Results by title
111 books match the query 'Museum Studies' and 12 start with t
Temple of Science
The Pre-Raphaelites and Oxford University Museum of Natural HistoryJohn Holmes
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2020
Built between 1855 and 1860, the Oxford University Museum of Natural History is the extraordinary result of close collaboration between artists and scientists. The architect Benjamin Woodward consulted with two groups on the design and decoration of the building: a panel of Oxford scientists and dons, and the society of artists known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The museum's decorative art was modeled on the Pre-Raphaelites' principle of meticulous observation of nature, itself indebted to science. The structure was an experiment in using architecture and art to communicate natural history, modern science, and natural theology. Temple of Science sets out the history of the campaign to build the museum before taking the reader on a tour of the art found in the museum itself. It looks at the façade and the central court, the natural history carvings and marble columns illustrating different geological strata, and the meticulously carved sculptures of influential scientists. With unique insights and lavish illustrations, Temple of Science tells the story of one of the most remarkable collaborations between scientists and artists in European art.
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The Absent Stone
Mexican Patrimony and the Aftershocks of State TheftSandra Rozental
Duke University Press, 2026
Where and to whom do ancient things belong? What happens when they are stolen—not by a colonial power, but by a national museum claiming them as state patrimony? What kinds of healing and restitution can follow? In The Absent Stone, Sandra Rozental tells the story of the Piedra de los Tecomates, the largest stone monument in the Americas, popularly identified as the pre-Hispanic rain deity Tlaloc. In 1964, the Mexican state called in the military to forcefully relocate this 167-ton carving from the town of Coatlinchan to Mexico City’s National Anthropology Museum. Using in-depth historical and ethnographic research, Rozental traces how the stone’s absence continues to affect and unsettle Coatlinchan and its residents decades later, revealing the tensions between patrimony, nationalism, territory, memory, and materiality in Mexico. Questioning the premise that historical artifacts belong in museums under state-sanctioned care, The Absent Stone pushes contemporary critical scholarship on monuments and museum collections beyond the language of law, heritage, and cultural property, demonstrating how ancient things remain bound to the people and places they come from even after they are removed and displayed elsewhere.
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The Agency of Access
Contemporary Disability Art & Institutional CritiqueAmanda Cachia
Temple University Press, 2025
The Agency of Access examines how access can be employed as a methodology for curating art exhibitions using a multi-sensorial approach. Crip curator and art historian Amanda Cachia illustrates how bodies take in information and process stimuli, making the inequities in museums and galleries more transparent. She also argues that, as contemporary disabled artists move away from representations of disability, they create an art of access, or access aesthetics, through works that center translation, sensory expansion, touch, and movement for audiences and offer an experience of “being with” disability.
Showcasing artwork by contemporary disabled artists Corban Walker, Christine Sun Kim, and Carmen Papalia, among others, The Agency of Access inscribes contemporary disability art in the broad canon of contemporary art, where the artistic past is regarded differently.
Cachia is an outspoken advocate for artists living with sensory disabilities. She understands disabled artists’ experiences in both the world and the gallery. The artists she has curated make bold, astonishing, and compelling statements about interdependency, care, and the ways in which our environment affects disabled, ill, and immunocompromised bodies.
Showcasing artwork by contemporary disabled artists Corban Walker, Christine Sun Kim, and Carmen Papalia, among others, The Agency of Access inscribes contemporary disability art in the broad canon of contemporary art, where the artistic past is regarded differently.
Cachia is an outspoken advocate for artists living with sensory disabilities. She understands disabled artists’ experiences in both the world and the gallery. The artists she has curated make bold, astonishing, and compelling statements about interdependency, care, and the ways in which our environment affects disabled, ill, and immunocompromised bodies.
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The Contested Crown
Repatriation Politics between Europe and MexicoKhadija von Zinnenburg Carroll
University of Chicago Press, 2022
Following conflicting desires for an Aztec crown, this book explores the possibilities of repatriation.
In The Contested Crown, Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll meditates on the case of a spectacular feather headdress believed to have belonged to Montezuma, emperor of the Aztecs. This crown has long been the center of political and cultural power struggles, and it is one of the most contested museum claims between Europe and the Americas. Taken to Europe during the conquest of Mexico, it was placed at Ambras Castle, the Habsburg residence of the author’s ancestors, and is now in Vienna’s Welt Museum. Mexico has long requested to have it back, but the Welt Museum uses science to insist it is too fragile to travel.
Both the biography of a cultural object and a history of collecting and colonizing, this book offers an artist’s perspective on the creative potentials of repatriation. Carroll compares Holocaust and colonial ethical claims, and she considers relationships between indigenous people, international law and the museums that amass global treasures, the significance of copies, and how conservation science shapes collections. Illustrated with diagrams and rare archival material, this book brings together global history, European history, and material culture around this fascinating object and the debates about repatriation.
