Curating Pop - by Sarah Baker & Lauren Istvandity & Raphaël Nowak (Hardcover)

About the Book

Speaks to the rapidly growing interest in the study of popular music exhibitions, which has occurred alongside the increasing number of popular music museums in operation across the world. Focusing on curatorial practices and processes, this book draws on interviews with museum workers and curators from twenty museums globally, including the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, the Experience Music Project in Seattle and the PopMuseum in Prague. Through a consideration of the subjective experiences of curators involved in the exhibition of popular music in museums in a range of geographic locations, This book compares institutional practices internationally, illustrating the ways in which popular music history is presented to visitors in a wider sense.

Book Synopsis

Curating Pop speaks to the rapidly growing interest in the study of popular music exhibitions, which has occurred alongside the increasing number of popular music museums in operation across the world. Focusing on curatorial practices and processes, this book draws on interviews with museum workers and curators from 19 museums globally, including the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, and the PopMuseum in Prague. Through a consideration of the subjective experiences of curators involved in the exhibition of popular music in museums in a range of geographic locations, Curating Pop compares institutional practices internationally, illustrating the ways in which popular music history is presented to visitors in a wider sense.

Review Quotes

As this book argues, popular music has found its place amidst the heritage sector, in innovative exhibitions in which materials are presented and preserved across a variety of museums and archives. However, as the authors demonstrate, the mediation of pop as heritage object raises questions about the security of its cultural value as it becomes subject to a range of curatorial responses, institutional challenges and economic insecurities.

In their approach to this fascinating subject, Baker, Istvandity and Nowack are admirably clear in purpose and systematic in their exploration of curatorial approaches to pop. The authors survey an impressive range of secondary material drawn from a rapidly growing field that will aid any reader's understanding of issues in popular music heritage and its place in the museum. This material is allied with a wealth of insightful and candid interviews with curators who reflect on their motives and work. They are afforded space for expression and in turn provide readers with a valuable resource for examining this practice. Attuned to the dispositions and storytelling role of curators, the book relates the ways in which they manage the weight of the canon or seek to expose other, hidden histories as they deal with the politics of pop, its prejudices and pleasures. Analysis is concerned as much with the commercial pressures of managing music exhibitions as it is with with the lure of nostalgia or the challenges of how sound plays a part (or does not) in the creative work of curators.

Offering much to think about and with, this work will appeal to museologists (old and new), as much as musicians, museum-goers and music consumers alike.
Paul Long, Professor of Media and Cultural History, Birmingham City University, UK

Research across an impressive global sample of nineteen museums and their staff forms the basis of Curating Pop, a comprehensive and critical examination of the range of policies and practices used in the curation of popular music. This vital and authoritative survey has both depth and breadth, shaping a rich combination of overview with critical insight into why popular music matters, and how we should manage it. Curating Pop demonstrates how popular music has found its place within authorised and "DIY+? heritage institutions and in cultural discourse more broadly. This excellent and important book, and the typology of approaches it presents, will shape practice for years to come.
John Schofield, Professor and Director of Studies, Cultural Heritage Management, University of York, UK

Whether you're delighted or mystified by the continuing rise of exhibitions centred around popular music, this book is for you. Using personal reflections from curators across the globe, Curating Pop cleverly unpacks the myriad challenges and rewards involved in getting mute objects to 'sing'.
Carolyn Laffan, Senior Curator, Australian Music Vault, Arts Centre Melbourne, Australia

About the Author

Sarah Baker is Professor in Cultural Sociology at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. She is the author of Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries (2011), Teaching Youth Studies Through Popular Culture (2014), Community Custodians of Popular Music's Past: A DIY Approach to Heritage (2017) and the editor of Redefining Mainstream Popular Music (2013), Youth Cultures and Subcultures: Australian Perspectives (2015), Preserving Popular Music Heritage: Do-it-Yourself, Do-It-Together (2015), The Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage (2018) and Remembering Popular Music's Past: Memory-Heritage-History (2019).

Lauren Istvandity is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre, Griffith University, Australia. She has published across popular music, heritage, and cultural studies platforms, and has two books forthcoming: The Lifetime Soundtrack: Music and Autobiographical Memory, and the co-edited collection Routledge Handbook to Popular Music History and Heritage.

Raphaël Nowak is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Griffith University Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Australia. He is a cultural sociologist and has expertise on music consumption, digital technologies, popular music heritage practices, and systems of classifications in culture. He is the author of Consuming Music in the Digital Age: Technologies, Roles, and Everyday Life (2015) and co-editor of Networked Music Cultures: Contemporary Approaches, Emerging Issues (2016).