Performance in the Museum charts the main stages of the inclusion of performance in the museum from the 1970s to the present day. While performance emerged in the late 1960s as an anti-institutional form of art, it has recently gained an extraordinary visibility in contemporary art museums. This book focuses on three specific areas affecting museums: how to display performance art; conservation of performance art; and acquisition. What emerges from this study is that the museum, although rarely anticipating the specific issues raised by performance, has assumed a unique position in devising curatorial strategies adapted to this medium. The crux of Performance in the Museum is the visibility recently given to performance in museums. Through close analysis of a selection of exhibitions and curatorial practices from many different parts of the world, and from specific periods from the past fifty years, this book identifies key moments of the integration of performance in the museum, thus filling a crucial gap both in the history of performance and curatorial studies. Despite the recent surge of exhibitions on performance and the part played by museums in this phenomenon, the history of the display, the conservation and the acquisition of live performance remains largely uncharted. This book offers a thought-provoking and highly readable assessment of some fundamental questions in contemporary curatorial practice.

Histories of Performance Documentation traces the many ways in which museums have approached performance works from the 1960s onwards, considering the unique challenges of documenting live events. From hybrid and interactive arts, to games and virtual and mixed reality performance, this collection investigates the burgeoning role of the performative in museum displays. Gabriella Giannachi and Jonah Westerman bring together interviews and essays by leading curators, conservators, artists and scholars from institutions including MoMA, Tate, SFMOMA and the Whitney, to examine a range of interdisciplinary practices that have influenced the field of performance documentation. Chapters build on recent approaches to performance analysis, which argue that it should not focus purely on the live event, and that documentation should not be read solely as a process of retrospection. These ideas create a radical new framework for thinking about the relationship between performance and its documentation—and how this relationship might shape ideas of what constitutes performance in the first place.

Based on extensive research and decades of experience, museum analyst and planner John W. Jacobsen provides both the theoretical underpinnings and the operational pragmatics of measuring any museum's intentional impact and performance by using 1,025 indicators drawn from 51 expert sources. Measuring Museum Impact and Performance: Theory and Practice provides museum professionals internationally with a clear, very open process that will improve their museum's value and performance by selecting indicators that monitor whether they are realizing their desired public, private, personal and institutional values. The book is not prescriptive, but liberating, as the framework recognizes that each museum needs to decide on its own purposes and priorities. The book is organized in two parts: "Part 1: Theory" is scholarly and builds on the museum field’s rich literature; and "Part 2: Practice" provides step-by-step methods for any museum to set up its own dashboard of prioritized impact and performance indicators. Substantive attachments include: the list of the 51 source documents for the MIIP indicators; definitions of terms and data fields; a long list of precedented museum impacts; measurement formulas and worksheet templates, filled in for a sample museum; and the MIIP 1.0 database available online. Readers will get the following benefits: A literature review of prior work on measuring museum value An analysis of eleven well-established evaluation frameworks that synthesize into a revolutionary, yet practical, Museum Theory of Action A robust and searchable menu of 1,025 existing and aspirational indicators (the MIIP 1.0 database) that you can use to start your own selection An analysis of the MIIP database using the Theory of Action that reveals 14 areas of potential museum impacts and benefits A process to select and prioritize your museum’s intentional purposes and desired impacts A process to determine, measure and compare your museum’s key performance indicators (KPIs) A process to set-up and conduct peer museum comparisons Procedures and examples of how to capture and report data used in your selected indicators Principles for using indicator data to inform museum management decisions

Museums have lengthy history, going back to the Renaissance Cabinets of Curiosity, and they are indices of changing fashions of perception insofar as the categories museum curators use to classify objects change over time. The major focus of Tyburczy s study is sexuality on display, which sets up, in turn, her investigation of the effects of museum display on the history of sexuality. Historical context for the museum is one of her themes (and how categories of normacly and perversity change over time), with another themes being the work of sex museums n redefining what sex means in the modern public sphere; she also folds in consideration of the pleasures and dangers of exhibiting marginalized sexual subjects (women, nonwhite races, LGBT individuals, and the like); last, she explores the paradox of asserting (as she does) that all museums are sex museums bodies move around and toward objects on display, they reshape the typical dances of museum-goers along with their preconscious motivations in visiting a museum. She proposes that explicit display or restagings of sexual artifacts provides new ways for approaching and understanding issues of desire, sexual identity, and sexual practices as they intersect with the history of the modern museum and with sexual history during the past two centuries. Her fieldwork sites are: the Leather Archives & Museum in Chicago, the Museum of Sex in New York, the World Erotic Art Museum in Miami Beach, and El Museo del Sexo in Mexico City. Such institutions allow Tyburczy to show how alternative sexuality (inclusive of kink, fetish, and sadomasochistic cultures) and slavery dangerously crisscross on the surface of objects. There are plenty of cases here, in short, to keep the casual reader titillated and the erudite reader surprised."

