, archaeology, anthropology, cultural studies, media, social policy, politics, philosophy, and history.

Sharing Authority in the Museum provides a detailed and fully contextualised study of a heritage assemblage over time, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Focussing on Māori objects, predominantly originating from the Ngā Paerangi tribe, housed in Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, the book examines the□nuances of cross-cultural interactions between an indigenous community and an anthropological museum.Analysis centres on the legacy of historic ethnographic collecting on indigenous communities and museums, and the impact of different value systems and world views on access to heritage objects. Questions of curatorial responsibilities and authority over access rights are explored. Proposing a method for indigenous engagement to address this legacy, and making recommendations to guide participants when forging relationships based around indigenous cultural heritage, Michelle Horwood shows how to negotiate power and authority within these assemblages. She argues that by doing this and acknowledging and communicating our difficult histories, together we can move from collaborative approaches to shared authority and indigenous self-determination, progressing the task of decolonising the museum.Addressing a salient, complex issue by way of a grounded case study, Sharing Authority in the Museum is key reading for museum practitioners working with ethnographic collections, as well as scholars and students working in the fields of museum, heritage, Indigenous or cultural studies. It should also be of great interest to indigenous communities wishing to take the lessons learned from Ngā Paerangi’s experiences further within their own spheres of museum engagement.

Global Trends in Museum Diplomacy traces the transformation of museums from publicly or privately funded heritage institutions into active players in the economic sector of culture. Exploring how this transformation reconfigured cultural diplomacy, the book argues that museums have become autonomous diplomatic players on the world stage.The book offers a comparative analysis across a range of case studies in order to demonstrate that museums have gone global in the era of neoliberal globalisation. Grincheva focuses first on the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, which is well known for its bold revolutionising strategies of global expansion: museum franchising and global corporatisation. The book then goes on to explore how these strategies were adopted across museums around the world and analyses two cases of post-Guggenheim developments in China and Russia: the K11 Art Mall in Hong Kong and the International Network of Foundations of the State Hermitage Museum in Russia. These cases from more authoritarian political regimes evidence the emergence of alternative avenues of museum diplomacy that no longer depend on government commissions to serve immediate geo-political interests. Global Trends in Museum Diplomacy will be a valuable resource for students, scholars and practitioners of contemporary museology and cultural diplomacy. Documenting new developments in museum diplomacy, the book will be particularly interesting to museum and heritage practitioners and policymakers involved in international exchanges or official programs of cultural diplomacy.

Museums as Agents for Social Change is the first comprehensive text to examine museum practice in a decolonised moment, moving beyond known roles of object collection and presentation. Drawing on studies of Mutare museum, a regional museum in Eastern Zimbabwe, this book considers how museums with inherited colonial legacies are dealing with their new environments. The book provides an examination of Mutare museum’s activism in engaging with topical issues affecting its surrounding community and Chipangura and Mataga demonstrate how new forms of engagement are being deployed to attract new audiences, whilst dealing with issues such as economic livelihoods, poverty, displacement, climate change and education. Illustrating how recent programmes have helped to reposition Mutare museum as a decolonial agent of social change and an important community anchor institution, the book also demonstrates how other museums can move beyond the colonial preoccupation with the gathering of collections, conservation and presentation of cultural heritage to the public. Museums as Agents for Social Change will primarily be of interest to academics and students working in the fields of museum and heritage studies, history, archaeology and anthropology. It should also be appealing to museum professionals around the world who are interested in learning more about how to decolonise their museum.

Queering the Museum develops a queer analysis of the ways in which museums construct themselves, their core business, and their publics through the, often unconscious, use of inherited ways of knowing and doing. Providing a critique of both the practices and conventions associated with the modern public museum, and the ontological assumptions that inform them, the authors consider recent discourse around inclusion in museums and explore the ways this has been taken up in practice. Highlighting the limits of particular approaches to inclusion, and the failure to move away from a traditional museological paradigm, the book outlines an alternative critical museological approach that the authors refer to as ‘queer’. Providing readers with the critical tools necessary for a profound rethinking of museum practice, the book also responds to and problematises the growing call for social inclusion. Queering the Museum will appeal to academics, students, and museum and arts sector practitioners with an interest in critical theory or queer practice. It will be of particular interest to those working in the fields of museum studies, sociology, archaeology, anthropology, cultural studies, media, social policy, politics, philosophy, and history.

