Product Description

Using case studies drawn from all areas of museum studies, "Museums and their Communities" explores the museums as a site of representation, identity and memory, and considers how it can influence its community. Focusing on the museum as an institution, and its social and cultural setting, Sheila Watson examines how museums use their roles as informers and educators to empower, or to ignore, communities. Looking at the current debates about the role of the museum, she considers contested values in museum functions and examines provision, power, ownership, responsibility, and institutional issues. This book is of great relevance for all disciplines as it explores and questions the role of the museum in modern society.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #152634 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 592 pages

From the Back Cover

Museums and their Communities brings together a collection of readings from practitioners and researchers, working across a range of disciplines, which explore and illuminate the complex and evolving relationships between museums and the diverse communities they represent, serve and with which they engage.

This collection of high quality, provocative and stimulating readings draws together thinking, practice and case studies relating to many different kinds of museum. Through wide ranging, international contexts it examines the ways in which museums operate as sites of community representation, identity and memory.

The Reader considers the shifting institutional priorities of the museum from a focus on collections to a growing concern for audience needs and expectations. It reflects on areas of contestation and addresses a number of timely questions which are increasingly challenging museum practitioners and scholars:

• Who are the museum’s communities? What needs and challenges do these constituencies present?
• What is the impact upon the museum of competing community interests?
• How do issues of power and control affect communities and influence the messages museums attempt to communicate?

Museums and their Communities provides a focused consideration of the challenges and opportunities facing museums that wish to engage with their community responsibilities.

About the Author

Sheila Watson is a lecturer in the Department of Museum Studies, University of Leicester.