Museum Innovation encourages museums to critically reflect upon current practices and adopt new approaches to their civic responsibilities. Arguing that museums have a moral duty to perform, the book shows how social innovation can make them more equitable, relevant and impactful institutions. Including contributions from a diverse group of international scholars, practitioners and researchers, the book investigates the innovative approaches museums are taking to address contemporary social issues. The volume focuses on the concept of social innovation and individual chapters address a range of crucial issues, such as climate change; the COVID-19 pandemic; diversity and inclusion; the travel ban; and the repatriation of museum collections. Exploring the impact that organizational structures have on museums’ aspirations to act as agents for social change, the book also unpacks how museums can establish sustainable relationships with minority communities. Proposing steps that museums can take to affirm their relevance as viable community partners, the book breaks down silos and connects ideas across different areas of museum work. Museum Innovation explores the role of contemporary museums in society. It is essential reading for academics, students and practitioners working in the museum and heritage studies field. The book’s interdisciplinary nature makes it also an interesting read for those working in business studies, digital humanities, visual culture, arts administration and political science fields.

This first comprehensive publication on New York-based interdisciplinary artist Autumn Knight documents her performances addressing the regulation of African American female bodies. Accompanying these images are scores and notes, text by performance studies scholars and an artist interview with choreographer Cynthia Oliver.

“Art will wake you up. Art will break your heart. There will be glorious days. If you want eternity you must be fearless.” —Heather Rose, The Museum of Modern Love Our hero, Arky Levin, has reached a creative dead end. An unexpected separation from his wife was meant to leave him with the space he needs to work composing film scores, but it has provided none of the peace of mind he needs to create. Guilty and restless, almost by chance he stumbles upon an art exhibit that will change his life. Based on a real piece of performance art that took place in 2010, the installation that the fictional Arky Levin discovers is inexplicably powerful. Visitors to the Museum of Modern Art sit across a table from the performance artist Marina Abramović, for as short or long a period of time as they choose. Although some go in skeptical, almost all leave moved. And the participants are not the only ones to find themselves changed by this unusual experience: Arky finds himself returning daily to watch others with Abramović. As the performance unfolds over the course of 75 days, so too does Arky. As he bonds with other people drawn to the exhibit, he slowly starts to understand what might be missing in his life and what he must do. This is a book about art, but it is also about success and failure, illness and happiness. It’s about what it means to find connection in a modern world. And most of all, it is about love, with its limitations and its transcendence.

Performing Archives/Archives of Performance contributes to the ongoing critical discussions of performance and its disappearance, of the ephemeral and its reproduction, of archives and mediatized recordings of liveness. The many contributions by excellent scholars and artists from a broad range of interdisciplinary fields as well as from various locations in research geographies demonstrate that despite the extensive discourse on the relationship between performance and the archive, inquiry into the productive tensions between ephemerality and permanence is by no means outdated or exhausted. New ways of understanding archives, history, and memory emerge and address theories of enactment and intervention, while concepts of performance constantly proliferate and enable a critical focus on archival residue. The contributions in Performing Archives/Archives of Performance cover philosophical inquiries as well as discussions of specific art works, performances, and archives.

Contributions by: Heike Roms, Amelia Jones, Julie Louise Bacon, Peter van der Meijden, Emma Willis, Rivka Syd Eisner, Rachel Fensham, Sarah Whatley, Tracy C. Davis, Barnaby King, Laura Luise Schultz, Malene Vest Hansen, Mette Sandbye, Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen, Margeritha Sprio, Annelis Kuhlmann, Morten Søndergaard, Martha Wilson, Catherine Bagnall, Paul Clarke, Solveig Gade, Gunhild Borggreen, Rune Gade, Louise Wolthers, Mathias Danbolt, Marco Pustianaz.

Gunhild Borggreen is Associate Professor at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen.

Rune Gade is Associate Professor at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen.

At the beginning of the 21st century museums are challenged on a number of fronts. The prioritisation of learning in museums in the context of demands for social justice and cultural democracy combined with cultural policy based on economic rationalism forces museums to review their educational purposes, redesign their pedagogies and account for their performance. The need to theorise learning and culture for a cultural theory of learning is very pressing. If culture acts as a process of signification, a means of producing meaning that shapes worldviews, learning in museums and other cultural organisations is potentially dynamic and profound, producing self-identities. How is this complexity to be ‘measured’? What can this ‘measurement’ reveal about the character of museum-based learning? The calibration of culture is an international phenomenon, and the measurement of the outcomes and impact of learning in museums in England has provided a detailed case study. Three national evaluation studies were carried out between 2003 and 2006 based on the conceptual framework of Generic Learning Outcomes. Using this revealing data Museums and Education reveals the power of museum pedagogy and as it does, questions are raised about traditional museum culture and the potential and challenge for museum futures is suggested.

Thanks to its very nature, performance enters into natural dialogue with art, new media, politics, and the social sphere as a whole. Always happening in the here and now, and with a unique freedom and openness to the unknown, performance is a medium with a special ability to question its own subjects, materials, and languages. As a result, it is often best reflected in the dynamic character of contemporary art and contemporaneity in the broadest sense of the word. Points of Convergence explores these ideas and investigates critical approaches to performance, ultimately aiming to stimulate new discussion between theorists and practitioners. With twelve essays by leading figures in the field of performance arts, this illustrated volume is structured in two parts. The first, authored by academics in the discipline, features an introduction to key areas of scholastic research. The second part, authored by curators and other researchers, then focuses on an account of individual traditions of performance. Taken together, the contributions identify new possibilities for interaction between the theoretical aspects of performance art and the ways performance plays out within local contexts.