Anti-Museum charts the development of the anti-museum as a concept and as it has been realised in practice. Drawing on a range of case studies, including the New Museum and PS1 in New York, Mona in Australia, Art42 in Paris and Donald Judd’s Marfa, the book assesses their potential to engage museum publics in new ways.Anti-museums seek to breathe relational and theatricalised vitality into the objects they exhibit, by connecting them to the contexts of their making, to their social life outside the museum, to visitors' lives via their transformative capacities for change, and by being a place of dialogue, exchange and transformation, rather than instruction. Documenting the ways in which they have been created by artists, collectors, and curators, the book also examines the extent to which anti-museums connect with other museums through the exchange of values and resources. Critically, it asks whether, after some 40 years of ‘new museology’, such institutions are still able to offer something fresh and valuable.Anti-Museum provides a sharp and incisive account of the anti-museum as it has been imagined, realised and experienced, and as it has relevance for understanding and working in the contemporary museum world. As such, the book will be of great interest to scholars and students engaged in the study of museums, cultural economy, inclusive urban regeneration, the democratisation of art and contemporary art. It should also appeal to museum professionals around the world.

Museums, Infinity and the Culture of Protocols enters a dialogue about museums’ responsibility for the curation of their collections into an infinite future while also tackling contentious issues of repatriation and digital access to collections. Bringing into focus a number of key debates centred on ethnographic collections and their relationship with source communities, Morphy considers the value material objects have to different ‘local’ communities – the museum and the source community – and the value-creation processes with which they are entangled. The focus on values and value brings the issue of repatriation and access into a dialogue between the two locals, questioning who has access to collections and whose values are taken into consideration. Placing the museum itself firmly at the centre of the debate, Morphy posits that museums constitute a kind of ‘local’ embedded in a trajectory of value. Museums, Infinity and the Culture of Protocols challenges aspects of postcolonial theory that position museums in the past by presenting an argument that places relationships with communities as central to the future of museums. This makes the book essential reading for academics and students working in the fields of museum and heritage studies, anthropology, archaeology, Indigenous studies, cultural studies, and history.

Digital Access and Museums as Platforms draws on interviews with museum practitioners, along with a range of case studies from public and private institutions, in order to investigate the tensions and benefits involved in making cultural collections available using digital technologies. Taking a media and critical studies approach to the museum and raising questions about the role of privately owned search engines in facilitating museum experiences, the book questions who collects what, for whom objects are collected and what purpose these objects and collections serve. Connecting fieldwork undertaken in Australia and New Zealand with the global practices of technology companies, Wilson-Barnao brings attention to an emerging new model of digital ownership and moderation. Considering the synergising of these institutions with media systems, which are now playing a more prominent role in facilitating access to culture, the book also explores the motivations of different cultural workers for constructing the museum as a mediatised location. Digital Access and Museums as Platforms will be of interest to academics and students working in the fields of museum studies, art, culture, media studies and digital humanities. Weighing in on conversations about how technologies are being incorporated into museums, the book should also be useful to practitioners working in museums and galleries around the world.

Museum Representations of Motherhood and the Maternal is the first book to address the underrepresentation of motherhood in museums.Questioning how mothering and maternal experiences should be represented in museums, Louise-Clarke argues that such institutions wield the power to influence what we think about families, mothers and the labour of care. Using the term ‘mothering’ to encompass lived experiences of mothering or caring that are not exclusively tied to sex, gender, or the maternal body, Louise-Clarke explores the ways that experiences of mothering can be represented in museums. The book begins this exploration with Australia’s Museums Victoria (MV), then expands to look at international cases. Offering a blueprint for what Louise-Clarke calls a ‘museology of mothering’, the book imagines what a museum that articulates maternal subjectivities might look and sound like.Museum Representations of Motherhood and the Maternal initiates a dialogue between museum studies and maternal studies, making it essential reading for scholars and students working in both disciplines. Questioning conventional museum practices and the values that underpin them, the book will also be of interest to museum and heritage practitioners around the world.

