Results by title
111 books match the query 'Museum Studies' and 9 start with p
Past for the Eyes
East European Representations of Communism in Cinema and Museums After 1989Oksana Sarkisova
Central European University Press, 2008
How do museums and cinema shape the image of the Communist past in today’s Central and Eastern Europe? This volume is the first systematic analysis of how visual techniques are used to understand and put into context the former regimes. After history “ended” in the Eastern Bloc in 1989, museums and other memorials mushroomed all over the region. These efforts tried both to explain the meaning of this lost history, as well as to shape public opinion on their society’s shared post-war heritage. Museums and films made political use of recollections of the recent past, and employed selected museum, memorial, and media tools and tactics to make its political intent historically credible. Thirteen essays from scholars around the region take a fresh look at the subject as they address the strategies of fashioning popular perceptions of the recent past.
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Places of Public Memory
The Rhetoric of Museums and MemorialsEdited by Greg Dickinson, Carole Blair, and Brian L. Ott
University of Alabama Press, 2010
A sustained and rigorous consideration of the intersections of memory, place, and rhetoric
Though we live in a time when memory seems to be losing its hold on communities, memory remains central to personal, communal, and national identities. And although popular and public discourses from speeches to films invite a shared sense of the past, official sites of memory such as memorials, museums, and battlefields embody unique rhetorical principles.
Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials is a sustained and rigorous consideration of the intersections of memory, place, and rhetoric. From the mnemonic systems inscribed upon ancient architecture to the roadside accident memorials that line America’s highways, memory and place have always been deeply interconnected. This book investigates the intersections of memory and place through nine original essays written by leading memory studies scholars from the fields of rhetoric, media studies, organizational communication, history, performance studies, and English. The essays address, among other subjects, the rhetorical strategies of those vying for competing visions of a 9/11 memorial at New York City’s Ground Zero; rhetorics of resistance embedded in the plans for an expansion of the National Civil Rights Museum; representations of nuclear energy—both as power source and weapon—in Cold War and post–Cold War museums; and tours and tourism as acts of performance.
By focusing on “official” places of memory, the collection causes readers to reflect on how nations and local communities remember history and on how some voices and views are legitimated and others are minimized or erased.
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Please Touch
A History of the First Four Children's Museums in the United States (1899–1965)Jessie Swigger
University of Massachusetts Press, 2026
The Innovation and influence of the first children’s museums in the US
When it opened in 1899, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum greeted visitors with a new experience. Rather than carefully ensconcing artifacts and curios behind protective glass, the staff took the unusual step of moving the objects out of their cases and into the hands of the children, inviting them to “please touch.” Born out of the reformist spirit of the Progressive Era, the museum represented a new kind of institution, one whose primary purpose was not to collect, preserve, and display objects but rather to educate a specific audience. Over the next twenty-five years, three other children’s museums opened with a similar mission and approach: the Boston Children’s Museum (1913), the Detroit Children’s Museum (1917), and The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis (1925).
At a time when most museums were led by men, women played a critical role in overseeing this first wave of children’s museums. As the number of children’s museums grew, women rose to prominence in the museum profession at large, advocating for new ways for institutions to interact with and serve their audiences. By 1965, the children’s museum movement had succeeded in demonstrating rich rewards and had influenced all types of museums and continues to do so to this day.
Drawing on archival materials, newspaper accounts, and the writings of museum workers and professionals, Please Touch carefully chronicles the early histories of these four seminal children’s museums. Jessie Swigger provides thorough institutional histories of each and connects them to broader currents in education, such as the Progressive education movement, and to key events in early- to mid-twentieth-century US history, including immigration, the Great Depression, World Wars I and II, and the Cold War. She also demonstrates how these institutions were fundamentally shaped by women’s leadership, and how they challenged and expanded the definition of museums and pressed museum practices in new directions.
When it opened in 1899, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum greeted visitors with a new experience. Rather than carefully ensconcing artifacts and curios behind protective glass, the staff took the unusual step of moving the objects out of their cases and into the hands of the children, inviting them to “please touch.” Born out of the reformist spirit of the Progressive Era, the museum represented a new kind of institution, one whose primary purpose was not to collect, preserve, and display objects but rather to educate a specific audience. Over the next twenty-five years, three other children’s museums opened with a similar mission and approach: the Boston Children’s Museum (1913), the Detroit Children’s Museum (1917), and The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis (1925).
At a time when most museums were led by men, women played a critical role in overseeing this first wave of children’s museums. As the number of children’s museums grew, women rose to prominence in the museum profession at large, advocating for new ways for institutions to interact with and serve their audiences. By 1965, the children’s museum movement had succeeded in demonstrating rich rewards and had influenced all types of museums and continues to do so to this day.
