Rethinking Evolution in the Museum

Rethinking Evolution in the Museum PDF Author: Monique Scott
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134135904
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Rethinking Evolution in the Museum explores the ways diverse natural history museum audiences imagine their evolutionary heritage. In particular, the book considers how the meanings constructed by audiences of museum exhibitions are a product of dynamic interplay between museum iconography and powerful images museum visitors bring with them to the museum. In doing so, the book illustrates how the preconceived images held by museum audiences about anthropology, Africa, and the museum itself strongly impact the human origins exhibition experience. Although museological theory has come increasingly to recognize that museum audiences ‘make meaning’ in exhibitions, or make their own complex interpretations of museum exhibitions, few scholars have explicitly asked how. Rethinking Evolution in the Museum, however, provides a rare window into visitor perceptions at four world-class museums—the Natural History Museum and Horniman Museum in London, the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Through rigorous and novel mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) covering nearly 500 museum visitors, this innovative study shows that audiences of human origins exhibitions interpret evolution exhibitions through a profoundly complex convergence of personal, political, intellectual, emotional and cultural interpretive strategies. This book also reveals that natural history museum visitors often respond to museum exhibitions similarly because they use common cultural tools picked up from globalized popular media circulating outside of the museum. One tool of particular interest is the notion that human evolution has proceeded linearly from a bestial African prehistory to a civilized European present. Despite critical growths in anthropological science and museum displays, the outdated Victorian progress motif lingers persistently in popular media and the popular imagination. Rethinking Evolution in the Museum sheds light on our relationship with natural history museums and will be crucial to those people interested in understanding the connection between the visitor, the museum and media culture outside of the museum context.

Rethinking Evolution in the Museum

Rethinking Evolution in the Museum PDF Author: Monique Scott
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134135904
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book

Book Description
Rethinking Evolution in the Museum explores the ways diverse natural history museum audiences imagine their evolutionary heritage. In particular, the book considers how the meanings constructed by audiences of museum exhibitions are a product of dynamic interplay between museum iconography and powerful images museum visitors bring with them to the museum. In doing so, the book illustrates how the preconceived images held by museum audiences about anthropology, Africa, and the museum itself strongly impact the human origins exhibition experience. Although museological theory has come increasingly to recognize that museum audiences ‘make meaning’ in exhibitions, or make their own complex interpretations of museum exhibitions, few scholars have explicitly asked how. Rethinking Evolution in the Museum, however, provides a rare window into visitor perceptions at four world-class museums—the Natural History Museum and Horniman Museum in London, the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Through rigorous and novel mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) covering nearly 500 museum visitors, this innovative study shows that audiences of human origins exhibitions interpret evolution exhibitions through a profoundly complex convergence of personal, political, intellectual, emotional and cultural interpretive strategies. This book also reveals that natural history museum visitors often respond to museum exhibitions similarly because they use common cultural tools picked up from globalized popular media circulating outside of the museum. One tool of particular interest is the notion that human evolution has proceeded linearly from a bestial African prehistory to a civilized European present. Despite critical growths in anthropological science and museum displays, the outdated Victorian progress motif lingers persistently in popular media and the popular imagination. Rethinking Evolution in the Museum sheds light on our relationship with natural history museums and will be crucial to those people interested in understanding the connection between the visitor, the museum and media culture outside of the museum context.

Pasts Beyond Memory

Pasts Beyond Memory PDF Author: Tony Bennett
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113453910X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Contributing to current debates on relationships between culture and the social, and the the rapidly changing practices of modern museums as they seek to shed the legacies of both evolutionary conceptions and colonial science, this important new work explores how evolutionary museums developed in the USA, UK, and Australia in the late nineteenth century.

The Story of Life: Evolution (Extended Edition)

The Story of Life: Evolution (Extended Edition) PDF Author: Ruth Symons
Publisher: Templar Publishing
ISBN: 1787413306
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 87

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Book Description
This new extended edition of Story of Life is the perfect gift for those with a love of the natural world. Wander the galleries - open 365 days a year - and discover a collection of curated exhibits on every page, accompanied by informative text. Each chapter features key species from a different geological era with fantastic new artwork from Katie Scott.

