{"id":2901,"date":"2014-03-28T09:00:40","date_gmt":"2014-03-28T09:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/?p=2901"},"modified":"2025-06-10T09:36:27","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T09:36:27","slug":"marking-museum-week-askthecurator-or-simply-read-the-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/marking-museum-week-askthecurator-or-simply-read-the-book","title":{"rendered":"Marking Museum Week: #AskTheCurator or View the Book"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week hundreds of museums across the United Kingdom and Europe are participating in Twitter’s first Museum Week<\/a> campaign. Each day during this week is associated with a hashtag, from #DayInTheLife<\/a> to #MuseumMemories<\/a>, all intended to hit on various delightful aspects of the museum world. Today’s hashtag, #AskTheCurator<\/a> is an opportunity to engage with museum experts. But for those who prefer to engage with experts the classic way \u2014 by way of their books \u2014 we have curated a collection of some of our Museum Studies<\/a> titles in the following gallery. <\/strong><\/p>\n

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\"\"EXTREME COLLECTING<\/a><\/h2>\n

Challenging Practices for 21st Century Museums<\/em><\/p>\n

Edited by Graeme Were and J. C. H. King<\/p>\n

\n

By exploring the processes of collecting, which challenge the bounds of normally acceptable practice, this book debates the practice of collecting \u2018difficult\u2019 objects, from a historical and contemporary perspective; and discusses the acquisition of objects related to war and genocide, and those purchased from the internet, as well as considering human remains, mass produced objects and illicitly traded antiquities. Much of the book engages with the question of the limits to the practice of collecting as a means to think through the implementation of new strategies.<\/p>\n

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COLONIAL COLLECTING AND DISPLAY\"\"<\/a><\/h2>\n

Encounters with Material Culture from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands<\/em><\/p>\n

Claire Wintle<\/p>\n

Colonial Collecting and Display follows the compelling history of a particular set of such objects, tracing their physical and conceptual transformation from objects of indigenous use to accessioned objects in a museum collection in the south of England. This first study dedicated to the historical collecting and display of the Islands’ material cultures develops a new analysis of colonial discourse, using a material culture-led approach to reconceptualize imperial relationships between Andamanese, Nicobarese, and British communities, both in the Bay of Bengal and on British soil.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"\"THE LIVES OF CHINESE OBJECTS<\/a><\/h2>\n

Buddhism, Imperialism and Display<\/em><\/p>\n

Louise Tythacott<\/p>\n

This is the biography of a set of rare Buddhist statues from China. Their extraordinary adventures take them from the Buddhist temples of fifteenth-century Putuo \u2013 China\u2019s most important pilgrimage island \u2013 to their seizure by a British soldier in the First Opium War in the early 1840s, and on to a starring role in the Great Exhibition of 1851. In the 1850s, they moved in and out of dealers\u2019 and antiquarian collections, arriving in 1867 at Liverpool Museum. Here they were re-conceptualized as specimens of the \u2018Mongolian race\u2019 and, later, as examples of Oriental art.<\/p>\n

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\"\"PANAMANIAN MUSEUMS AND HISTORICAL MEMORY<\/a><\/h2>\n

Ana Luisa S\u00e1nchez Laws<\/p>\n

Panama is an ethnically diverse country with a recent history of political conflict which makes the representation of historical memory an especially complex and important task for the country\u2019s museums. This book studies new museum projects in Panama with the aim of identifying the dominant narratives that are being formed as well as those voices that remain absent and muted. Through case analyses of specific museums and exhibitions the author identifies and examines the influences that form and shape museum strategy and development.<\/p>\n

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\"\"EXHIBITING EUROPE IN MUSEUMS<\/a><\/h2>\n

Transnational Networks, Collections, Narratives, and Representations<\/em><\/p>\n

Translated from the German<\/p>\n

Wolfram Kaiser, Stefan Krankenhagen and Kerstin Poehls<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This book investigates how museums exhibit Europe. Based on research in nearly 100 museums across the Continent and interviews with cultural policy makers and museum curators, it studies the growing transnational activities of state institutions, societal organizations, and people in the museum field such as attempts to Europeanize collection policy and collections as well as different strategies for making narratives more transnational like telling stories of European integration as shared history and discussing both inward and outward migration as a common experience and challenge.<\/p>\n

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\"\"FROM ANTIQUITIES TO HERITAGE<\/a><\/h2>\n