Museum Representations of Motherhood and the Maternal is the first book to address the underrepresentation of motherhood in museums.Questioning how mothering and maternal experiences should be represented in museums, Louise-Clarke argues that such institutions wield the power to influence what we think about families, mothers and the labour of care. Using the term ‘mothering’ to encompass lived experiences of mothering or caring that are not exclusively tied to sex, gender, or the maternal body, Louise-Clarke explores the ways that experiences of mothering can be represented in museums. The book begins this exploration with Australia’s Museums Victoria (MV), then expands to look at international cases. Offering a blueprint for what Louise-Clarke calls a ‘museology of mothering’, the book imagines what a museum that articulates maternal subjectivities might look and sound like.Museum Representations of Motherhood and the Maternal initiates a dialogue between museum studies and maternal studies, making it essential reading for scholars and students working in both disciplines. Questioning conventional museum practices and the values that underpin them, the book will also be of interest to museum and heritage practitioners around the world.

The Black Curator highlights the role that Black curators have long played in advocating for black artists and social changes and argues that they made a significant contribution to the democratization of museums over the last 150 years.Drawing on oral testimonies and archival research, this book examines how black curatorial activist practices emerged as a social and imaginative response to racism across various museum contexts. Exploring the work of black curators at three different museums, Benyehudah traces a lineage from black curators in the 19th century to those currently working in curatorial roles. Analysis of these case studies and the use of ideas from museum studies, critical race theory, and art history also enable the author to demonstrate how black curatorial practice was and is distinct from Eurocentric forms of curating black art. Explaining that the black curatorial lens was used in the process of establishing counter‑archives, the author also demonstrates that it has played – and continues to play – a vital role in the decolonization of museums.Offering compelling ways to look at the relationship between black curators and legacies of colonialism in museums, The Black Curator will be essential reading for scholars, students, and museum practitioners.

Mind Museums offers a fresh perspective on the heritage of mental health, bringing museums into sharp focus. Drawing on interdisciplinary approaches from architecture, museum and exhibition design, and heritage and museum studies, it examines former psychiatric asylums that have been converted into museums.The book presents a comprehensive investigation of mind museums, the first of its kind in Europe, and explores their potential in raising awareness and dismantling the stigma surrounding mental health. Through an indepth examination of selected European examples, Lanz describes what mind museums are and how they came to be. The innovative visitor studies carried out at the Museo di Storia della Psichiatria in Reggio Emilia, which are presented here, explore people’s encounters with mind museums and reveal the profound impact of such experiences. By uncovering the power of these heritage sites in facilitating discussions on mental health, civility, and care, Lanz provides new insights into the emotive capacity of the museum and visitors’ reflexivity at place-based memory sites.Mind Museums will be of great interest to scholars and postgraduate level students engaged in the study of museums, heritage, exhibition design, architecture, and mental health. It should also be of interest to heritage professionals, particularly those working in mind museums and other similar sites, such as prison museums and sites of conscience.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Mind Museums offers a fresh perspective on the heritage of mental health, bringing museums into sharp focus. Drawing on interdisciplinary approaches from architecture, museum and exhibition design, and heritage and museum studies, it examines former psychiatric asylums that have been converted into museums.The book presents a comprehensive investigation of mind museums, the first of its kind in Europe, and explores their potential in raising awareness and dismantling the stigma surrounding mental health. Through an indepth examination of selected European examples, Lanz describes what mind museums are and how they came to be. The innovative visitor studies carried out at the Museo di Storia della Psichiatria in Reggio Emilia, which are presented here, explore people’s encounters with mind museums and reveal the profound impact of such experiences. By uncovering the power of these heritage sites in facilitating discussions on mental health, civility, and care, Lanz provides new insights into the emotive capacity of the museum and visitors’ reflexivity at place-based memory sites.Mind Museums will be of great interest to scholars and postgraduate level students engaged in the study of museums, heritage, exhibition design, architecture, and mental health. It should also be of interest to heritage professionals, particularly those working in mind museums and other similar sites, such as prison museums and sites of conscience.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.