Drawing on archival materials, newspaper accounts, and the writings of museum workers and professionals, Please Touch carefully chronicles the early histories of these four seminal children’s museums. Jessie Swigger provides thorough institutional histories of each and connects them to broader currents in education, such as the Progressive education movement, and to key events in early- to mid-twentieth-century US history, including immigration, the Great Depression, World Wars I and II, and the Cold War. She also demonstrates how these institutions were fundamentally shaped by women’s leadership, and how they challenged and expanded the definition of museums and pressed museum practices in new directions.
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Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits
Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America's CultureChip Colwell
University of Chicago Press, 2017
Who owns the past and the objects that physically connect us to history? And who has the right to decide this ownership, particularly when the objects are sacred or, in the case of skeletal remains, human? Is it the museums that care for the objects or the communities whose ancestors made them? These questions are at the heart of Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits, an unflinching insider account by a leading curator who has spent years learning how to balance these controversial considerations.
Five decades ago, Native American leaders launched a crusade to force museums to return their sacred objects and allow them to rebury their kin. Today, hundreds of tribes use the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to help them recover their looted heritage from museums across the country. As senior curator of anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Chip Colwell has navigated firsthand the questions of how to weigh the religious freedom of Native Americans against the academic freedom of scientists and whether the emptying of museum shelves elevates human rights or destroys a common heritage. This book offers his personal account of the process of repatriation, following the trail of four objects as they were created, collected, and ultimately returned to their sources: a sculpture that is a living god, the scalp of a massacre victim, a ceremonial blanket, and a skeleton from a tribe considered by some to be extinct. These specific stories reveal a dramatic process that involves not merely obeying the law, but negotiating the blurry lines between identity and morality, spirituality and politics.
Things, like people, have biographies. Repatriation, Colwell argues, is a difficult but vitally important way for museums and tribes to acknowledge that fact—and heal the wounds of the past while creating a respectful approach to caring for these rich artifacts of history.
Five decades ago, Native American leaders launched a crusade to force museums to return their sacred objects and allow them to rebury their kin. Today, hundreds of tribes use the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to help them recover their looted heritage from museums across the country. As senior curator of anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Chip Colwell has navigated firsthand the questions of how to weigh the religious freedom of Native Americans against the academic freedom of scientists and whether the emptying of museum shelves elevates human rights or destroys a common heritage. This book offers his personal account of the process of repatriation, following the trail of four objects as they were created, collected, and ultimately returned to their sources: a sculpture that is a living god, the scalp of a massacre victim, a ceremonial blanket, and a skeleton from a tribe considered by some to be extinct. These specific stories reveal a dramatic process that involves not merely obeying the law, but negotiating the blurry lines between identity and morality, spirituality and politics.
Things, like people, have biographies. Repatriation, Colwell argues, is a difficult but vitally important way for museums and tribes to acknowledge that fact—and heal the wounds of the past while creating a respectful approach to caring for these rich artifacts of history.
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Pluralising Pasts
Heritage, Identity and Place in Multicultural SocietiesBrian Graham, G. J. Ashworth, and J. E. Tunbridge
Pluto Press, 2007
The heritage industry is big business. From museums and the preservation of old buildings to broader questions of community and identity, heritage is now a political issue. This book explores what heritage means and how it is used to encourage people to identify with particular places and 'traditions'. The authors show how contemporary societies use heritage in the creation and management of collective identities and, most especially, the different ways in which it is involved with the questions of multicultural societies. The resources that are poured into heritage mean that questions of identity are widely discussed at a policy level: what does it mean to be American or British, or a minority in any society? This book shows how heritage is used politically and commercially to shape the ways people represent themselves, and are represented, in diverse and hybrid societies.
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Preserving Maritime America
A Cultural History of the Nation's Great Maritime MuseumsJames M. Lindgren
University of Massachusetts Press, 2019
The United States has long been dependent on the seas, but Americans know little about their maritime history. While Britain and other countries have established national museums to nurture their seagoing traditions, America has left that responsibility to private institutions. In this first-of-its-kind history, James M. Lindgren focuses on a half-dozen of these great museums, ranging from Salem's East India Marine Society, founded in 1799, to San Francisco's Maritime Museum and New York's South Street Seaport Museum, which were established in recent decades.
Begun by activists with unique agendas—whether overseas empire, economic redevelopment, or cultural preservation—these museums have displayed the nation's complex interrelationship with the sea. Yet they all faced chronic shortfalls, as policymakers, corporations, and everyday citizens failed to appreciate the oceans' formative environment. Preserving Maritime America shows how these institutions shifted course to remain solvent and relevant and demonstrates how their stories tell of the nation's rise and decline as a commercial maritime power.
Begun by activists with unique agendas—whether overseas empire, economic redevelopment, or cultural preservation—these museums have displayed the nation's complex interrelationship with the sea. Yet they all faced chronic shortfalls, as policymakers, corporations, and everyday citizens failed to appreciate the oceans' formative environment. Preserving Maritime America shows how these institutions shifted course to remain solvent and relevant and demonstrates how their stories tell of the nation's rise and decline as a commercial maritime power.
