Diversity and Philanthropy at African American Museums is the first scholarly book to analyze contemporary African American museums from a multifaceted perspective. While it puts a spotlight on the ...issues and challenges related to racial politics that black museums collectively face in the 21st century, it also shines a light on how they intersect with corporate culture, youth culture, and the broader cultural world. Turning the lens to philanthropy in the contemporary era, Banks throws light on the establishment side of African American museums and demonstrates how this contrasts with their grassroots foundations. Drawing on over 80 in-depth interviews with trustees and other supporters of African American museums across the United States, this book offers an inside look at the world of cultural philanthropy. While patrons are bound together by being among the distinct group of cultural philanthropists who support black museums, the motivations and meanings underlying their giving depart in both subtle and considerable ways depending on race and ethnicity, profession, generation, and lifestyle. Revealing not only why black museums matter in the eyes of supporters, the book also complicates the conventional view that social class drives giving to cultural nonprofits. It also paints a vivid portrait of how diversity colors cultural philanthropy, and philanthropy more broadly, in the 21st century. Diversity and Philanthropy at African American Museums will be a valuable resource for scholars and practitioners engaged with African American heritage. It will also offer important insights for academics, as well as cultural administrators, nonprofit leaders, and fundraisers who are concerned with philanthropy and diversity.
The book identifies the characteristics of comparative method in the social sciences and its applications in library and information science, analyzing aims, methodological problems, phases and ...approaches of comparative librarianship. It is a disciplinary field, still little explored in the Italian context, which aims to examine structures, services, practices and functions of libraries to highlight aspects and peculiarities in a defined context, relating different realities, analyzing causes and effects of emerged specificities and evaluating factors that influence their development. The reflection is enriched by a critical analysis of Italian and foreign comparative researches and by the proposal of a work outline to approach comparative librarianship.
Hybrid Museum Experiences
Meaningful Personalization of Hybrid Virtual Museum Experiences Through Gifting and Appropriation,
2022
eBook, Book
Open access
"So you’re the one getting this gift? Lucky you! Someone who knows you has visited the museum. They searched out things they thought you would care about, and they took photos and left messages for ...you.” This is the welcoming message for the Gift app, designed to create a very personal museum visit. Hybrid Museum Experiences use new technologies to augment, expand or alter the physical experience of visiting the museum. They are designed to be experienced in close relation to the physical space and exhibit. In this book we discuss three forms of hybridity in museum experiences: incorporating the digital and the physical, creating social, yet personal and intimate experiences, and exploring ways to balance visitor participation and museum curation. The book reports on a three-year cross-disciplinary research project in which artists, design researchers and museum professionals have collaborated to create technology-mediated experiences that merge with the museum environment.
The discussion about objects, human remains and archives from former colonial territories is becoming increasingly heated. Over the centuries, a multitude of items – including a cannon of the King of ...Kandy, power-objects from DR Congo, Benin bronzes, Javanese temple statues, M.ori heads and strategic documents – has ended up in museums and private collections in Belgium and the Netherlands by improper means. Since gaining independence, former colonies have been calling for the return of their lost heritage. As continued possession of these objects only grows more uncomfortable, governments and museums must decide what to do. How did these objects get here? Are they all looted, and how can we find out? How does restitution work in practice? Are there any appealing examples? How do other former colonial powers deal with restitution? Do former colonies trust their intentions? The answers to these questions are far from unambiguous, but indispensable for a balanced discussion.
Cultural and natural heritage are central to ‘Europe’ and ‘the European project’. They were bound up in the emergence of nation-states in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where they were used ...to justify differences over which border conflicts were fought. Later, the idea of a ‘common European heritage’ provided a rationale for the development of the European Union. Now, the emergence of ‘new’ populist nationalisms shows how the imagined past continues to play a role in cultural and social governance, while a series of interlinked social and ecological crises are changing the ways that heritage operates. New discourses and ontologies are emerging to reconfigure heritage for the circumstances of the present and the uncertainties of the future. Taking the current role of heritage in Europe as its starting point, Critical Heritage Studies and the Futures of Europe presents a number of case studies that explore key themes in this transformation. Contributors draw on a range of disciplinary perspectives to consider, variously, the role of heritage and museums in the migration and climate ‘emergencies’; approaches to urban heritage conservation and practices of curating cities; digital and digitised heritage; the use of heritage as a therapeutic resource; and critical approaches to heritage and its management. Taken together, the chapters explore the multiple ontologies through which cultural and natural heritage have actively intervened in redrawing the futures of Europe and the world. Praise for Critical Heritage Studies and the Futures of Europe 'Filled with many fascinating and diverse chapters, this book vividly demonstrates the dynamism and breadth of critical heritage study of, in, and entangled with Europe today' Sharon Macdonald, Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) in the Institute of European Ethnology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. 'Far from being restrictive, let alone chauvinistic, the multiscalar European focus of this book confirms the breadth and relevance of current critical heritage studies. With contributions addressing such topical issues as climate emergencies, urban landscapes, cultural industries, new media and identity politics – be they written by established scholars or by emerging researchers – it is ""Europe"" with all its shared grounds and recurrent divergences that comes into sharper relief. From this vantage point, readers of this compelling book will be better positioned for reflecting on and eventually influencing and challenging our heritage futures.' Nathan Schlanger, Professor of Archaeology, École nationale des chartes, Paris. 'This book addresses European heritage realities and futures through new voices, paradigms, and methods. It is a collage of tensions – practically a representation of Europe itself – through which to comprehend contemporary intersections of time, place, things, and meaning. It contributes to new vistas in heritage studies: the offer of design and imagination as methods; reckonings with data and climate change as seemingly uncontrollable actors; and the ongoing negotiation of ""criticality"" in the making of our responsibilities for the past in the present' Christopher Whitehead, Professor of Museology, Newcastle University.
