Museology & heritage studies Books

This volume examines the implications and consequences of the idea of 'intangible heritage' to current international academic and policy debates about the meaning and nature of cultural heritage and the management processes developed to protect it. It...

Museums in the Material World seeks to both introduce classic and thought-provoking pieces and contrast them with articles which reveal grounded practice. The articles are selected from across the full breadth of museum disciplines and are linked by a...

Practical Considerations for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage examines theoretical issues relating to intangible cultural heritage policy and practice, whilst also proposing practical ways to facilitate the safeguarding of such heritage...

Experimental Museology scrutinizes innovative endeavours to transform museum interactions with the world. Analysing cutting-edge cases from around the globe, the volume demonstrates how museums can design, apply and assess new modes of audience...

Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism examines the role of exhibitionary institutions in representing LGBTQ+ people, cisgender women, and nonbinary individuals. Considering recent gender and sexuality-related developments through a critical lens, the...

Curating Lively Objects explores the role of things as catalysts in imagining futures beyond disciplines for museums and exhibitions. Authors describe how their curatorial collaborations with diverse objects, from rocks to robots, generate new ways of...

Museums must change to illuminate the histories, cultures, and social issues that matter to their local population. Based on a unique longitudinal ethnographic study, Transforming Museum Management illustrates how a traditional art museum attempted to...

In this pioneering book, Christopher Whitehead provides an overview and critique of art interpretation practices in museums and galleries. Covering the philosophy and sociology of art, traditions in art history and art display, the psychology of the...

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book seeks to better understand the processes and influences that have driven professionalization in the arts.

Children are one of the major audiences for museums, but their visits are often seen solely from the point of view of museum learning. In Snapshots of Museum Experience, Will Buckingham draws upon Elee Kirk's research amongst child visitors to the Oxford...

This book critiques modern museologies and curatorial practices that have been complicit in emerging existential crises. It confidently presents novel, more-than-human curatorial visions, methods, frameworks, policies, and museologies radically...

Drawing together a selection of high quality, intellectually robust and stimulating articles on both theoretical and practice-based developments in the field, this Reader investigates the closely linked areas of management and marketing in the museum.

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...

Decolonizing Colonial Heritage explores how different agents practice the decolonization of European colonial heritage at European and extra-European locations. Assessing the impact of these practices, the book also explores what a new vision of Europe...

Contemporary Curating, Artistic Reference and Public Reception undertakes a unique critical survey and analysis of prevailing group exhibition-making practices in Europe, the UK and North America.  

Doing Public Humanities explores the cultural landscape from disruptive events to websites, from tours to exhibits, from after school arts programs to archives, giving readers a wide-ranging look at the interdisciplinary practice of public humanities...

Heritage, Tourism, and Race views heritage and leisure tourism in the Americas through the lens of race, and is especially concerned with redressing gaps in recognizing and critically accounting for African Americans as an underrepresented community in...

Conservation Skills for the 21st Century provides a much-needed update to the original Conservation Skills volume, presenting an overview of current issues facing conservators of historic and artistic works. Beginning with the basics - why the past...

Capturing the richness of the museum studies discipline, Museum Revolutions is the ideal text for museum studies courses, providing a wide range of interlinked themes and the latest thought and research from experts in the field.

Beyond their often beautiful exhibition halls, many museums contain vast, hidden spaces in which objects may be stored, conserved, or processed. Museums can also include unseen archives, study rooms, and libraries which are inaccessible to the public...

Re-Presenting Disability addresses issues surrounding disability representation in museums and galleries, a topic which is receiving much academic attention and is becoming an increasingly pressing issue for practitioners working in wide-ranging museums...

Are Museums Irrelevant? Museums are rarely acknowledged in the global discussion of climate change, environmental degradation, the inevitability of depleted fossil fuels, and the myriad local issues concerning the well-being of particular communities -...

Museums, International Exhibitions and China's Cultural Diplomacy examines the role museums and, more specifically, international exhibitions, have played in shaping China's international image to date. Drawing on theories and methods from museum studies...

