Kategoria BISAC: Art >> Museum Studies

Samuel Quiccheberg's Inscriptiones, first published in Latin in 1565, is an ambitious effort to demonstrate the pragmatic value of curiosity cabinets, or Wunderkammern, to princely collectors in sixteenth-century Europe and, by so doing, inspire them to develop their own such collections. Quiccheberg shows how the assembly and display of physical objects offered nobles a powerful means to expand visual knowledge, allowing them to incorporate empirical and artisanal expertise into the realm of the written word. But in mapping out the collectability of the material world,...

In 1994, when the National Air and Space Museum announced plans to display the Enola Gay, the B-29 sent to destroy Hiroshima with an atomic bomb, the ensuing political uproar caught the museum's parent Smithsonian Institution entirely unprepared. As the largest such complex in the world, the Smithsonian cares for millions of objects and has displayed everything from George Washington's sword to moon rocks to Dorothy's ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz. Why did this particular object arouse such controversy? From an insider's perspective, Robert C. Post's Who Owns America's...

Gender, Sexuality and Museums provides the only repository of key articles, new essays and case studies for the important area of gender and sexuality in museums. It is the first reader to focus on LGBT issues and museums, and the first reader in nearly 15 years to collect articles which focus on women and museums. At last, students of museum studies, women's studies, LGBT studies and museum professionals have a single resource.

The book is organised into three thematic parts, each with its own introduction. Sections focus on women in museum work, applications of...

One of the most influential anthropological works of the last two decades, Alfred Gell's Art and Agency is a provocative and ambitious work that both challenged and reshaped anthropological understandings of art, agency, creativity and the social. It has become a touchstone in contemporary artifact-based scholarship. This volume brings together leading anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians and other scholars into an interdisciplinary dialogue with Art and Agency, generating a timely re-engagement with the themes, issues and arguments at the heart of Gell's...

Museums: A Visual Anthropology provides a clear and concise summary of the key ideas, debates and texts of the most important approaches to the study of museums from around the world. The book examines ways to address the social relations of museums, embedded in their sites, collections, and exhibitions, as an integral part of the visual and material culture they comprise. Cross-disciplinary in scope, Museums uses ideas and approaches both from within and outside of anthropology to further students' knowledge of and interest in museums. Including selected, globally based case...

One might believe that museum studies is a stable field of academic inquiry based on a set of familiar institutional forms and functions. But as institutions museums have never been stable or singular, and neither has the discipline of museum studies. Museum studies as a field of academic inquiry has received little critical attention. One result of this neglect has arguably been a lack of invention in museum studies; another is the distancing of academic museum studies from museum practice.

Doing Museology Differently charts a different course. A critical creative...

Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts entstand in Europa ein breites Interesse fur italienische Malerei der Vor- und Fruhrenaissance. In Preussen war es besonders gross innerhalb weniger Jahre kamen hunderte Gemalde nach Berlin. Der asthetische, historische und politische Wert der Bilder wurde vielfaltig diskutiert: Sie wurden zu identitatsstiftenden Kulturtragern, setzten Massstabe fur die Geschmacksbildung des Publikums und fur das Schaffen zeitgenossischer Kunstler. Anhand neu erschlossener Quellen werden die in Preussen wahrgenommenen Gemalde im Detail identifiziert, ihr Weg aus Italien...

Museums are public institutions with various sets of obligations to, and legacies of, individuals and communities. This volume considers theoretically and geographically varied implications of these interactions. One thread considers particular sets of objects and the historical and social pathways they have moved along: Zuni cultural objects that remain uniquely and intrinsically sacred to their originating community, despite repeated movements and decontextualizations; West African collections in the Manchester Museum that embody historical connections between their places of origin and...

Museums serve to help us understand the past and navigate our future--as individuals, as societies, and as a global community. A careful and accurate assessment of a museum's purpose is crucial to its ability to serve its users effectively. "Foundations of Museum Studies: Evolving Systems of Knowledge" offers a holistic introduction to museums and the study of them from the perspective of specialization in museum studies within the context of library and information science (LIS).

The book strikes a balance between theory and practice, examining museums from a systems perspective that...