In The Contested Crown, Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll meditates on the case of a spectacular feather headdress believed to have belonged to Montezuma, emperor of the Aztecs. This crown has long been the center of political and cultural power struggles, and it is one of the most contested museum claims between Europe and the Americas. Taken to Europe during the conquest of Mexico, it was placed at Ambras Castle, the Habsburg residence of the author’s ancestors, and is now in Vienna’s Welt Museum. Mexico has long requested to have it back, but the Welt Museum uses science to insist it is too fragile to travel.
Both the biography of a cultural object and a history of collecting and colonizing, this book offers an artist’s perspective on the creative potentials of repatriation. Carroll compares Holocaust and colonial ethical claims, and she considers relationships between indigenous people, international law and the museums that amass global treasures, the significance of copies, and how conservation science shapes collections. Illustrated with diagrams and rare archival material, this book brings together global history, European history, and material culture around this fascinating object and the debates about repatriation.
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The First Treatise on Museums
Samuel Quiccheberg’s Inscriptiones, 1565Samuel Quiccheberg
J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 2014
A new translation of a seminal sixteenth-century book on the collection and display of objects.
Samuel Quiccheberg’s Inscriptiones, first published in Latin in 1565, is an ambitious effort to demonstrate the pragmatic value of curiosity cabinets, or Wunderkammern, to princely collectors in sixteenth-century Europe and, by so doing, inspire them to develop their own such collections. Quiccheberg shows how the assembly and display of physical objects offered nobles a powerful means to expand visual knowledge, allowing them to incorporate empirical and artisanal expertise into the realm of the written word. But in mapping out the collectability of the material world, Quiccheberg did far more than create a taxonomy. Rather, he demonstrated how organizing objects made their knowledge more accessible; how objects, when juxtaposed or grouped, could tell a story; and how such strategies could enhance the value of any single object.
Quiccheberg’s descriptions of early modern collections provide both a point of origin for today’s museums and an implicit critique of their aims, asserting the fundamental research and scholarly value of collections: collections are to be used, not merely viewed. The First Treatise on Museums makes Quiccheberg’s now rare publication available in an English translation. Complementing the translation are a critical introduction by Mark A. Meadow and a preface by Bruce Robertson.
Samuel Quiccheberg’s Inscriptiones, first published in Latin in 1565, is an ambitious effort to demonstrate the pragmatic value of curiosity cabinets, or Wunderkammern, to princely collectors in sixteenth-century Europe and, by so doing, inspire them to develop their own such collections. Quiccheberg shows how the assembly and display of physical objects offered nobles a powerful means to expand visual knowledge, allowing them to incorporate empirical and artisanal expertise into the realm of the written word. But in mapping out the collectability of the material world, Quiccheberg did far more than create a taxonomy. Rather, he demonstrated how organizing objects made their knowledge more accessible; how objects, when juxtaposed or grouped, could tell a story; and how such strategies could enhance the value of any single object.
Quiccheberg’s descriptions of early modern collections provide both a point of origin for today’s museums and an implicit critique of their aims, asserting the fundamental research and scholarly value of collections: collections are to be used, not merely viewed. The First Treatise on Museums makes Quiccheberg’s now rare publication available in an English translation. Complementing the translation are a critical introduction by Mark A. Meadow and a preface by Bruce Robertson.
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The India Museum Revisited
Arthur MacGregor
University College London, 2023
A full examination of the India Museum’s founding manifesto and evolving ambitions.
The museum of the East India Company formed, for a large part of the nineteenth century, one of the sights of London. In recent years, little has been remembered of it beyond its mere existence, while an assumed negative role has been widely attributed to it on the basis of its position at the heart of one of Britain’s arch-colonialist enterprises.
Extensively illustrated, The India Museum Revisited surveys the contents of its multi-faceted collections—with respect to materials, their manufacture, and original functions on the Indian sub-continent—as well as the collectors who gathered them and the manner in which they were mobilized to various ends within the museum.
From this integrated treatment of documentary and material sources, a more accurate, rounded, and nuanced picture emerges of an institution that contributed in major ways, over a period of eighty years, to the representation of India for a European audience, not only in Britain but through the museum’s involvement in the international exposition movement to audiences on the continent and beyond.
The museum of the East India Company formed, for a large part of the nineteenth century, one of the sights of London. In recent years, little has been remembered of it beyond its mere existence, while an assumed negative role has been widely attributed to it on the basis of its position at the heart of one of Britain’s arch-colonialist enterprises.
