"By examining the ways in which museums involve refugees and asylum seekers, Changes in Museum Practice: New Media, Refugees and Participation explores the opportunities around new media. Leading artists, curators, and academics come together to outline different degrees of participation by audiences and communities and explore a range of topics from video games to theatre, from photography to participatory video and digital storytelling. Case studies are used throughout to highlight the unique ways that various approaches to inclusion and participation can be used successfully." --Book Jacket.

MUSEUM PR ACTICE Edited by CONAL MCCARTHY Museum Practice covers the professional work carried out in museums and art galleries of all types, including the core functions of management, collections, exhibitions, and programs. Some forms of museum practice are familiar to visitors, yet within these diverse and complex institutions many practices are hidden from view, such as creating marketing campaigns, curating and designing exhibitions, developing fundraising and sponsorship plans, crafting mission statements, handling repatriation claims, dealing with digital media, and more. Focused on what actually occurs in everyday museum work, this volume offers contributions from experienced professionals and academics that cover a wide range of subjects including policy frameworks, ethical guidelines, approaches to conservation, collection care and management, exhibition development and public programs. From internal processes such as leadership, governance and strategic planning, to public facing roles in interpretation, visitor research and community engagement and learning, each essential component of contemporary museum practice is thoroughly discussed.

Aimed at museum educators, Multiculturalism in Art Museums Today seeks to marry museum and multicultural education theories. It reveals how the union of these theories yields more equitable educational practices and guides museum educators to address misrepresentation, exclusivity, accessibility, and educational inequality. This contemporary text is directive; it encourages museum educators to consider the critical multicultural education theoretical framework in their day-to-day functions in order to illuminate and combat shortcomings at the crux of museum education: Museum Educators as Change Agents Inclusion versus Exclusion Collaboration with Diverse Audiences Responsive Pedagogy This book adopts a broad definition of multiculturalism, which names not only race and ethnicity as concerns, but also gender, sexual orientation, religion, ability, age, and class. While focusing on these various facets of identity, the authors demonstrate how museums are social systems that should offer comprehensive, diverse educational experiences not only through exhibitions but through other educational activities. The authors pull from their own research and practical experiences which exemplify how museums have been and can be attentive to these areas of identity. Multiculturalism in Art Museums Today is hopeful and inspiring, as it identifies and commends the positive and effective practices that some museum educators have enacted in an effort to be inclusive. Museum educators are at the front-line interacting with the public on a daily basis. Thus, these educators can be the real vanguard of change, modeling critical multicultural behavior and practices.

George E. Hein explores the impact on current museum theory and practice of early 20th-century educational reformer John Dewey’s philosophy, covering philosophies that shaped today’s best practices.

As an historical account of the exchange of “duplicate specimens” between anthropologists at the Smithsonian Institution and museums, collectors, and schools around the world in the late nineteenth century, this book reveals connections between both well-known museums and little-known local institutions, created through the exchange of museum objects. It explores how anthropologists categorized some objects in their collections as “duplicate specimens,” making them potential candidates for exchange. This historical form of what museum professionals would now call deaccessioning considers the intellectual and technical requirement of classifying objects in museums, and suggests that a deeper understanding of past museum practice can inform mission-driven contemporary museum work.

Museums must change to illuminate the histories, cultures, and social issues that matter to their local population. Based on a unique longitudinal ethnographic study, Transforming Museum Management illustrates how a traditional art museum attempted to transform into a more inclusive and community-based institution. Using open systems theory and the Buddhist concept of mutual causality, it examines the museum’s internal management structure and culture, programs and exhibitions, and mental models of museum workers. In providing both theoretical and practical foundations to transform management structures, this accessible volume will benefit stakeholders by proposing a new culture and structure to arts institutions, to change practice to be more relevant, diverse, and inclusive. This book will be an invaluable resource for researchers and advanced students of museum studies, cultural management, arts administration, non-profit management, and organizational studies.

Museums and Social Change explores the ways museums can work in collaboration with marginalised groups to work for social change and, in so doing, rethink the museum. Drawing on the first-hand experiences of museum practitioners and their partners around the world, the volume demonstrates the impact of a shared commitment to collaborative, reflective practice. Including analytical discussion from practitioners in their collegial work with women, the homeless, survivors of institutionalised child abuse and people with disabilities, the book draws attention to the significant contributions of small, specialist museums in bringing about social change. It is here, the book argues, that the new museum emerges: when museum practitioners see themselves as partners, working with others to lead social change, this is where museums can play a distinct and important role. Emerging in response to ongoing calls for museums to be more inclusive and participate in meaningful engagement, Museums and Social Change will be essential reading for academics and students working in museum and gallery studies, librarianship, archives, heritage studies and arts management. It will also be of great interest to those working in history and cultural studies, as well as museum practitioners and social activists around the world.

Across countries and time, asylum-seekers and refugees have been represented in a variety of ways. In some representations they appear negatively, as dangers threatening to ‘over-run’ a country or a region with ‘floods’ of incompatible strangers. In others, the same people are portrayed positively, with compassion, and pictured as desperately in need of assistance. How these competing perceptions are received has significant consequences for determining public policy, human rights, international agreements, and the realization of cultural diversity, and so it is imperative to understand how these images are perpetuated. To this end, this volume reflects on museum practice and the contexts, stories, and images of asylum seekers and refugees prevalent in our mass media. Based on case studies from Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, the overall findings are illustrative of narratives and images common to museums and the media throughout the world. They aim to challenge political rhetoric and populist media imagery and consider what forms of dissent are likely to be sustained and what narratives ultimately break through and can lead to empathy and positive political change.

Capturing the richness of the museum studies discipline, Museum Revolutions is the ideal text for museum studies courses, providing a wide range of interlinked themes and the latest thought and research from experts in the field.

New Museum Theory and Practice is an original collection ofessays with a unique focus: the contested politics and ideologiesof museum exhibition. Contains 12 original essays that contribute to the field whilecreating a collective whole for course use. Discusses theory through vivid examples and historicaloverviews. Offers guidance on how to put theory into practice. Covers a range of museums around the world: from art tohistory, anthropology to music, as well as historic houses,cultural centres, virtual sites, and commercial displays that usethe conventions of the museum. Authors come from the UK, Canada, the US, and Australia, andfrom a variety of fields that inform cultural studies.