Theorizing Equity in the Museum integrates the perspectives of learning researchers and museum practitioners to shed light on the deep-seated structures that must be accounted for if the field is to move past aspirations and rhetoric and towards more...

National Museums in Africa brings the voices of African museum professionals into dialogue with scholars and, by so doing, is able to consider the state of African national museums from fresh perspectives. Covering all regions of the continent, the...

This book is an interdisciplinary collection of twenty-four essays which critically examine contemporary exhibitions and artistic practices that focus on conceptual and creative aspects of access.

Documentation as Art presents documentation as an expanded practice that is radically changing the ways in which to look at, participate in, and generate art.

Self-determined First Nations Museums and Colonial Contestation explores Indigenous practices of curation, object repatriation and cross-cultural community engagement in a dynamic Koori museum.

Independent Museums and Culture Centres in Colonial and Post-colonial Zimbabwe presents case studies that grapple with the issue of 'decolonising practice' in privately owned museums and cultural centres in Zimbabwe.

The Heritage Corridor argues for a transnational approach to investigating and recording heritage places that emerge from histories of migration. Addressing the material legacy of migration, this book also relates it to issues of contemporary importance...

Mannequins in Museums is a collection of historical and contemporary case studies that examine how mannequins are presented in exhibitions and shows that, as objects used for storytelling, they are not neutral objects. Demonstrating that mannequins have...

Today, the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden is internationally known for its outstanding archaeological collections. Yet its origins lie in an insignificant assortment of artefacts used for study by Leiden University. How did this transformation...

Museum Informatics explores the sociotechnical issues that arise when people, information, and technology interact in museums. It is designed specifically to address the many challenges faced by museums, museum professionals, and museum visitors in the...

The Museum's Borders demonstrates that museum practices are deeply entangled in border making, patrol, mitigation and erasure, and that the border lens offers a new tool for deconstructing and reconfiguring such practices.Arguing that the museum is a...

Curation as a concept and a catchword in modern parlance has, over recent decades, become deeply ingrained in modern culture. The purpose of this study is to explore the curatorial forces at work within the modern opera house and to examine the...

Climate change is a complex and dynamic environmental, cultural and political phenomenon that is reshaping our relationship to nature. Climate change is a global force, with global impacts. Viable solutions on what to do must involve dialogues and...

The Routledge Handbook of Heritage and the Law sheds light on the relationship between the two fields and analyses how the law shapes heritage and heritage practice in both expected and unexpected ways.

Museums and Atlantic Slavery explores how slavery, the Atlantic slave trade, and enslaved people are represented through words, visual images, artifacts, and audiovisual materials in museums in Europe and the Americas. Divided into four chapters, the...

Monuments and memorials commemorating the dead and past events around the world have recently gained importance, not least because we are living in an era in which many are driven to record and archive the events of their lives. Cemeteries, in...

Museums as Agents for Social Change is the first comprehensive text to examine museum practice in a decolonised moment, moving beyond known roles of object collection and presentation. Drawing on studies of Mutare museum, a regional museum in Eastern...

Drawing together an international group of scholars from a variety of disciplinary and cultural backgrounds, Colonialism and the Object explores the impact of colonial contact with other cultures on the material culture of both the colonized and the...

The Future of Digital Data, Heritage and Curation critiques digital cultural heritage concepts and their application to data, developing new theories, curatorial practices and a more-than-human museology for a contemporary and future world...

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...

Welcoming Young Children into the Museum provides all of the information practitioners need to consider when making the decision to engage with this audience and their carers. Meeting the reader where they are, this guide enables professionals to work...

Negotiating Race and Rights in the Museum traces the evolution of pervasive racial ideas, and 'post-race' allusions, over more than a century of museum thinking and practice. Drawing on the illuminating history of the Smithsonian Institution, this...

Reflecting on Practice for STEM Educators is a guidebook to lead a professional learning program for educators working in STEM learning environments.Making research on the science of human learning accessible to educational professionals around the...

Monuments as Cultural and Critical Objects explores monuments as political, psychical, social, and mystical objects. Incorporating autoethnography, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, postcolonialism, and queer ecology, Houlton argues for a radical,...