Extensively illustrated, The India Museum Revisited surveys the contents of its multi-faceted collections—with respect to materials, their manufacture, and original functions on the Indian sub-continent—as well as the collectors who gathered them and the manner in which they were mobilized to various ends within the museum.
From this integrated treatment of documentary and material sources, a more accurate, rounded, and nuanced picture emerges of an institution that contributed in major ways, over a period of eighty years, to the representation of India for a European audience, not only in Britain but through the museum’s involvement in the international exposition movement to audiences on the continent and beyond.
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The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
A HistoryKristie C. Wolferman
University of Missouri Press, 2020
When Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art opened to the public in 1933, it was viewed as a miracle, an oasis of culture in a Midwestern town whose image was still largely one of cowboys and steaks. In an engaging style, Kristie Wolferman tells the history of the Nelson-Atkins from its founding to the present day, a fascinating combination of people, events, and circumstances that culminated in an art museum that now holds its own among the finest in the world.
Wolferman begins by relaying how the trustees of the estates of the reclusive widow Mary Atkins and the family of Kansas City Star newspaper editor William Rockhill Nelson joined forces to establish a museum from scratch, then goes on to consider all of the highly talented people who directed and staffed the Nelson-Atkins along the way, their efforts resulting in many bold innovations, among them new collections, grounds, and educational programs and offerings.
With 100 color and black and white photographs, this book will be treasured by all who love and admire this remarkable institution, one that attracts half a million visitors—from across the city, state, nation, and world—each year.
This is a co-publication of the University of Missouri Press and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
Wolferman begins by relaying how the trustees of the estates of the reclusive widow Mary Atkins and the family of Kansas City Star newspaper editor William Rockhill Nelson joined forces to establish a museum from scratch, then goes on to consider all of the highly talented people who directed and staffed the Nelson-Atkins along the way, their efforts resulting in many bold innovations, among them new collections, grounds, and educational programs and offerings.
With 100 color and black and white photographs, this book will be treasured by all who love and admire this remarkable institution, one that attracts half a million visitors—from across the city, state, nation, and world—each year.
This is a co-publication of the University of Missouri Press and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
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The Persistence of Dance
Choreography as Concept and Material in Contemporary ArtErin Brannigan
University of Michigan Press, 2023
There is a category of choreographic practice with a lineage stretching back to mid-20th century North America that has re-emerged since the early 1990s: dance as a contemporary art medium. Such work belongs as much to the gallery as does video art or sculpture and is distinct from both performance art and its history as well as from theater-based dance.
The Persistence of Dance: Choreography as Concept and Material in Contemporary Art clarifies the continuities and differences between the second-wave dance avant-garde in the 1950s‒1970s and the third-wave starting in the 1990s. Through close readings of key artists such as Maria Hassabi, Sarah Michelson, Boris Charmatz, Meg Stuart, Philipp Gehmacher, Adam Linder, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Shelley Lasica and Latai Taumoepeau, The Persistence of Dance traces the relationship between the third-wave and gallery-based work. Looking at these artists highlights how the discussions and practices associated with “conceptual dance” resonate with the categories of conceptual and post-conceptual art as well as with the critical work on the function of visual art categories. Brannigan concludes that within the current post-disciplinary context, there is a persistence of dance and that a model of post-dance exists that encompasses dance as a contemporary art medium.
The Persistence of Dance: Choreography as Concept and Material in Contemporary Art clarifies the continuities and differences between the second-wave dance avant-garde in the 1950s‒1970s and the third-wave starting in the 1990s. Through close readings of key artists such as Maria Hassabi, Sarah Michelson, Boris Charmatz, Meg Stuart, Philipp Gehmacher, Adam Linder, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Shelley Lasica and Latai Taumoepeau, The Persistence of Dance traces the relationship between the third-wave and gallery-based work. Looking at these artists highlights how the discussions and practices associated with “conceptual dance” resonate with the categories of conceptual and post-conceptual art as well as with the critical work on the function of visual art categories. Brannigan concludes that within the current post-disciplinary context, there is a persistence of dance and that a model of post-dance exists that encompasses dance as a contemporary art medium.
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The Politics of Collecting
Race and the Aestheticization of PropertyEunsong Kim
Duke University Press, 2024
In The Politics of Collecting, Eunsong Kim traces how racial capitalism and colonialism situated the rise of US museum collections and conceptual art forms. Investigating historical legal and property claims, she argues that regimes of expropriation—rather than merit or good taste—are responsible for popular ideas of formal innovation and artistic genius. In doing so, she details how Marcel Duchamp’s canonization has more to do with his patron’s donations to museums than it does the quality of Duchamp’s work, and she uncovers the racialized and financialized logic behind the Archive of New Poetry’s collecting practices. Ranging from the conception of philanthropy devised by the robber barons of the late nineteenth century to ongoing digitization projects, Kim provides a new history of contemporary art that accounts for the complicated entanglement of race, capital, and labor behind storied art institutions and artists. Drawing on history, theory, and economics, Kim challenges received notions of artistic success and talent and calls for a new vision of art beyond the cultural institution.
