Museums have been active in shaping knowledge over the last six hundred years. Yet what is their function within today's society? At the present time, when funding is becoming increasingly scarce, difficult questions are being asked about the justification of museums. Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge presents a critical survey of major changes in current assumptions about the nature of museums. Through the examination of case studies, Eilean Hooper-Greenhill reveals a variety of different roles for museums in the production and shaping of knowledge. Today, museums are once again organising their spaces and collections to present themselves as environments for experimental and self-directed learning.

A guide for museum and gallery staff in the development of provision for their visitors, to ensure survival into the next century.

The author traces the history and theory of visual culture asking how and why visual media have become so central to contemporary everyday life. He explores a wide range of visual forms, including painting, sculpture, photography, television, cinema, virtual reality, and the Internet while addressing the subjects of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, the body, and the international media event that followed the death of Princess Diana.

This is a multi-disciplinary study that adopts an innovative and original approach to a highly topical question, that of meaning-making in museums, focusing its attention on pedagogy and visual culture. This work explores such questions as: How and why is it that museums select and arrange artefacts, shape knowledge, construct a view? How do museums produce values? How do active audiences make meaning from what they experience in museums? This stimulating book provokes debate and discussion on these topics and puts forward the idea of a new museum - the post-museum, which will challenge the familiar modernist museum. A must for students and professionals in the field.

This thoroughly revised and updated second edition of The Visual Culture Readerbrings together key writings as well as specially commissioned articles covering a wealth of visual forms including photography, painting, sculpture, fashion, advertising, television, cinema and digital culture. The Readerfeatures an introductory section tracing the development of visual culture studies in response to globalization and digital culture, and articles grouped into thematic sections, each prefaced by an introduction by the editor and conclude with suggestions for further reading.

In Visual Culture the 'visual' character of contemporary culture is explored in original and lively essays. The contributors look at advertising, film, painting and fine art, journalism, photography, television and propaganda. They argue that there is only a social, not a formal relation between vision and truth.

In this pioneering book, Christopher Whitehead provides an overview and critique of art interpretation practices in museums and galleries. Covering the philosophy and sociology of art, traditions in art history and art display, the psychology of the aesthetic experience and ideas about learning and communication, Whitehead advances major theoretical frameworks for understanding interpretation from curators’ and visitors’ perspectives. Although not a manual, the book is deeply practical. It presents extensively researched European and North American case studies involving interviews with professionals engaged in significant cutting-edge interpretation projects. Finally, it sets out the ethical and political responsibilities of institutions and professionals engaged in art interpretation. Exploring the theoretical and practical dimensions of art interpretation in accessible language, this book covers: The construction of art by museums and galleries, in the form of collections, displays, exhibition and discourse; The historical and political dimensions of art interpretation; The functioning of narrative, categories and chronologies in art displays; Practices, discourses and problems surrounding the interpretation of historical and contemporary art; Visitor experiences and questions of authorship and accessibility; The role of exhibition texts, new interpretive technologies and live interpretation in art museum and gallery contexts. Thoroughly researched with immediately practical applications, Interpreting Art in Museums and Galleries will inform the practices of art curators and those studying the subject.