This single-volume museum studies reference title explores the ways in which museums are shaped and configured and how they themselves attempt to shape and change the world around them.

Written by a leading group of museum professionals and academics from around the world and including new research, the chapters reveal the diverse and subtle means by which museums engage and in so doing change and are changed. The authors span over 200 years discussing national museums, ecomuseums, society museums, provincial galleries, colonial museums, the showman's museum, and science centres....