Western European Museums and Visual Persuasion is an assessment of the visual persuasiveness of art museums. It demonstrates that museums are as capable of influence as speeches or advertisements are and that an awareness of this influence provides an insight into museums’ cultural roles. The book considers a diverse array of institutions ranging from such national cultural icons as the Louvre, the British Museum, and the Prado to museums of partisan advocacy such as the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Tate Modern, and the Museo Nacional Centro Arte de Reina Sofia. The museums’ architectural significance, the importance of their collections, and the persuasiveness of their exhibition designs are the bases for assessment. Western European Museums and Visual Persuasion is an important extension of theories of persuasion and visual communication to art, art history, and museology. It utilizes a theory of visual signs based on the semiotics of C. S. Peirce to demonstrate that museum buildings, the art within them, and the spaces used for display all may be thought as ways of influencing society.

Beyond Buildings: Designed Spaces as Visual Persuasion is an assessment of the visual persuasiveness of designed spaces. It demonstrates that these spaces are as socially influential as speeches or advertisements are, and that an awareness of this influence provides an insight into the cultural roles of designed spaces. The book considers a diverse array of spaces ranging from pleasure gardens and parks to city parks and cities themselves, and includes assessments of the visual impact of national parks, zoological gardens, amusement parks, battlefields and monuments, and the interior spaces of buildings. Beyond Buildings is an extension of theories of persuasion and visual communication to landscape architecture and interior design. The book bases its assessments on the elements of visual literacy, as well as the elements of landscape and interior design to show that such designed spaces as gardens, parks, battlefields, and cities affect the viewer in such a way as to have social impact.

Compelling Form: Architecture as Visual Persuasion is an assessment of the visual persuasiveness of buildings. It demonstrates that architecture is as capable of social influence as speeches or advertisements are and that an awareness of this influence provides an insight into buildings’ cultural roles. The book considers a diverse array of structures ranging from museums, to performance halls, to universities, to cathedrals, to governmental buildings, to palaces, and to skyscrapers. Compelling Form is an important extension of theories of persuasion and visual communication to architecture and engineering. The book bases its assessments on the elements of visual literacy and then on the elements of architectural design to demonstrate that buildings, monuments, and even such means of commerce as bridges affect the viewer in such a way as to have social impact.

This is a book about death, comprehensive in its discussion of strategies for coping with loss and grief in rural northern Russia. Elizabeth Warner and Svetlana Adonyeva bring forth the voices of those for whom caring for their dead is deeply personal and firmly rooted in practices of everyday life. Thoroughly researched chapters consider lamenting traditions, examine beliefs surrounding natural symbols, and parse sensitive and profound funereal rituals. “We remember, we love, we grieve” is a common epitaph in this part of the world. As contemporary Russia contends with the Soviet Union’s legacy of dismantling older ways of life, the phrase ripples beyond individual loss—it encapsulates communities’ determination to preserve their customs when faced with oppression. This volume offers insight into a core cultural practice, exploring the dynamism of tradition.

In American Museums and the Persuasive Impulse, Professor Ragsdale assesses American museums as means of visual persuasion. He demonstrates that museums, their contents, and their manners of display are as capable of influencing visitors as speeches or advertisements and that an awareness of their social influence provides an insight into the cultural roles of museums. The book considers a diverse array of museums ranging from such national cultural icons as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute to such city museums as the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art, and includes separate chapters on museums devoted to modern and contemporary art and to the specialized collections of individual connoisseurs. In addition to these primarily art museums, Professor Ragsdale assesses museums devoted to collections, such as the National Air and Space Museum, and to commemoration and remembrance, such as the National World War II Museum and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. American Museums and the Persuasive Impulse makes an important contribution to the theory of persuasion and to visual communication, art history, and museology. It utilizes a theory of visual signs based on the semiotic theory of C. S. Peirce. In so doing, it demonstrates that museum buildings, the art and other objects contained within them, and the spaces used for display may all be thought of in terms of means of social influence.

