Museum Matters

Museum Matters PDF Author: Miruna Achim
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 081653957X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Museum Matters tells the story of Mexico's national collections through the trajectories of its objects. The essays in this book show the many ways in which things matter and affect how Mexico imagines its past, present, and future.

National Museums

National Museums PDF Author: Simon Knell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317723147
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
National Museums is the first book to explore the national museum as a cultural institution in a range of contrasting national contexts. Composed of new studies of countries that rarely make a showing in the English-language studies of museums, this book reveals how these national museums have been used to create a sense of national self, place the nation in the arts, deal with the consequences of political change, remake difficult pasts, and confront those issues of nationalism, ethnicity and multiculturalism which have come to the fore in national politics in recent decades. National Museums combines research from both leading and new researchers in the fields of history, museum studies, cultural studies, sociology, history of art, media studies, science and technology studies, and anthropology. It is an interrogation of the origins, purpose, organisation, politics, narratives and philosophies of national museums.

Museum Rhetoric

Museum Rhetoric PDF Author: M. Elizabeth Weiser
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271080221
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
In today’s diverse societies, museums are the primary institutions within the public sphere in which individuals can both engage critical thought and celebrate community. This volume uses the lens of rhetoric to explore the role these societal repositories play in establishing and altering cultural heritage and national identity. Based on fieldwork conducted in over sixty museums in twenty-two countries across six continents, Museum Rhetoric explores how heritage museum exhibits persuade visitors to unite their own sense of identity with that of the broader civic society and how the latter changes in response. Elizabeth Weiser examines what compels communities, organizations, and nations to create museum spaces, and how museums operate as sites of both civic engagement and rhetorical persuasion. Moving beyond rhetorical explorations of museums as “memory sites,” she shows how they intentionally straddle the divides between style and content, intellect and affect, and unity and diversity, and why their portrayal of the past matters to civic life—and particularly studies of nationalism—in the present and future. Deeply researched and artfully argued, Museum Rhetoric sheds light on the public impact of cultural and aesthetic heritage and opens avenues of inquiry for scholars of museum studies and public history.

The State of Museums

The State of Museums PDF Author: Rebekah Beaulieu
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781912528097
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Checklists, roadmaps and models Coinciding with the centenary of the New England Museums Association - a region home to many of the USA's most progressive and ground-breaking museums - The State of Museums explores the shifts in culture, urbanisation, technology, tolerance and diversity that continue to impact the mission, operation and priorities of museums worldwide. The result is thought-provoking series of must-read essays, checklists, roadmaps and models which face up to the big questions facing museums in rapidly changing times. Facing up to the big questions The State of Museums: Voices from the Field, brings together grassroots voices to explore the issues, challenges and strengths of today's museums. Edited by experienced thought leaders, in frank discussion it explores the present and future of museums and celebrates the tenets at the core of museum leaders everywhere.

History Museums in the United States

History Museums in the United States PDF Author: Warren Leon
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252060649
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Every year 100 million visitor's tour historic houses and re-created villages, examine museum artifacts, and walk through battlefields. But what do they learn? What version of the past are history museums offering to the public? And how well do these institutions reflect the latest historical scholarship? Fifteen scholars and museum staff members here provide the first critical assessment of American history museums, a vital arena for shaping popular historical consciousness. They consider the form and content of exhibits, ranging from Gettysburg to Disney World. They also examine the social and political contexts on which museums operate.

Museums of Communism

Museums of Communism PDF Author: Stephen M. Norris
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253050316
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description
How did communities come to terms with the collapse of communism? In order to guide the wider narrative, many former communist countries constructed museums dedicated to chronicling their experiences. Museums of Communism explores the complicated intersection of history, commemoration, and victimization made evident in these museums constructed after 1991. While contributors from a diverse range of fields explore various museums and include nearly 90 photographs, a common denominator emerges: rather than focusing on artifacts and historical documents, these museums often privilege memories and stories. In doing so, the museums shift attention from experiences of guilt or collaboration to narratives of shared victimization under communist rule. As editor Stephen M. Norris demonstrates, these museums are often problematic at best and revisionist at worst. From occupation museums in the Baltic States to memorial museums in Ukraine, former secret police prisons in Romania, and nostalgic museums of everyday life in Russia, the sites considered offer new ways of understanding the challenges of separating memory and myth.

