Museums in the Material World seeks to both introduce classic and thought-provoking pieces and contrast them with articles which reveal grounded practice. The articles are selected from across the full breadth of museum disciplines and are linked by a logical narrative, as detailed in the section introductions. The choice of articles reveals how the debate has opened up on disciplinary practice, how the practices of the past have been critiqued and in some cases replaced, how it has become necessary to look beyond and outside disciplinary boundaries, and how old practices can in many circumstances continue to have validity. Museums in the Material World is about broadening horizons and moving museum studies students, and others, beyond the narrow confines of their own disciplinary thinking or indeed any narrow conception of collections. In essence, this is a book about the practice of interpretation and will therefore be of great use to those students and museum practitioners involved in the field of material culture in museums.

The underlying theme of this book is the excitement, and challenge, of creating and transforming collections. The Gulf States are in the middle of "the most explosive per capita museum building boom in history." And this exponential growth is fuelled by many new methods of amassing, preserving or recording the collections which fill them: public or private, archaeological, historical or artistic. In thirteen detailed case-studies and 540 pages, Museums and the Material World provides a unique insight into the pioneering policies and practices of collection building in the region - which in so many ways mirror and support nation-building and the formation of national identity. Editor Pamela Erskine-Loftus comments: "Social, cultural and traditional practice shapes collecting in the Peninsula. But wherever we are, and whatever we collect, we can all learn from the narratives collected here, which examine globally relevant themes: nation, identity and object; the relevance of the character of the collector, and their view of collecting; the intangible aspect of tangible objects; and ongoing changes in the management of collections.""

All across the humanities fields there is a new interest in materials and materiality. This is the first book to capture and study the “material turn” in the humanities from all its varied perspectives. Cultural Histories of the Material World brings together top scholars from all these different fields—from Art History, Anthropology, Archaeology, Classics, Folklore, History, History of Science, Literature, Philosophy—to offer their vision of what cultural history of the material world looks like and attempt to show how attention to materiality can contribute to a more precise historical understanding of specific times, places, ways, and means. The result is a spectacular kaleidoscope of future possibilities and new perspectives.

Connecting Museums explores the boundaries of museums and how external relationships are affected by internal commitments, structures and traditions. Focusing on museums’ relationship with heath, inclusion, and community, the book provides a detailed assessment of the alliances between museums and other stakeholders in recent years. With contributions from practitioners and established and early-career academics, this volume explore the ideas and practices through which museums are seeking to move beyond what might be called one-off contributions to society, to reach places where the museum is dynamic and facilitates self-generation and renewal, where it can become not just a provider of a cultural service, but an active participant in the rehabilitation of social trust and democratic participation. The contributors to this volume provide conceptual critiques and clarification of a number of key ideas which form the basis of the ethics of museum legitimacy, as well as a number of reports from the front line about the experience of trying to renew museums as more valuable and more relevant institutions. Providing internal and external perspectives, Connecting Museums presents a mix of applied and theoretical understandings of the changing roles of museums today. As such, the book should be of interest to academics, researchers and students working in the broad fields of museum and heritage studies, material culture, and arts and museum management.

Combining the history of ideas, institutions, and architecture, this study shows how the museum both reflected and shaped the place of art in German culture from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. On a broader level, it illuminates the origin and character of the museum's central role in modern culture. James Sheehan begins by describing the establishment of the first public galleries during the last decades of Germany's old regime. He then examines the revolutionary upheaval that swept Germany between 1789 and 1815, arguing that the first great German museums reflected the nation's revolutionary aspirations. By the mid-nineteenth century, the climate had changed; museums constructed in this period affirmed historical continuities and celebrated political accomplishments. During the next several years, however, Germans became disillusioned with conventional definitions of art and lost interest in monumental museums. By the turn of the century, the museum had become a site for the political and cultural controversies caused by the rise of artistic modernism. In this context, Sheehan argues, we can see the first signs of what would become the modern style of museum architecture and modes of display. The first study of its kind, this highly accessible book will appeal to historians, museum professionals, and anyone interested in the relationship between art, politics, and culture.

This is an innovative interdisciplinary book about objects and people within museums and galleries. It addresses fundamental issues of human sensory, emotional and aesthetic experience of objects. The chapters explore ways and contexts in which things and people mutually interact, and raise questions about how objects carry meaning and feeling, the distinctions between objects and persons, particular qualities of the museum as context for person-object engagements, and the active and embodied role of the museum visitor. Museum Materialities is divided into three sections – Objects, Engagements and Interpretations – and includes a foreword by Susan Pearce and an afterword by Howard Morphy. It examines materiality and other perceptual and ontological qualities of objects themselves; embodied sensory and cognitive engagements – both personal and across a wider audience spread – with particular objects or object types in a museum or gallery setting; notions of aesthetics, affect and wellbeing in museum contexts; and creative and innovative artistic and museum practices that seek to illuminate or critique museum objects and interpretations. Phenomenological and other approaches to embodied experience in an emphatically material world are current in a number of academic areas, most particularly strands of material culture studies within anthropology and cognate disciplines. Thus far, however, there has been no concerted application of this kind of approach to museum collections and interactions with them by museum visitors, curators, artists and researchers. Bringing together essays by scholars and practitioners from a wide disciplinary and international base, Museum Materialities seeks to make just such a contribution. In so doing it makes a valuable and original addition to the literature of both material culture studies and museum studies.

Museums: A Visual Anthropology provides a clear and concise summary of the key ideas, debates and texts of the most important approaches to the study of museums from around the world. The book examines ways to address the social relations of museums, embedded in their sites, collections, and exhibitions, as an integral part of the visual and material culture they comprise. Cross-disciplinary in scope, Museums uses ideas and approaches both from within and outside of anthropology to further students' knowledge of and interest in museums. Including selected, globally based case studies to highlight and exemplify important issues, the book also contains suggested Further Reading for each chapter, for students to expand their learning independently. Exploring fundamental methods and approaches to engage this constantly evolving time machine, Museums will be essential reading for students of anthropology and museum studies.