Structures as Argument assesses museums, places of worship, monuments, and cemetery stones as means of visual persuasion. It argues that structures are equally capable of influencing viewers as speeches or advertisements are and that to miss this essential feature of them is to fail in understanding their cultural roles. The book spotlights museums ranging from such cultural icons as the Louvre and the British Museum, to such museums of collective memory as the Anne Frank House, to museums of pure visual persuasion such as the Doge’s Palace in Venice. It features places of worship which range from Notre-Dame de Paris, to the Spanish missions of San Antonio, Texas, to the Protestant churches of America and includes a chapter on non-Western structures such as Chinese museums and Buddhist temples. Structures as Argument makes a significant contribution to the theory of persuasion, visual communication, and art history. It utilizes a theory of visual signs developed by Paul Messaris out of the semiotic theory of C. S. Peirce. In so doing, it demonstrates that artifacts of war, cathedral iconography, positioning of art objects for effect, and the art of gravestone sculpture all may be thought of in terms of means of social influence.

Museums and Sites of Persuasion examines the concept of museums and memory sites as locations that attempt to promote human rights, democracy and peace. Demonstrating that such sites have the potential to act as powerful spaces of persuasion or contestation, the book also shows that there are perils in the selective memory and history that they present. Examining a range of museums, memorials and exhibits in places as varied as Burundi, Denmark, Georgia, Kosovo, Mexico, Peru, Vietnam and the US, this volume demonstrates how they represent and try to come to terms with difficult histories. As sites of persuasion, the contributors to this book argue, their public goal is to use memory and education about the past to provide moral lessons to visitors that will encourage a more democratic and peaceful future. However, the case studies also demonstrate how political, economic and social realities often undermine this lofty goal, raising questions about how these sites of persuasion actually function on a daily basis. Straddling several interdisciplinary fields of research and study, Museums and Sites of Persuasion will be essential reading for those working in the fields of museum studies, memory studies, and genocide studies. It will also be essential reading for museum practitioners and anyone engaged in the study of history, sociology, political science, anthropology and art history. Chapter 3 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The people who inhabited Europe during the two millennia before the Roman conquests had established urban centers, large-scale production of goods such as pottery and iron tools, a money economy, and more. This title argues the visual world of these late prehistoric communities was different from those of ancient Rome's literate civilization.

The Porous Museum examines questions of museum practice, aesthetics and politics through a focused study of The National Museum of the Romanian Peasant in Bucharest. The museum has functioned successively as a museum of art, a communist museum, the headquarters of the communist secret police, and a museum of folk art. Gabriela Nicolescu traces the museum's spectacular biography and follows the transformation of its practices and aesthetics through three very different political regimes in the 20th and early 21st century: monarchist, socialist and post-socialist. Nicolescu's fascinating study starts with a focus on a dumped and smashed statue of the revolutionary figureheads Marx, Engels and Lenin in the museum's rear yard as an expression of the complicated journey of modern Romania. She considers questions of recycling and rupture, with some exhibits and practices carried over from one regime to another, whilst others have been discarded in favour of the completely new. Through this process, the museum can been seen as a microcosm of the wider nation state and the ways in which the past is remembered or rejected. The interdependency of politics, ethics and aesthetics that Nicolescu terms 'porosity' is an attribute of museums all over the world. Applying original anthropological research to key ethnographic museums in Romania and elsewhere in Europe, the book moves beyond regional and media stereotypes by arguing for the influence of local oral histories on national history.

We cannot live a full life unless we know who we are, unless we know the essence of our being. The sciences, which have been immensely helpful in the way in which we live our lives, have been helpless when it comes to telling us how our life should be lived and what its meaning is. Accepting any philosophical or religious belief, on the other hand, limits our freedom to learn directly from personal knowledge of reality, as any preconceived ideas do not only alter its perception, but limit the spectrum of possibilities to which our reason can be applied. To those who do not surrender their right to decide for themselves what reality is, life offers a unique opportunity to apply their insights both in the worlds within and without and either validates or disproves their findings. If they are true to themselves, the continuous feeedback life offers will reveal to them unique characterics of our mind, which are otherwise limited by its own beliefs.