The First Modern Museums of Art

The First Modern Museums of Art PDF Author: Carole Paul
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 1606061208
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the first modern, public museums of art—civic, state, or national—appeared throughout Europe, setting a standard for the nature of such institutions that has made its influence felt to the present day. Although the emergence of these museums was an international development, their shared history has not been systematically explored until now. Taking up that project, this volume includes chapters on fifteen of the earliest and still major examples, from the Capitoline Museum in Rome, opened in 1734, to the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, opened in 1836. These essays consider a number of issues, such as the nature, display, and growth of the museums’ collections and the role of the institutions in educating the public. The introductory chapters by art historian Carole Paul, the volume’s editor, lay out the relationship among the various museums and discuss their evolution from private noble and royal collections to public institutions. In concert, the accounts of the individual museums give a comprehensive overview, providing a basis for understanding how the collective emergence of public art museums is indicative of the cultural, social, and political shifts that mark the transformation from the early-modern to the modern world. The fourteen distinguished contributors to the book include Robert G. W. Anderson, former director of the British Museum in London; Paula Findlen, Ubaldo Pierotti Professor of Italian History at Stanford University; Thomas Gaehtgens, director of the Getty Research Institute; and Andrew McClellan, dean of academic affairs and professor of art history at Tufts University. Show more Show less

The Presence of the Past

The Presence of the Past PDF Author: Roy Rosenzweig
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231500487
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Some people make photo albums, collect antiques, or visit historic battlefields. Others keep diaries, plan annual family gatherings, or stitch together patchwork quilts in a tradition learned from grandparents. Each of us has ways of communing with the past, and our reasons for doing so are as varied as our memories. In a sweeping survey, Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen asked 1,500 Americans about their connection to the past and how it influences their daily lives and hopes for the future. The result is a surprisingly candid series of conversations and reflections on how the past infuses the present with meaning. Rosenzweig and Thelen found that people assemble their experiences into narratives that allow them to make sense of their personal histories, set priorities, project what might happen next, and try to shape the future. By using these narratives to mark change and create continuity, people chart the courses of their lives. A young woman from Ohio speaks of giving birth to her first child, which caused her to reflect upon her parents and the ways that their example would help her to become a good mother. An African American man from Georgia tells how he and his wife were drawn to each other by their shared experiences and lessons learned from growing up in the South in the 1950s. Others reveal how they personalize historical events, as in the case of a Massachusetts woman who traces much of her guarded attitude toward life to witnessing the assassination of John F. Kennedy on television when she was a child. While the past is omnipresent to Americans, "history" as it is usually defined in textbooks leaves many people cold. Rosenzweig and Thelen found that history as taught in school does not inspire a strong connection to the past. And they reveal how race and ethnicity affects how Americans perceive the past: while most white Americans tend to think of it as something personal, African Americans and American Indians are more likely to think in terms of broadly shared experiences--like slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and the violation of Indian treaties." Rosenzweig and Thelen's conclusions about the ways people use their personal, family, and national stories have profound implications for anyone involved in researching or presenting history, as well as for all those who struggle to engage with the past in a meaningful way.

Museums, Monuments, and National Parks

Museums, Monuments, and National Parks PDF Author: Denise D. Meringolo
Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Press
ISBN: 1558499407
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
The rapid expansion of the field of public history since the 1970s has led many to believe that it is a relatively new profession. In this book, Denise D. Meringolo shows that the roots of public history actually reach back to the nineteenth century, when the federal government entered into the work of collecting and preserving the nation's natural and cultural resources. Yet it was not until the emergence of the education-oriented National Park Service history program in the 1920s and 1930s that public history found an institutional home. Even then, tensions between administrators in Washington and practitioners on the ground at National Parks, monuments, and museums continued to redefine the scope and substance of the field. The process of definition persists to this day as public historians establish a growing presence in major universities throughout the United States and abroad. Book jacket.

America's Art Museums

America's Art Museums PDF Author: Suzanne Loebl
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393320060
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
A tour of America's most notable museums is also a history of the nation's art that highlights each location's top works while discussing the backgrounds of each building and featured piece of art.