Transformations of Cultural Memory<\/em><\/p>\n

Anne Eriksen<\/p>\n

Eighteenth-century gentleman scholars collected antiquities. Nineteenth-century nation states built museums to preserve their historical monuments. In the present world, heritage is a global concern as well as an issue of identity politics. What does it mean when runic stones or medieval churches are transformed from antiquities to monuments to heritage sites? This book argues that the transformations concern more than words alone: They reflect fundamental changes in the way we experience the past, and the way historical objects are assigned meaning and value in the present.<\/p>\n

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\"\"BORDERS OF BELONGING<\/a><\/h2>\n

Experiencing History, War and Nation at a Danish Heritage Site<\/em><\/p>\n

Mads Daugbjerg<\/p>\n

This book explores how such struggles unfold in practice at a highly symbolic battlefield site in the Danish\/German borderland. Comprised of an ethnography of two profoundly different institutions \u2013 a conventional museum and an experience-based heritage center \u2013 it analyses the ways in which staff and visitors interfere with, relate to, and literally \u201cmake sense\u201d of the war heritage and its national connotations. Borders of Belonging<\/em> offers a comparative, in-depth analysis of the practices and negotiations through which history is made and manifested at two houses devoted to the interpretation of one event: the decisive battle of the 1864 war in which Otto von Bismarck, on his way to uniting the new German Empire, led the Prussian army to victory over the Danish.<\/p>\n

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DISTRIBUTED OBJECTS\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n

Meaning and Mattering after Alfred Gell<\/em><\/p>\n

Edited by Liana Chua and Mark Elliott<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

One of the most influential anthropological works of the last two decades, Alfred Gell\u2019s Art and Agency <\/em>is a provocative and ambitious work that both challenged and reshaped anthropological understandings of art, agency, creativity and the social. It has become a touchstone in contemporary artifact-based scholarship. This volume brings together leading anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians and other scholars into an interdisciplinary dialogue with Art and Agency<\/em>, generating a timely re-engagement with the themes, issues and arguments at the heart of Gell\u2019s work, which remains salient, and controversial, in the social sciences and humanities.<\/p>\n

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\"\"SCIENCE, MAGIC AND RELIGION<\/a><\/h2>\n

The Ritual Processes of Museum Magic<\/em><\/p>\n

Edited by Mary Bouquet and Nuno Porto<\/p>\n

For some time now, museums have been recognized as important institutions of western cultural and social life. The idea of the museum as a ritual site is fairly new and has been applied to the art museums in Europe and the United States so far. This volume expands it by exploring a range of contemporary museums in Europe and Africa. The case studies examine the different ways in which various actors involved in cultural production dramatize and ritualize such sites.<\/p>\n

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\"\"FETISHES AND MONUMENTS<\/a><\/h2>\n

Afro-Brazilian Art and Culture in the 20th<\/sup> Century<\/em><\/p>\n

Roger Sansi<\/p>\n

One hundred years ago in Brazil the rituals of Candombl\u00e9 were feared as sorcery and persecuted as crime. Its cult objects were fearsome fetishes. Nowadays, they are Afro-Brazilian cultural works of art, objects of museum display and public monuments. Focusing on the particular histories of objects, images, spaces and persons who embodied it, this book portrays the historical journey from weapons of sorcery looted by the police, to hidden living stones, to public works of art attacked by religious fanatics that see them as images of the Devil, former sorcerers who have become artists, writers, and philosophers.<\/p>\n

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\"\"CHANGES IN MUSEUM PRACTICE<\/a><\/h2>\n

New Media, Refugees and Participation<\/em><\/p>\n

Edited by Hanne-Lovise Skartveit and Katherine Goodnow<\/p>\n

How can museums move beyond simply raising awareness and establish a dialogue both within and across communities and cultural boundaries? By examining the ways in which museums can involve refugees and asylum seekers this volume explores this key question. Leading artists, curators, and academics come together to outline different levels of participation by audiences and communities and explore a range of topics from video games to role-play and theatre; and from photography to participatory video and digital storytelling.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week hundreds of museums across the United Kingdom and Europe are participating in Twitter’s first Museum Week campaign. Each day during this week is associated with a hashtag, from #DayInTheLife to #MuseumMemories, all intended to hit on various delightful aspects of the museum world. Today’s hashtag, #AskTheCurator is an opportunity to engage with museum… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,137,116,122],"tags":[107,190,581,1740,111,113,992,110,601,994,278,2330,94,275,276],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2901"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21086,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901\/revisions\/21086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}