The 21st century has seen a boom in museum construction, both in new buildings and renovations. This volume inspects 26 museums and discusses the cultural and geographic environment for each one. It also provides an assessment of museum functionality in modern times.

An ambitious study of what it means to be a museum in the twenty-first century In Museums Inside Out, Mark W. Rectanus investigates how museums are blurring the boundaries between their gallery walls and public spaces. He examines how artists are challenging and changing museums, taking readers deep into new experiments in exhibition making. Along the way, Rectanus offers insights about how museums currently exemplify the fusion of the creative and digital economies. Exploring contemporary museum practices, initiatives, and collaborations, Rectanus analyzes projects like the Collective Museum, which foster land-based museum ecologies by co-curating with local communities. The Schirn Kunsthalle, Petach Tikva Museum of Art, and Tate Modern reflect museums as cultural zones for performance, inside and outside the museum. In addition, he studies a joint project between the Van Gogh Museum and the investment firm Deloitte Luxembourg, extracting insights on the transfer of expertise from museums to the financial sector. Wide-ranging in its case studies, and boldly putting museum studies and art into conversation, Museums Inside Out delivers vital insights into the ideas and places that museums are creating in contemporary culture.

Digital technologies have opened up new possibilities for the cultural sector. Many museums are represented on the internet with various materials. Augmented reality and virtual reality offer immersion experiences even for existing museums. However, for many topics there are no museums and exhibitions. The author group "Virtual Museums Forum" is now presenting a contribution to the discussion that focuses on museums in the metaverse. It aims to promote conceptual considerations for implementing virtual museums. This raises two fundamental questions: "What is a virtual museum?" and "For which topics or constellations can a virtual museum be particularly suitable?" This book provides a pragmatic answer to the first question. Comprehensive theses are then put forward for the second question and implementation of virtual museums. "Virtual Museums Forum" author group: Isabelle Becker, Messe Basel Otmar Böhmer, Kunststiftung Volkswagen und Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg Reinhard Gröne, Angel Engine e. V., Düsseldorf Bernd Günter, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf Rebecca Heinzelmann, Studio Heinzelmann Anja Kircher-Kannemann, Jugendstilforum Bad Nauheim Yasmin Mahmoudi, Kanzlei Dr. Mahmoudi & Partner Rechtsanwälte mbB, Köln Julia Römhild, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf Holger Simon, Pausanio, Köln Theresa Stärk, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf Laura Zebisch, Goethe-Institut

MUSEUM MEDIA Edited by Michelle Henning Museum Media explores the contemporary uses of diverse media in museum contexts and discusses how technology is reinventing the museum. It considers how technological changes—from photography and television through to digital mobile media—have given rise to new habits, forms of attention and behaviors. It explores how research methods can be used to understand people's relationships with media technologies and display techniques in museum contexts, as well as the new opportunities media offer for museums to engage with their visitors. Entries written by leading experts examine the transformation of history and memory by new media, the ways in which exhibitions mediate visitor experience, how designers and curators can establish new kinds of relationships with visitors, the expansion of the museum beyond its walls and its insertion into a wider commercial and corporate landscape. Focusing on formal, theoretical and technical aspects of exhibition practice, this in-depth volume explores questions of temporality, attachment to objects, atmospheric and immersive exhibition design, the reinvention of the exhibition medium, and much more.