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The value of touch and object handling in museums is little understood, despite the overwhelming weight of anecdotal evidence which confirms the benefits of physical interaction with objects. Touch in Museums presents a ground-breaking overview of object handling from both historical and scientific perspectives. The book aims to establish a framework for understanding the role of object handling for learning, enjoyment, and health. The broad range of essays included explores the many different contexts for object handling, not only within the museum, but extending beyond it to hospitals, schools and the wider community. The combination of theoretical analysis, policy assessment and detailed case material make Touch in Museums invaluable reading for students and professionals of museology or cultural heritage.
Despite the fact that we have a range of senses with which to perceive the world around us, museums and other cultural institutions have traditionally used sight as the main way to convey information. In everyday life, though, we use touch constantly in conjunction with sight. Why, then, does it play so small a role in the study and enjoyment of museum objects? Contributors to this volume explore how the sense of touch can be utilized in cultural institutions to facilitate understanding and learning.
Recent research in the cognitive sciences gives us a new perspective on the cognitive and sensory landscape. In The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space,museum expert Nina Levent and Alvaro Pascual-Leone, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School bring together scholars and museum practitioners from around the world to highlight new trends and untapped opportunities for using such modalities as scent, sound, and touch in museums to offer more immersive experiences and diverse sensory engagement for visually- and otherwise-impaired patrons. Visitor studies describe how different personal and group identities color our cultural consumption and might serve as a compass on museum journeys. Psychologists and educators look at the creation of memories through different types of sensory engagement with objects, and how these memories in turn affect our next cultural experience. An anthropological perspective on the history of our multisensory engagement with ritual and art objects, especially in cultures that did not privilege sight over other senses, allows us a glimpse of what museums might become in the future. Education researchers discover museums as unique educational playgrounds that allow for a variety of learning styles, active and passive exploration, and participatory learning. Designers and architects suggest a framework for thinking about design solutions for a museum environment that invites an intuitive, multisensory and flexible exploration, as well as minimizes physical hurdles. While attention has been paid to accessibility for the physically-impaired since passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, making buildings accessible is only the first small step in elevating museums to be centers of learning and culture for all members of their communities. This landmark book will help all museums go much further.
The Things about Museums constitutes a unique, highly diverse collection of essays unprecedented in existing books in either museum and heritage studies or material culture studies. Taking varied perspectives and presenting a range of case studies, the chapters all address objects in the context of museums, galleries and/or the heritage sector more broadly. Specifically, the book deals with how objects are constructed in museums, the ways in which visitors may directly experience those objects, how objects are utilised within particular representational strategies and forms, and the challenges and opportunities presented by using objects to communicate difficult and contested matters. Topics and approaches examined in the book are diverse, but include the objectification of natural history specimens and museum registers; materiality, immateriality, transience and absence; subject/object boundaries; sensory, phenomenological perspectives; the museumisation of objects and collections; and the dangers inherent in assuming that objects, interpretation and heritage are ‘good’ for us.
What does the transformation to a visitor-centered approach do for a museum? How are museums made relevant to a broad range of visitors of varying ages, identities, and social classes? Does appealing to a larger audience force museums to "dumb down" their work? What internal changes are required? Based on a multi-year Kress Foundation-sponsored study of 20 innovative American and European collections-based museums recognized by their peers to be visitor-centered, Peter Samis and Mimi Michaelson answer these key questions for the field. The book describes key institutions that have opened the doors to a wider range of visitors; addresses the internal struggles to reorganize and democratize these institutions; uses case studies, interviews of key personnel, Key Takeaways, and additional resources to help museum professionals implement a visitor-centered approach in collections-based institutions
In this broadly conceived study Steven Conn examines the development of American museums across the twentieth century with a historian's attention and a critic's eye. He focuses on an array of museum types and asks illuminating questions about the relationship between museums and American cultural life.
Slow Looking provides a robust argument for the importance of slow looking in learning environments both general and specialized, formal and informal, and its connection to major concepts in teaching, learning, and knowledge. A museum-originated practice increasingly seen as holding wide educational benefits, slow looking contends that patient, immersive attention to content can produce active cognitive opportunities for meaning-making and critical thinking that may not be possible though high-speed means of information delivery. Addressing the multi-disciplinary applications of this purposeful behavioral practice, this book draws examples from the visual arts, literature, science, and everyday life, using original, real-world scenarios to illustrate the complexities and rewards of slow looking.
In the past, museums often changed the meaning of icons or statues of deities from sacred to aesthetic, or used them to declare the superiority of Western society, or simply as cultural and historical evidence. The last generation has seen faith groups demanding to control 'their' objects, and curators recognising that objects can only be understood within their original religious context. In recent years there has been an explosion of interest in the role religion plays in museums, with major exhibitions highlighting the religious as well as the historical nature of objects.Using examples from all over the world, Religious Objects in Museums is the first book to examine how religious objects are transformed when they enter the museum, and how they affect curators and visitors. It examines the full range of meanings that religious objects may bear - as scientific specimen, sacred icon, work of art, or historical record. Showing how objects may be used to argue a point, tell a story or promote a cause, may be worshipped, ignored, or seen as dangerous or unlucky, this highly accessible book is an essential introduction to the subject.
Art, Museums and Touch examines conceptions and uses of touch within arts museums and art history. Candlin deftly weaves archival material and contemporary museology together with government policy and art practice to question the foundations of modern art history, museums as sites of visual learning, and the association of touch with female identity and sexuality. This remarkable study presents a challenging riposte to museology and art history that privileges visual experience. Candlin demonstrates that touch was, and still is, crucially important to museums and art history. At the same time she contests the recent characterization of touch as an accessible and inclusive way of engaging with museum collections, and argues against prevalent ideas of touch as an unmediated and uncomplicated mode of learning. An original and wide-ranging enquiry, this book is essential reading for scholars and students of museum studies, art history, visual culture, disability, and for anyone interested in the cultural construction of the senses.
The role of museums in enhancing well-being and improving health through social intervention is one of the foremost topics of importance in the museums sector today. With an aging population and emerging policies on the social responsibilities of museums, the sector is facing an unprecedented challenge in how to develop services to meet the needs of its communities in a more holistic and inclusive way. This book sets the scene for the future of museums where the health and well-being of communities is top of the agenda. The authors draw together existing research and best practice in the area of museum interventions in health and social care and offer a detailed overview of the multifarious outcomes of such interactions, including benefits and challenges. This timely book will be essential reading for museum professionals, particularly those involved in access and education, students of museums and heritage studies, as well as practitioners of arts in health, art therapists, care and community workers.