Museum in General

(2024-01-03) , Adina Langer

With chapters written by a diverse set of practitioners from across the museum field and around the world, Storytelling in Museums explores the efficacy and ethics of storytelling in museums.0The book shows how museums use personal, local, and specific stories to make visitors feel welcome while inspiring them to engage with new ideas and unfamiliar situations. At the same time, the book explores the responsibilities of museum practitioners toward the storytellers included in their narratives and how those responsibilities shift over time and manifest in different contexts.0The book?s eighteen chapters represent a conversation among a diverse set of professionals for whom storytelling connotes their daily museum practice. As educators, collectors, curators, designers, marketers, researchers, planners, and collaborators, the authors of this book consider the ?real work? of storytelling from every angle. From the inclusion of personal stories in educational programs to the meta-narratives on display in exhibitions, this book balances practical examples with ethical considerations, placing the praxis of storytelling within the larger context of the 21st century museum. The book moves beyond advocacy for storytelling as an essential part of the museum?s toolkit to explore the many ways in which museums use personal stories, and multiple storytelling techniques, to support the larger public narratives embedded in their missions.0The contributors demonstrate how museums that emphasize storytelling from multiple angles can serve as a kind of counterpoint to our tendency to fixate on singular images of things we know little about. They encourage museums to both acknowledge that they cannot control the narrative and to embrace their power to contribute to it through the multivalent, multivocal stories they choose to share.

(2023-06-07) , Amareswar Galla , Alissandra Cummins , Kevin Farmer , Roslyn Russell.

Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot, in his discussion on how the current global Westernized hegemony treats specific historical events, events chosen for their relevance to the text of Western dominance, has addressed absences (or silences as 'inherent in the creation of sources, the first moment of historical production' (Trouillot, 1995, p. 51). People and places that are designated 'Third World' often find their history has (or has been) 'disappeared'. He references complex historiographical occurrences of this process of historical production, whereby black and poor societies were not just physically ostracized, but in a sense mentally too as they basically 'disappeared' from the historical text. He states: 'History reveals itself only through the production of specific narratives. What matters most are the process and conditions of such narratives . ... Only through that overlap can we discover the differential exercise of power that makes some narratives possible and silences others.

(2024-01-02) , Porchia Moore , Rose Paquet

"Inclusion" is a word, a concept, a value, a set of practices, but what should it mean for museum staff and leaders as they envision new ways of being a museum in an emergent future? Political and environmental upheavals, and now a global pandemic, are transforming the museum landscape forever. How can our paradigm for understanding inclusion continue to transform as well? This book offers a new paradigm for understanding inclusion grounded in a retrospective of museum worker efforts to test the limits of inclusion, a reflection on inclusion's advantages and limitations in practice, as well as the integral concerns of racial equity and social justice. Questions throughout the book invite readers to reflect on how their own experiences can add to, and expand on, new ways of thinking about inclusion in museums. Museum workers and lovers can use this book as a tool for engaging with "inclusion" anew, and as a terrain for collaborative inquiry and world-building that can help us imagine and realize new potential for museums in the future.

(2023-06-08) , Allyson Mitchell , Tami Moehring , Janet Zanetis

Museums and Interactive Virtual Learning provides informal educators with practical resources that will help them to build dynamic digital engagement experiences within their own cultural organizations.

(2024-01-02) , Avi Y, Marsha L. Semmel and Ken Yellis.

Change is Required: Preparing for the Post-Pandemic Museum is a book about the future of American museums. Like other institutions, museums and zoos, historic sites, gardens, and arboreta, were powerfully affected by the nested crises of the pandemic. These unprecedented crises challenged American museums. Adapting to novel circumstances and uncertainty became the order of the day; improvisation in policy and practice the new norm. Amidst upheavals and disruptions, a number of American museums have charted new directions for themselves and their communities. Many museums have taken a decisive turn to digital programming. Others have taken a turn toward community, developing new kinds of collaborations with their neighbors and local audiences. Still others have moved issues of equity and justice—internally and in the world—to the center of their institutional concerns. In every part of the country—and in every type of museum--museum workers are challenging old assumptions, conventional narratives, and customary practices as they look to the future. In Change Is Required, a unique array of 50 museum professionals--representing different disciplines, positions, and experiences--share their thinking about assessing needs and possibilities, managing people and resources, and building productive new relationships with neighbors, communities, and partner organizations. These authors argue that change is necessary--inside and beyond the museum. It is futile and unproductive to default to the old “normal.” To achieve greater relevance, impact, equity, and inclusiveness, museums need to reconsider their leadership models, organizational culture, internal structures, and community collaborations Bristling with personal passion, informed by experience, and focused on the future, the essays in this volume convey the urgency to rethink traditional museum practice, offering visionary—yet practical—routes to future museum success in a volatile, complex, and ambiguous world. In its depth and range, this book constitutes an invitation to join in the growing, lively discourse about possible futures for museums in America. The invitation extends not only to museum professionals, but to all those interested in cultural affairs and institutions.

(2023-06-07) , Were, Graeme

Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot, in his discussion on how the current global Westernized hegemony treats specific historical events, events chosen for their relevance to the text of Western dominance, has addressed absences (or silences as 'inherent in the creation of sources, the first moment of historical production' (Trouillot, 1995, p. 51). People and places that are designated 'Third World' often find their history has (or has been) 'disappeared'. He references complex historiographical occurrences of this process of historical production, whereby black and poor societies were not just physically ostracized, but in a sense mentally too as they basically 'disappeared' from the historical text. He states: 'History reveals itself only through the production of specific narratives. What matters most are the process and conditions of such narratives . ... Only through that overlap can we discover the differential exercise of power that makes some narratives possible and silences others.