About this item
Highlights
- MUSEUM THEORY EDITED BY ANDREA WITCOMB AND KYLIE MESSAGE Museum Theory offers critical perspectives drawn from a broad range of disciplinary and intellectual traditions.
- About the Author: ANDREA WITCOMB is Professor of Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies at Deakin University and Deputy Director of the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Victoria, Australia.
- 632 Pages
- Business + Money Management, Museum Administration & Museology
Description
Book Synopsis
MUSEUM THEORY EDITED BY ANDREA WITCOMB AND KYLIE MESSAGE
Museum Theory offers critical perspectives drawn from a broad range of disciplinary and intellectual traditions. This volume describes and challenges previous ways of understanding museums and their relationship to society. Essays written by scholars from museology and other disciplines address theoretical reflexivity in the museum, exploring the contextual, theoretical, and pragmatic ways museums work, are understood, and are experienced.
Organized around three themes--Thinking about Museums, Disciplines and Politics, and Theory from Practice/Practicing Theory--the text includes discussion and analysis of different kinds of museums from various, primarily contemporary, national and local contexts. Essays consider subjects including the nature of museums as institutions and their role in the public sphere, cutting-edge museum practice and their connections with current global concerns, and the links between museum studies and disciplines such as cultural studies, anthropology, and history.
From the Back Cover
MUSEUM THEORY EDITED BY ANDREA WITCOMB AND KYLIE MESSAGE
Museum Theory offers critical perspectives drawn from a broad range of disciplinary and intellectual traditions. This volume describes and challenges previous ways of understanding museums and their relationship to society. Essays written by scholars from museology and other disciplines address theoretical reflexivity in the museum, exploring the contextual, theoretical, and pragmatic ways museums work, are understood, and are experienced.
Organized around three themes--Thinking about Museums, Disciplines and Politics, and Theory from Practice/Practicing Theory--the text includes discussion and analysis of different kinds of museums from various, primarily contemporary, national and local contexts. Essays consider subjects including the nature of museums as institutions and their role in the public sphere, cutting-edge museum practice and their connections with current global concerns, and the links between museum studies and disciplines such as cultural studies, anthropology, and history.
THE INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOKS OF MUSEUM STUDIES General Editors: Sharon Macdonald and Helen Rees Leahy
The International Handbooks of Museum Studies is a multi-volume reference work that represents a state-of-the-art survey of the burgeoning field of museum studies. Featuring original essays by leading international museum experts and emerging scholars, readings cover all aspects of museum theory, practice, debates, and the impact of technologies. The four volumes in the series, divided thematically, offer in-depth treatment of all major issues relating to museum theory; historical and contemporary museum practice; mediations in art, design, and architecture; and the transformations and challenges confronting the museum. In addition to invaluable surveys of current scholarship, the entries include a rich and diverse panoply of examples and original case studies to illuminate the various perspectives. Unprecedented for its in-depth topic coverage and breadth of scholarship, the multi-volume International Handbooks of Museum Studies is an indispensable resource for the study of the development, roles, and significance of museums in contemporary society.
SHARON MACDONALD is Professor of Social Anthropology in the Institute of European Ethnology, Humboldt-Üniversität zu Berlin, where she also directs the CARMAH, the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage.
HELEN REES LEAHY is Professor Emerita of the University of Manchester, where she was Director of the Centre for Museology from 2002-2017.
Online edition available at museumstudieshandbooks.com
About the Author
ANDREA WITCOMB is Professor of Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies at Deakin University and Deputy Director of the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Victoria, Australia. She brings an interdisciplinary approach to her research, locating her work at the intersection of history, museology, and cultural studies.
KYLIE MESSAGE is Professor of Public Humanities in the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Her research examines the relationships between cultural organizations, citizenship, government, and political reform movements.