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Presidential Libraries as Performance
Curating American Character from Herbert Hoover to George W. BushJodi Kanter
Southern Illinois University Press, 2016
How do the funding, setting architecture, and exhibition of a presidential library shape our understanding of the president’s character? And how do diverse performances of the presidency create radically different opportunities for the practice of American citizenship? In Presidential Libraries as Performance: Curating American Character from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush, Jodi Kanter analyzes presidential libraries as performances that encourage visitors to think in particular ways about executive leadership and about their own roles in public life.
Kanter considers the moments in the presidents’ lives the museums choose to interpret, and not to interpret, and how the libraries approach common subjects in the presidential museum narrative—the presidents’ early years in relation to cultural ideals, the libraries’ representations of presidential failures, personal and political, and the question of presidential legacy. Identifying the limited number of strategies the libraries currently use to represent the diversity of the American experience and American character, Kanter offers concrete suggestions for reinventing and reshaping the practices of museum professionals and visitors within the walls of these institutions.
Presidential museums can tell us important things about the relationships between performance and politics, entertainment and history, and leaders and the people they lead. Kanter demonstrates how the presidential libraries generate normative narratives about individual presidents, historical events, and what it means to be an American.
Kanter considers the moments in the presidents’ lives the museums choose to interpret, and not to interpret, and how the libraries approach common subjects in the presidential museum narrative—the presidents’ early years in relation to cultural ideals, the libraries’ representations of presidential failures, personal and political, and the question of presidential legacy. Identifying the limited number of strategies the libraries currently use to represent the diversity of the American experience and American character, Kanter offers concrete suggestions for reinventing and reshaping the practices of museum professionals and visitors within the walls of these institutions.
Presidential museums can tell us important things about the relationships between performance and politics, entertainment and history, and leaders and the people they lead. Kanter demonstrates how the presidential libraries generate normative narratives about individual presidents, historical events, and what it means to be an American.
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Provenance Research for Mediterranean Antiquities
Methods and ResourcesJudith Barr
J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 2026
This practical volume is the first to gather resources specific to the provenance of Mediterranean antiquities in an accessible, comprehensive guidebook.
The first of its kind, this book is an accessible, comprehensive primer of methods and resources for researching the provenance of Mediterranean (Greek, Roman, and Etruscan) antiquities. In addition to outlining effective strategies for documentation and investigation, the volume features an annotated guide to key archives, databases, and twentieth-century dealers to facilitate a broad spectrum of research endeavors. Building upon a decade-long review of the Getty Museum’s antiquities collection, it draws together instructive case studies, legal perspectives, and practical experience to provide an efficient reference for museum professionals, scholars, collectors, and students. The authors aim to emphasize the need for diligent provenance research and to shorten the learning curve for such projects.
The free online edition of this open-access publication is available at getty.edu/publications/provenance-research and includes zoomable illustrations. Also available are free PDF and EPUB downloads of the book.
The first of its kind, this book is an accessible, comprehensive primer of methods and resources for researching the provenance of Mediterranean (Greek, Roman, and Etruscan) antiquities. In addition to outlining effective strategies for documentation and investigation, the volume features an annotated guide to key archives, databases, and twentieth-century dealers to facilitate a broad spectrum of research endeavors. Building upon a decade-long review of the Getty Museum’s antiquities collection, it draws together instructive case studies, legal perspectives, and practical experience to provide an efficient reference for museum professionals, scholars, collectors, and students. The authors aim to emphasize the need for diligent provenance research and to shorten the learning curve for such projects.
The free online edition of this open-access publication is available at getty.edu/publications/provenance-research and includes zoomable illustrations. Also available are free PDF and EPUB downloads of the book.
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Public Properties
Museums in Imperial JapanNoriko Aso
Duke University Press, 2013
In the late nineteenth century, Japan's new Meiji government established museums to showcase a national aesthetic heritage. Inspired by Western museums and expositions, these institutions were introduced by government officials hoping to spur industrialization and self-disciplined public behavior, and to cultivate an "imperial public" loyal to the emperor. Japan's network of museums expanded along with its colonies. By the mid-1930s, the Japanese museum system had established or absorbed institutions in Taiwan, Korea, Sakhalin, and Manchuria. Not surprising, colonial subjects' views of Japanese imperialism differed from those promulgated by the Japanese state. Meanwhile, in Japan, philanthropic and commercial museums were expanding, revising, and even questioning the state-sanctioned aesthetic canon. Public Properties describes how museums in Japan and its empire contributed to the reimagining of state and society during the imperial era, despite vigorous disagreements about what was to be displayed, how, and by whom it was to be seen.
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