Books in the Museum Meanings series

As well as providing a theoretical basis to museum education, this volume serves as a practical guide for all museum professionals on how to adapt their museums to maximise the educational experience of every visitor.

Museums and the Working Class is the first book to take an intersectional and international approach to the issues of economic diversity and class within the field of museum studies.

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 - suggesting the irrelevance of museums as social institutions. This book explores the meaning and role of museums.

Explores the complex ways in which heritage actively contributes to the construction and representation of identities in contemporary societies, providing an account of the diverse conceptions of heritage and identity across different continents and cultures. This collection is suitable for those interested in heritage and museum studies.

Explores the complex ways in which heritage actively contributes to the construction and representation of identities in contemporary societies, providing an account of the diverse conceptions of heritage and identity across different continents and cultures. This collection is suitable for those interested in heritage and museum studies.

Explores the dynamics of the relationship between the community and the museum. This work examines one of the museum's primary responsibilities - working with different communities and using collections to encourage people to learn about their own histories, and to understand other people's.

Collating the views of international museum professionals, architects, designers and academics, this book highlights the complexity and significance of museum space, studies recent developments in museum architecture and exhibition design.

Explores the ways diverse natural history museum audiences imagine their evolutionary heritage. This book considers how the meanings constructed by audiences of museum exhibitions are a product of dynamic interplay between museum iconography and powerful images museum visitors bring with them to the museum.

Interdisciplinary in approach, this book presents interpretations of museum history and practices. The text discusses museums in terms of their relationship with the media and their role in modern society.

This work examines the artistic production of imperial nations and their colonies and aims to show how it was affected by colonial contact. It also presents case studies of objects from India, China and Africa which were collected by or exhibited in the institutions of the British Empire.

Answering key questions in the study of how museums communicate, this book provides a set of frameworks to investigate the complexities of communication in museums. It argues that communication contributes to what a museum is, who it relates to, and what it stands for. It is useful for students of museum studies and communications studies.

Drawing upon a range of professional and theoretical sources, this book offers a history of museum computing. It attempts to explain a series of tensions between curatorship and the digital realm and reveals how the sector has experienced a broadening of participation, and a widening of creative horizons.

This important new work explores how evolutionary museums developed in the USA, UK, and Australia in the late 19th century.

Brings together the views of an international group of museum professionals, architects, designers and academics, highlights the complexity, significance and malleability of museum space, and provides reflections upon developments in museum architecture and exhibition design.

Museums, Society, Inequality brings together diverse perspectives from across the globe to explore the wide-ranging social roles and responsibilities of the museum.

This volume considers in depth the most up-to-date approaches to museum communication - museums as media, museums and audience and the evaluation of museums.

Museums and Social Change explores the ways museums can work in collaboration with marginalised groups to work for social change and, in so doing, re-think the museum.

The museum has become a vital strategic space for negotiating ownership of and access to knowledge produced in local settings. This volume presents community-engaged "culture work" of a group of scholars whose collaborative projects consider the social spaces between the museum and community and offer new ways of addressing the challenges of bridging the local and the global. Scholars from around the world describe their engagement with communities in Australia, Canada, Ghana, Great Britain, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, South Africa, Taiwan and the United States.

The museum has become a vital strategic space for negotiating ownership of and access to knowledge produced in local settings. This volume presents community-engaged "culture work" of a group of scholars whose collaborative projects consider the social spaces between the museum and community and offer new ways of addressing the challenges of bridging the local and the global. Scholars from around the world describe their engagement with communities in Australia, Canada, Ghana, Great Britain, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, South Africa, Taiwan and the United States.

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 forces museums to review their educational purposes, redesign their pedagogies and account for their performance. This book reveals the power of museum pedagogy.

Over recent decades, many museums, galleries and historic sites around the world have enjoyed large-scale investment in their capital infrastructure; in building refurbishments and new gallery displays. The period has also seen the creation of a series of new purpose-built museums and galleries, and a fundamental reinvention in the design and shaping of museums. Museum Making: Narratives, Architectures, Exhibitions explores this re-making through a focus on the inherently spatial character of narrative and storytelling and their potential to connect with human perception and imagination.

Museum Activism elucidates the largely untapped potential for museums as key intellectual and civic resources to address inequalities, injustice and environmental challenges. This makes the book essential reading for scholars and students of museum and heritage studies, gallery studies, arts and heritage management and politics.

Curating Under Pressure breaks the silence surrounding curatorial self-censorship and shows that it is both endemic to the practice and ubiquitous. Contributors map the diverse forms such self-censorship takes and offer creative strategies for negotiating curatorial integrity.

Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism examines the role of exhibitionary institutions in representing LGBTQ+ people, cisgender women, and nonbinary individuals.

This is a multi-disciplinary study that adopts an innovative and original approach to a highly topical question, that of meaning-making in museums.