Is culture brokered like stocks, real estate, or marriage? In this engaging book, Richard Kurin shows that cultures are also mediated and indeed brokered by countries, organizations, communities, and individuals -- all with their own vision of the truth and varying abilities to impose it on others. Drawing on his diverse experiences in producing exhibitions and public programs, Kurin challenges culture brokers -- defined broadly to include museum professionals, film-makers, journalists, festival producers, and scholars of many disciplines -- to reveal more clearly the nature of their interpretations, to envision the ways in which their messages can "play" to different audiences, and to better understand the relationship between knowledge, art, politics, and entertainment. The book documents a variety of cases in which the Smithsonian has brokered culture for the American public: a planned exhibit on Jerusalem had to balance both Israeli and Palestinian agendas; debates over the 1996 Olympic Arts Festival presented differing visions of the American South; and the National Air and Space Museum's controversial display of the Enola Gay prompted the Smithsonian to re-examine the role of national museums. Arguing that cultural exhibits reflect a series of decisions about representing someone, someplace, and something, Reflections of a Culture Broker discusses the ethical and technical problems faced by not only those who practice in a museum setting but also anyone charged with representing culture in a public forum.

Is culture brokered like stocks, real estate, or marriage? In this engaging book, Richard Kurin shows that cultures are also mediated and indeed brokered by countries, organizations, communities, and individuals -- all with their own vision of the truth and varying abilities to impose it on others. Drawing on his diverse experiences in producing exhibitions and public programs, Kurin challenges culture brokers -- defined broadly to include museum professionals, film-makers, journalists, festival producers, and scholars of many disciplines -- to reveal more clearly the nature of their interpretations, to envision the ways in which their messages can "play" to different audiences, and to better understand the relationship between knowledge, art, politics, and entertainment. The book documents a variety of cases in which the Smithsonian has brokered culture for the American public: a planned exhibit on Jerusalem had to balance both Israeli and Palestinian agendas; debates over the 1996 Olympic Arts Festival presented differing visions of the American South; and the National Air and Space Museum's controversial display of the Enola Gay prompted the Smithsonian to re-examine the role of national museums. Arguing that cultural exhibits reflect a series of decisions about representing someone, someplace, and something, Reflections of a Culture Broker discusses the ethical and technical problems faced by not only those who practice in a museum setting but also anyone charged with representing culture in a public forum.

Is culture brokered like stocks, real estate, or marriage? In this engaging book, Richard Kurin shows that cultures are always mediated and indeed brokered by countries, organizations, communities, and individuals - all with their own vision of the truth and varying abilities to impose it on others. Arguing that cultural exhibits reflect a series of decisions about representing someone, someplace, and something, Reflections of a Culture Broker discusses the ethical and technical problems faced by not only those who practice in a museum setting but also anyone charged with representing culture in a public forum.

The goal of this book is to deal, in a provocative way, with a number of key issues involving the increased participation of the private sector within cultural tourism. My goal is not to write a complete overview of the field. Instead, this short book deals with a fairly circumscribed set of issues involving contemporary changes within cultural tourism. Since modern business largely focuses on serving customers, a major focus of this book concerns marketing thought and its implications in regard to cultural tourism. In large measure, this book seeks to help host communities and their advocates to become familiar with and comfortable within a private sector context as well as being able to interact in such an environment. The book starts with a two-chapter introduction that focuses upon the distinctive role of cultural tourism. As emphasized in chapter 1, a dilemma arises because cultural tourism must simultaneously serve multiple stakeholders and do so in equitable ways. This is much more complex than the more typical task of concentrating upon the needs, wants, and desires of customers. These ideas are refined in chapter 2 where the discussion centers primarily upon the importance of serving host communities, in addition to customers. Certainly, catering to customers continues to be an issue, but it should be envisioned as an ad hoc method of serving the host community.

No other book is available that takes into consideration the diverse components of cultural heritage and suggests how these components can best be: organized and arranged, cataloged and described, exhibited, made accessible, and preserved and conserved by librarians, archivists, and museum curators. Cultural Heritage Care and Management: Theory and Practice covers a vast array of components such as landscape, foodways, performance and dance, language, etc. In addition, the tools, technologies, and methodologies for organizing and arranging, cataloging and describing, exhibiting, providing access, and preserving and conserving these components are also covered. In this book: Diverse, indigenous, and global perspectives of cultural heritage are described Laws and cultural rules and norms for the care and management of cultural heritage resources and components are discussed Tools and methodologies for the organization, access, and preservation of cultural heritage are described. Theories and concepts related to digital heritage are discussed.

A Companion to Folklore presents an original and comprehensive collection of essays from international experts in the field of folklore studies. Unprecedented in depth and scope, this state-of-the-art collection uniquely displays the vitality of folklore research across the globe. An unprecedented collection of original, state of the art essays on folklore authored by international experts Examines the practices and theoretical approaches developed to understand the phenomena of folklore Considers folklore in the context of multi-disciplinary topics that include poetics, performance, religious practice, myth, ritual and symbol, oral textuality, history, law, politics and power as well as the social base of folklore Selected by Choice as a 2013 Outstanding Academic Title

Cultural Democracy explores the crisis of our national cultural vitality, as access to the arts becomes increasingly mediated by a handful of corporations and the narrow tastes of wealthy elites. Graves offers the concept of cultural democracy as corrective--an idea with important historic and contemporary validation, and an alternative pathway toward ethical cultural development that is part of a global shift in values. Drawing upon a range of scholarship and illustrative anecdotes from his own experiences with cultural programs in ethnically diverse communities, Graves explains in convincing detail the dynamics of how traditional and grassroots cultures may survive and thrive--or not--and what we can do to provide them opportunities equal to those of mainstream, Eurocentric culture.