Millions of items are held in museum collections around the world but many museums have very few visitors to their stored collections. These stored objects are certainly not neglected by their ...professional custodians, and they are loved with a great intensity by some curators and enthusiasts. However, for all but a tiny proportion of the population they have little or no personal meaning. This book goes beyond strategic discussions of access to stores, information enhancement, or collections rationalization and focuses on the emotional potential of these objects.
The authors explore how “care” for objects has varied over time and consider who cares for objects that are generally considered to be unsuitable for display and why they care. They also consider how inter-generational and inter-disciplinary dialogue can enhance or engender engagement with unloved collections and offer strategies and reflection on interpreting stored collections. This book will be essential reading for scholars, students, and professionals in museums, especially those concerned with curation and collections.
The influence of digital media on the cultural heritage sector has been pervasive and profound. Today museums are reliant on new technology to manage their collections. They collect digital as well ...as material things. New media is embedded within their exhibition spaces. And their activity online is as important as their physical presence on site.
However, 'digital heritage' (as an area of practice and as a subject of study) does not exist in one single place. Its evidence base is complex, diverse and distributed, and its content is available through multiple channels, on varied media, in myriad locations, and different genres of writing.
It is this diaspora of material and practice that this Reader is intended to address. With over forty chapters (by some fifty authors and co-authors), from around the world, spanning over twenty years of museum practice and research, this volume acts as an aggregator drawing selectively from a notoriously distributed network of content. Divided into seven parts (on information, space, access, interpretation, objects, production and futures), the book presents a series of cross-sections through the body of digital heritage literature, each revealing how a different aspect of curatorship and museum provision has been informed, shaped or challenged by computing.
Museums in a Digital Age is a provocative and inspiring guide for any student or practitioner of digital heritage.
This book addresses the issue of valuing objects in cultural collections, ranging from high-value to low or no-value and featuring a range of collections including fine art, archives, science and ...photography. Practical advice is given on how to assign values and best practice examples are drawn from museums, libraries and archives. The subject of valuation has always been challenging for museums and public collections and is becoming more urgent as monetary values of many items continue to break records. There is an increase in lending, with more loans requiring a value for insurance. Cultural collections and exhibitions are expanding to all corners of the world, while, at the same time, lenders are becoming more risk-averse. Valuing Your Collection will address the issues and offer some solutions.
By learning how to rightsize, you will ensure that both the collection and your institution's available physical spaces meet the needs of your library's users.
This volume presents 17 essays critically reflecting on the collaborative work of the contemporary ethnographic museum with diverse communities. It invites the reader to think about the roles and ...values of museums internationally, particularly the wide range of creative approaches that can progress dialogue and intercultural understanding in an age of migration that is marked by division and distrust. Against a troubling global background of prejudice and misunderstanding, where elections are increasingly returning right-wing governments, this timely book considers the power of an inclusive and transformative museum space, specifically the movements from static sites where knowledge is transmitted to passive audiences towards potential contact zones where diverse community voices and visibilities are raised and new knowledge(s) actively constructed.
Packed with discussion questions, activities, suggested references, selected readings, and many other features that speak directly to students and library professionals, Gregory's Collection ...Development and Management for 21st Century Library Collections is a comprehensive handbook.
By exploring the processes of collecting, which challenge the bounds of normally acceptable practice, this book debates the practice of collecting 'difficult' objects, from a historical and ...contemporary perspective; and discusses the acquisition of objects related to war and genocide, and those purchased from the internet, as well as considering human remains, mass produced objects and illicitly traded antiquities. The aim is to apply a critical approach to the rigidity of museums in maintaining essentially nineteenth-century ideas of collecting; and to move towards identifying priorities for collection policies in museums, which are inclusive of acquiring 'difficult' objects. Much of the book engages with the question of the limits to the practice of collecting as a means to think through the implementation of new strategies.
-- The editors are senior faculty members who are both established authors in the fields of African studies, dress history, art history, and human geography. They also all have curatorial experience. ...-- This reflection on sources and methods is timely given the resurgence of interest in African fashion within academia, museums, and the fashion world. -- The list adds to the list in its clear and vivid exploration of a topic that resonates beyond academia and in its interdisciplinarity and international pool of contributors. -- The work will appeal to scholars working in African fashion within academia, musems, the fashion world and scholars working in African studies, museum studies, fashion and design studies, African history, art history, anthropology, and cultural geography.