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The Return of Curiosity
What Museums are Good For in the 21st CenturyNicholas Thomas
Reaktion Books, 2016
The Spy Museum, the Vacuum Cleaner Museum, the National Mustard Museum—not to mention the Art Institute, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Getty Center: museums have never been more robust, curating just about everything there is and assuming a new prominence in public life. The Return of Curiosity explores museums in the modern age, offering a fresh perspective on some of our most important cultural institutions and the vital function they serve as stewards of human and natural history.
Reflecting on art galleries, science and history institutions, and collections all around the world, Nicholas Thomas argues that, in times marked by incredible insecurity and turbulence, museums help us sustain and enrich society. Moreover, they stimulate us to think in new ways about our world, compelling our curiosity and showing us the importance of understanding one another. Thomas looks at museums not simply as storehouses of old things but as the products of meaningful relationships between curators, the public, history, and culture. These relationships, he shows, don’t always go smoothly, but they do always offer new insights into the many ways we value—and try to preserve—the world we live in.
The result is a refreshing and hopeful look at museums as a cultural force, one that, by gathering together paintings, tropical birds, antiques, or even our own bodies, offers an illuminating reflection of who we are.
Reflecting on art galleries, science and history institutions, and collections all around the world, Nicholas Thomas argues that, in times marked by incredible insecurity and turbulence, museums help us sustain and enrich society. Moreover, they stimulate us to think in new ways about our world, compelling our curiosity and showing us the importance of understanding one another. Thomas looks at museums not simply as storehouses of old things but as the products of meaningful relationships between curators, the public, history, and culture. These relationships, he shows, don’t always go smoothly, but they do always offer new insights into the many ways we value—and try to preserve—the world we live in.
The result is a refreshing and hopeful look at museums as a cultural force, one that, by gathering together paintings, tropical birds, antiques, or even our own bodies, offers an illuminating reflection of who we are.
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The Spirit of Colonial Williamsburg
Ghosts and Interpreting the Recreated PastAlena Pirok
University of Massachusetts Press, 2022
On any given night, hundreds of guests walk the darkened streets of Colonial Williamsburg looking for ghosts. Since the early 2000s, both the museum and private companies have facilitated these hunts, offering year-round ghost tours. Critics have called these excursions a cash grab, but in truth, ghosts and hauntings have long been at the center of the Colonial Williamsburg project.
The Spirit of Colonial Williamsburg examines how the long-dead past comes alive at this living-history museum. In the early twentieth century, local stories about the ghosts of former residents—among them Revolutionary War soldiers and nurses, tavern owners and prominent attorneys, and enslaved African Americans—helped to turn Williamsburg into a desirable site for historical restoration. But, for much of the twentieth century, the museum tried diligently to avoid any discussion of ghosts, considering them frivolous and lowbrow. Alena Pirok explores why historic sites have begun to embrace their spectral residents in recent decades, arguing that through them, patrons experience an emotional connection to place and a palpable understanding of the past through its people.
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Treasured Possessions
Indigenous Interventions into Cultural and Intellectual PropertyHaidy Geismar
Duke University Press, 2013
What happens when ritual practitioners from a small Pacific nation make an intellectual property claim to bungee jumping? When a German company successfully sues to defend its trademark of a Māori name? Or when UNESCO deems ephemeral sand drawings to be "intangible cultural heritage"? In Treasured Possessions, Haidy Geismar examines how global forms of cultural and intellectual property are being redefined by everyday people and policymakers in two markedly different Pacific nations. The New Hebrides, a small archipelago in Melanesia managed jointly by Britain and France until 1980, is now the independent nation-state of Vanuatu, with a population that is more than 95 percent indigenous. New Zealand, by contrast, is a settler state and former British colony that engages with its entangled Polynesian and British heritage through an ethos of "biculturalism" that is meant to involve an indigenous population of just 15 percent. Alternative notions of property, resources, and heritage—informed by distinct national histories—are emerging in both countries. These property claims are advanced in national and international settings, but they emanate from specific communities and cultural landscapes, and they are grounded in an awareness of ancestral power and inheritance. They reveal intellectual and cultural property to be not only legal constructs but also powerful ways of asserting indigenous identities and sovereignties.
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