Rethinking Evolution in the Museum

Rethinking Evolution in the Museum PDF Author: Monique R. Scott
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415405409
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Rethinking Evolution in the Museum explores the ways diverse natural history museum audiences imagine their evolutionary heritage. In particular, the book considers how the meanings constructed by audiences of museum exhibitions are a product of dynamic interplay between museum iconography and powerful images museum visitors bring with them to the museum. In doing so, the book illustrates how the preconceived images held by museum audiences about anthropology, Africa, and the museum itself strongly impact the human origins exhibition experience. Although museological theory has come increasingly to recognize that museum audiences 'make meaning' in exhibitions, or make their own complex interpretations of museum exhibitions, few scholars have explicitly asked how. Rethinking Evolution in the Museum, however, provides a rare window into visitor perceptions at four world-class museums—the Natural History Museum and Horniman Museum in London, the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Through rigorous and novel mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) covering nearly 500 museum visitors, this innovative study shows that audiences of human origins exhibitions interpret evolution exhibitions through a profoundly complex convergence of personal, political, intellectual, emotional and cultural interpretive strategies. This book also reveals that natural history museum visitors often respond to museum exhibitions similarly because they use common cultural tools picked up from globalized popular media circulating outside of the museum. One tool of particular interest is the notion that human evolution has proceeded linearly from a bestial African prehistory to a civilized European present. Despite critical growths in anthropological science and museum displays, the outdated Victorian progress motif lingers persistently in popular media and the popular imagination. Rethinking Evolution in the Museum sheds light on our relationship with natural history museums and will be crucial to those people interested in understanding the connection between the visitor, the museum and media culture outside of the museum context.

The Museum

The Museum PDF Author: Samuel J. Redman
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479809330
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
"On a cold and clear afternoon in January 1865, a roaring fire swept through the Smithsonian Institution. The flames at the Smithsonian, however, were merely an omen of things to come for museums in the United States. Beset by challenges ranging from pandemic and war to fire and economic uncertainty, museums have sought ways to emerge from crisis periods stronger than before, occasionally carving important new paths forward in the process. Hampered by troubling problems, museum leaders made different choices while remaining committed to versions of the museum idea. This book explores the concepts of "crisis" as it relates to museums in the United States, exploring how museums have dealt with challenges ranging from depression and war to pandemic and philosophical uncertainty. Fires, floods, and hurricanes have all upended museum plans and forced people to ask difficult questions about U.S. cultural life. With chapters exploring the First World War and 1918 influenza pandemic, Great Depression, Second World War, 1970 Art Strike in New York City, as well as more recent controversies in U.S. museums, this book takes a new approach to understanding museum history. By diving deeply into the nature of museum changes emerging from these key challenges, historian Samuel J. Redman argues that museums and other cultural institutions can use their history to prepare for challenges lying ahead"--

The Birth of the Museum

The Birth of the Museum PDF Author: Tony Bennett
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136115161
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
In a series of richly detailed case studies from Britian, Australia and North America, Tony Bennett investigates how nineteenth- and twentieth-century museums, fairs and exhibitions have organized their collections, and their visitors. Discussing the historical development of museums alongside that of the fair and the international exhibition, Bennett sheds new light upon the relationship between modern forms of official and popular culture. Using Foucaltian perspectives The Birth of the Museum explores how the public museum should be understood not just as a place of instruction, but as a reformatory of manners in which a wide range of regulated social routines and performances take place. This invigorating study enriches and challenges the understanding of the museum, and places it at the centre of modern relations between culture and government. For students of museum, cultural and sociology studies, this will be an asset to their reading list.

The Curator's Egg

The Curator's Egg PDF Author: Karsten Schubert
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
'The Curator's Egg' traces the growth of the museum concept from the opening of the Louvre to the current popularity of buildings by 'starchitects'. Encompassing curatorial, scholarly, political and cultural spheres, author Karsten Schubert addresses the concept of the museum from a variety of influences.

The Way of the Panda

The Way of the Panda PDF Author: Henry Nicholls
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1605987581
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
Learn how the extraordinary impact of the panda—from obscurity to fame—is also the story of China’s transition from shy beginnings to center stage. Giant pandas have been causing a stir ever since their formal scientific discovery just over 140 years ago. Yet in spite of humankind’s evident obsession with the giant panda, it is only in the last few decades that scientific research has begun to show us what this mysterious, frequently misunderstood creature is really like. Henry Nicholls uses the rich and curious history of the giant panda to do several things: to ponder our changing attitudes toward the natural world; to offer a compelling history of the conservation movement; and to chart the rise of modern China on its journey to become the self-sufficient, twenty-first-century superpower it is today.

The Future of Natural History Museums

The Future of Natural History Museums PDF Author: Eric Dorfman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315531879
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Natural history museums are changing, both because of their own internal development and in response to changes in context. Historically, the aim of collecting from nature was to develop encyclopedic assemblages to satisfy human curiosity and build a basis for taxonomic information. Today, with global biodiversity in rapid decline, there are new reasons to build and maintain collections, while audiences are more diverse, numerous, and technically savvy. Institutions must learn to embrace new technology while retaining the authenticity of their stories and the value placed on their objects. The Future of Natural History Museums begins to develop a cohesive discourse that balances the disparate issues that our institutions will face over the next decades. It disassembles the topic into various key elements and, through commentary and synthesis, explores a cohesive picture of the trajectory of the natural history museum sector. This book contributes to the study of collections, teaching and learning, ethics, and running non-profit businesses and will be of interest to museum and heritage professionals and academics and senior students in Biological Sciences and Museum Studies.

Evolution in the Museum

Evolution in the Museum PDF Author: Monique R. Scott
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Anthropological museums and collections
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description