1. Introduction / Juliette FritschPart 1 Situating interpretation in the museum context2. The Museum as a social instrument : a democratic conception of museum education / George E. Hein3. Invoking the Muse : the purposes and processes of communicative action in museums / Paulette M.McManus4. Interpretation and the art museum : between the familiar and the unfamiliar / Cheryl Meszaros, Twyla Gibson, Jennifer CarterPt II The role of interpretation in art galleries5. Towards some cartographic understandings of art interpretation in museums / Christopher Whitehead6. Art for whose sake? / Sue Latimer7,. The seeing eye : the seeing I / Sylvia LahavPt III Language and museum interpretation8. How can we define the role of language in museum interpretation? / Juliette FritschPt IV Interpretation, personal experience and memory9. I loved it dearly : recalling personal memories of dress in the museum / Torunn Kjolberg10. Welcome to my world : personal narrative and historic house interpretation / Mariruth Leftwich11. Narrative museum, museum of voices : displaying rural culture in the Museo della Mezzadria Senese, Italy / Marzia MinorePt V. Evidence-based practice12. An evaluation of object-centered approaches to interpretation at the British Museum / David Francis, Steve Slack, Claire Edwards13. The other side of the coin : audience consultation and the interpretation of numismatic collections / Effrosyni NomikouPt VI Interpretive strategies for specific audiences14. Designing effective interpretation for contemporary family visitors to art museums and galleries : a reflection of associated problems and issues / Patricia Sterry15. Interactive gallery interpretation for design students : help or hindrance? / Elizabeth Dyson16. Empower the audience! How art museums can become enriching creative spaces for a wider audience through deliberate and strategic use of experience and learning theories / Karen GronPt.VII Process and people17. Reading the walls : a study of curatorial expectation and visitor perception / Sarah Ganz Blythe, Barbara Palley18 Education is a department isn't it? : perceptions of education, learning and interpretation in exhibition development / Juliette Fritsch.

Museum Gallery Interpretation and Material Culture publishes the proceedings of the first annual Sackler Centre for Arts Education conference at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London. The conference launched the annual series by addressing the question of how gallery interpretation design and management can help museum visitors learn about art and material culture. The book features a range of papers by leading academics, museum learning professionals, graduate researchers and curators from Europe, the USA and Canada. The papers present diverse new research and practice in the field, and open up debate about the role, design and process of exhibition interpretation in museums, art galleries and historic sites. The authors represent both academics and practitioners, and are affiliated with high quality institutions of broad geographical scope. The result is a strong, consistent representation of current thinking across the theory, methodology and practice of interpretation design for learning in museums.

This volume brings together for the first time the most significant papers on the interpretation of objects and collections and examines how people relate to material culture and why they collect things. The first section of the book discusses the interpretation of objects, setting the philosophical and historical context of object interpretation. Papers are included which discuss objects variously as historical documents, functioning material, and as semiotic texts, as well as those which examine the politics of objects and the methodology of object study. The second section, on the interpretation of collections, looks at the study of collections in their historical and conceptual context. Many topics are covered such as the study of collecting to structure individual identity, its affect on time and space and the construction of gender. There are also papers discussing collection and ideology, collection and social action and the methodology of collection study. This unique anthology of articles and extracts will be of inestimable value to all students and professionals involved in the interpretation of objects and collections.

In early twentieth-century Berlin, the museumsdebate was set into motion with Wilhelm von Bode's sweeping proposal to reorganize a group of the city's museums. Between 1907 and 1910, two particularly striking series of articles appeared in the journal Museumskunde: Journal for the Administration and Technology of Public and Private Collections. The first was a six-part essay by Otto Lauffer on history museums and the second was a ten-part piece by Oswald Richter regarding ethnographic museums, and both initiated a century of important dialogue. Presented together here as Collecting, Displaying, and Interpreting Material Culture, these first full English translations of the two book-length articles remain unequalled presentations about the different implications of art, historical, and ethnographic museums. They show how sophisticated the discussion of museums and museum display was in the early twentieth century, and how much could be gained from revisiting these reflections today. Accompanied with short commentaries by a group of museum professionals, these translations and associated commentaries allow for an intervention and intensification of the current level of debate about museums, one that will further invigorated by the opening of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin in 2019.

This book examines the historical context of museums, their collections, and the objects that form them. Susan M. Pearce probes the psychological and social reasons that people collect and identifies three modes of collecting: collecting as souvenirs, as fetishes, and as systematic assemblages. She considers how museum professionals set policies of collection management; acquire, study, and exhibit objects; and make meaning of the objects in their care. Pearce also explores the ideological relationship between museums and their collections and the intellectual and social relationships of museums to the public.

Art As Evidence celebrates the career of Jules Prown, historian of American art and a pioneer in the study of material culture. It brings together some of his most influential essays along with an introductory chapter, and an intellectual autobiography.