Museum Studies

Manual of Curatorship: a guide to museum practice, [Second edition], 1992

The term museum 1 , like most words, has changed in meaning with time. Today it conveys concepts not only of preserving the material evidence of the human and natural world but of a major force in interpreting these things. The idea is perceived positively and the availability of museums as a public facility is considered desirable in developed and developing countries alike. For countries with a significant past museums may be seen to have a vital cultural and even economic role to play. Museums today are, to quote part of the the International Council of Museums (1989) definition of a museum, `in the service of society and of its development'.

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion, 2022

Much of the art housed in Western museums is religious in nature—the result of how these museum collections were assembled and merged with differing displays over time. The origins of museums and their exhibition activities lie in the vast and myriad collecting histories of ancient, medieval, and Early Modern times, when the avenues of acquisition and display were often intertwined with sacred purposes. As empires, international trade, and missionaries encouraged the movement of people, objects, and ideas, they ensured that the monumental containers meant to preserve and display these collections took on meanings ever more distinct from the original meanings and functions of the individual objects they housed, religious or otherwise. Collections also evolved into “contact zones” between peoples and objects. While the history of display is different from that of museums, because it is premised more on a visiting public than on preservation and study efforts, these approaches to objec...

Museum Worlds, 2015

Curator: The Museum Journal, 2012

Reviewed in 'Museum & Society', 2017

Museums: A History, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016, hardcover £.54.95, pp. v+304

Onlime, open access, peer-reviewed international journal MuseumEdu ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE PUBLICATION OF THE THIRD ISSUE Museumedu 3 Dear friends and colleagues, Hello, and welcome to the third issue of the MuseumEdu Journal, a publication of the Museum Education and Research Laboratory at the University of Thessaly, Greece, available at: http://museumedulab.ece.uth.gr/main/en/node/206 Museumedu 3. Museums and Education: Research approaches, was edited by Niki Nikonanou, Irene Nakou and Panagiotis Kanellopoulos and was published in June 2016. It is available at: http://museumedulab.ece.uth.gr/main/en/node/426 More information in the attached file. The MuseumEdu Editors Irene Nakou Niki Nikonanou Panagiotis Kanellopoulos

Journal of Education in Librariy and Information Sciences, 2019

In this article, we assess the state of museum studies, with special attention to programs in the United States. After briefly reviewing the historical trajectory of museum studies, we define this field of study and determine that it should more accurately be called museology. To investigate the most critical issues in current museological pedagogy, we then address museology's current status and, finally, its future through select critical issues in the field: museological thinking, the meaning of museum professional, museology as an academic discipline, and museological curricula. In this article, we assess the state of museum studies, with special attention to programs in the United States. Between us, we have 78 years of work in museum practice and 35 years teaching in museum studies programs. One of us (Simmons) is a historian with a long perspective of the field, the other (Latham) is a theoretician of museology with a conceptual perspective. Although most of our experience has been in the United States, we have both worked extensively in other countries as well, giving us a broader, global understanding of the field. We acknowledge that museology as it is conceived in other parts of the world is understood through cultural and linguistic differences. Here, we position museum studies within the information sciences, following Bates (2012). However, we recognize that because this field is a meta-discipline (cutting across more traditional disciplines) and that its subject matter focuses on the relationships between people and documents-as Czech museologist Z. Z. Stránský (1987, p. 295) said, "the specific relation between man and reality"-it makes sense to place it in this context pedagogically. In this paper, we organize our inquiry and statements into three sections. First, we examine what museum studies is and how it has developed historically, then its current status, and finally its future through select critical issues in the field.

Communicating Archaeology, 2017

This chapter is intended to provide readers with an overview of the key contemporary principles, practices, and debates relating to museum archaeology. By highlighting a series of questions, it encourages readers to adopt a critical perspective and to use this in their own evaluations of museum theory and work. And, by referring to a significant sample of the professional and academic literature on museum archaeology, it offers not only an introduction to the chapters selected for inclusion in this Reader but also the chance to explore an even wider body of relevant literature. The focus in this introduction, and throughout the Reader, is on present-day museum archaeology, including its development since the 1970s. Over this period, there has been a clear shift in museums from servicing the needs of archaeologists to serving diverse publics in more dynamic and sustainable ways. There exists, however, an extensive literature on the earlier history of antiquarian and archaeological collecting, dedicated to themes ranging from colonialism and nationalism to classical art and aesthetics (e.g.

Booklet with synopses from the international symposium arranged by Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation