Museums and cultural institutions across North America and Europe are being transformed by budget cuts, re-evaluation of their cultural missions, evolving concepts of museology, and changing audiences, making Brian Young's trenchant history of a prestigious university museum, Montreal's McCord Museum of Canadian History, especially pertinent. In The Making and Unmaking of a University Museum Young elucidates the relationship between museums and communities by examining the nineteenth-century social context of the family who bequeathed their collection to McGill University and the collection's fate in an academic institution. Tracing the museum's history from its founding by David Ross McCord, he emphasizes the centrality of elite women to the culture of the museum and its survival in the twentieth century, the museum's importance as the collective memory of Montreal's English-speaking elite, and the difficulty academic historians have had in dealing with material history. He recounts a sorry tale of mismatched institutional and intellectual cultures that culminated in the university's transfer of custodial responsibility to a corporate museum board and the collapse of the museum's central research and conservation mandates. The Making and Unmaking of a University Museum reveals the complex and often conflicting relationships between private collectors, curators, museum and university officials, volunteers, researchers, philanthropic foundations, the state, and the public. It shows how the makeup, interests, and perspectives of these groups have changed over the course of the century, leading to the current crisis in which many museums are forced to function according to a corporate culture in which the dictates of audience size, marketing, and public relations experts dominate the priorities of curators and collections, the needs of scholars and students, and the interests of communities. Young exposes the present-day conflict between cultural institutions operating ahistorically and often without any social vision and a public demanding greater help in understanding the past. It will be of interest to everyone who cares about culture, museums, and public memory.

This book covers the contributions of various international organisations, governments and their peoples, and solidarity organisations to the liberation struggle in South Africa. With emphasis on international solidarity with the liberation struggle, the subject matter in this book examines and analyses the events leading to the settlement of democracy in South Africa with a focus on: the events leading to the banning of the liberation movements; the various strategies and tactics adopted in pursuit of the democratic struggle; and the events leading to the advent of democracy Print editions not for sale in Sub-Saharan Africa. This book is part of Routledge’s co-published series 30 Years of Democracy in South Africa, in collaboration with UNISA Press, which reflects on the past years of a democratic South Africa and assesses the future opportunities and challenges.

This book examines the Australian state's changing role in post-war manufacturing industry. It provides a comprehensive analysis of federal industry policy since World War II and develops a range of arguments about the limits and possibilities of state-industry relationships in Australia.