Museums have long been viewed as exclusive, excluding, and as antiseptic to intimacy. In the past few decades, however, humanized experiences—cultivated by curators, educators, artists, activists, ...and marketers alike—have emerged as the reason for being for these cornerstones of community. Such experiences are often possible only in museum settings, where cultural exploration, probing conversation, and safe risk-taking can occur in spaces now becoming sacred through inclusiveness. This book brings together an interdisciplinary collection of essays examining the kinds of human experiences and interactions that have converted the once-sterile museum into a space of enlivenment and enrichment, as well as physical and emotional well-being. The essays focus for the first time on the uniquely human and humanizing experiences to be found in the collections, programs, exhibitions, and spaces of today’s museums.
During the early nineteenth century, the harp was transformed into a sophisticated instrument that became as popular as the piano. This was largely the result of the harp's intensive technical, ...musical and visual upgrading, which gradually led to the transition from the single- to the double-action pedal harp. A major figure in this process was Sébastien Erard (1752-1831), a tireless inventor and prolific manufacturer of harps and pianos operating branches in Paris and London. With the introduction in 1811 of the so-called 'Grecian' model, the first commercially built double-action harp, the Erard firm managed to establish the harp not only as a novel, state-of-the-art instrument, but also as a powerful symbol of luxury, wealth and status. Drawing upon a wide variety of primary sources, including surviving instruments, archival documents and iconographical evidence, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the development, production and consumption of the Erard Grecian harp in Regency England. The innovative approaches employed by the Erard firm in the manufacture and marketing of harps are measured against competitors but also against the work of leading entrepreneurs in related trades, ranging from the mechanical devices and precision tools of James Watt, Henry Maudslay or Jacques Holtzapffel, through the ornamental pottery of Josiah Wedgwood, to the clocks and watches of George Prior or Abraham-Louis Breguet. In addition, the book examines the omnipresent role of the harp in the education, art, fashion and literature of the Regency era, discussing how the image and perception of the instrument were shaped by groundbreaking advances, such as the Industrial Revolution, Neoclassicism, and the Napoleonic Wars.
The prehistoric site of Ban Chiang in northeast Thailand challenges the narrative of Thai origins, while at the same time appealing to the public’s vision of Thailand as an early centre of ...civilization. Ban Chiang demonstrates the complexity of constructing national heritage in modern Thailand, where the Thai national narrative begins and ends with Buddhism and the monarchy. Designs on Pots. Ban Chiang and the Politics of Heritage in Thailand contributes to the literature on cultural preservation, repatriation, fake antiquities as souvenirs, and the ethics of collecting and demonstrates how heritage tourism intersects with the antiquities market in Asia. Ban Chiang itself is important for rethinking the model of indigenous development in Southeast Asian prehistory and provides informed speculation about the borders between prehistory, proto-history, and history in the region, challenging current and past models of Indianization that shape the Thai state’s heritage narrative.
Dieses Buch ist für alle, die mutig genug sind, sich selbst und das Zeigen von Kunst zu stören. Beatrice Miersch entwirft radikal-relationale Alternativen zu zeitgenössischen Ausstellungspraktiken. ...Um sich der gesellschaftlichen Verantwortung im Rahmen des Ausstellens von Kunst zu stellen, erprobt sie queer-feministische, kulturwissenschaftliche und selbstreflektierende Methoden in der Praxis und Theorie des Kuratierens. Momente kuratorischer Störung werden zu produktiv-schöpferischen Momenten der Unterbrechung, mit denen sie reflektierte, offene, engagierte und vulnerable Perspektiven auf das Ausstellen eröffnet und tradierte Strukturen durchbricht.
The prehistoric site of Ban Chiang in northeast Thailand challenges the narrative of Thai origins, while at the same time appealing to the public’s vision of Thailand as an early centre of ...civilization. Ban Chiang demonstrates the complexity of constructing national heritage in modern Thailand, where the Thai national narrative begins and ends with Buddhism and the monarchy. Designs on Pots. Ban Chiang and the Politics of Heritage in Thailand contributes to the literature on cultural preservation, repatriation, fake antiquities as souvenirs, and the ethics of collecting and demonstrates how heritage tourism intersects with the antiquities market in Asia. Ban Chiang itself is important for rethinking the model of indigenous development in Southeast Asian prehistory and provides informed speculation about the borders between prehistory, proto-history, and history in the region, challenging current and past models of Indianization that shape the Thai state’s heritage narrative.