Museums and public art have traditionally taken significantly different approaches to customer engagement, but throughout history they have also worked together in some urban contexts, notably as landmarks of so-called cultural districts. Public Art and Museums in Cultural Districts reviews their changing interactions in many different types of cities since the Enlightenment, or even before, going back to the etymological origins of museums and monuments in classical antiquity. The type of historical enquiry presented within the volume is not intended as a total narrative, but the international study cases considered convey a global panorama of the shifting paradigms set in different periods by some cultural neighbourhoods and emulated worldwide. Blurring boundaries between art history, museology and urbanism, this critical account explores past tensions, achievements and failures, giving insightful consideration to present policies and pointing out reasonable recommendations for the future regarding public heritage. Presenting for the first time an insights into the role of collections of public art as landmarks of cultural districts, this book considers collections displayed outdoors from the double perspective of curatorial outreach and civic values. This book will fill a gap in the existing museum studies literature, hitherto mainly focused on indoor collecting and curatorial policies, but increasingly more and more attentive to their outside context. As such, the book should be of great interest to academics, researchers and students working in the fields of art, heritage, museum studies and urban history. It should also be of value to professionals working in the museum and art sectors.

Through the Lens: Dallas Arts District is a collaboration between the Dallas Arts District (DAD), HALL Group, corporate sponsors and participating local photographers to raise funds for the Dallas Arts District Foundation - the granting arm that re-invests in the visual and performing arts in Dallas.'Through the Lens' was a juried photography competition, open to artists at all levels of experience, featuring photos of the Dallas Arts District. A total of 91 winning images and 57 photographers are featured in this hardbound coffee table book sold at venues throughout the Dallas Arts District. All gross proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to the Dallas Arts District Foundation. This is the first fundraiser that will support the grants program since the first donation in 1984 by the Crow family.

This book presents a critical analysis of the power and opportunity created in the implementation of community engaged practices within art museums, by looking at the networks connecting art museums to community organizations, artists and residents. The Art Museum Redefined places the interaction of art museums and urban neighbourhoods as the central focus of the study, to investigate how museums and artists collaborate with residents and local community groups. Rather than defining the community solely from the perspective of a museum looking out at its audience, the research examines the larger networks of art organizing and creative activism connected to the museum that are active across the neighbourhood. Taylor's research encompasses the grassroots efforts of local groups and their collaboration with museums and other art institutions that are extending their reach outside their physical walls and into the community. This focus on social engagement speaks to recent emphasis in cultural policy on cultural equity and inclusion, creative place-making and community engagement at neighbourhood and city-levels, and will be of interest to students, scholars and policy-makers alike.

An engaging guide to over 150 art museums and more throughout New England

Focused on multiple-scenario planning method, Museum Resilience gets to the “how” for expanding inclusivity and decolonization efforts, as well as adapting in a time of visitation and financial challenges. Unique features of the book include explaining worldview differences, value-based planning techniques (adaptive and multiple-scenario), the specifics of expanding museum income through collaborations, and ways of developing learning programs that support cultural continuance. The author has field-tested these methods for 30 years (over 50 plans completed), blending her graduate degrees in Cultural Anthropology and Urban and Regional Planning to design methods for cross-cultural planning. Integral to the book are planning processes for museums to use with communities in addressing these issues. Each chapter contains an annotated “Further Readings” feature, useful for textbook readers. Another feature of the book is the integration of examples concerning potential roles museums can take in opening environmental awareness. The author is an experienced leader in culturally diverse issues, focusing on value-based planning and designing techniques that work across cultures.

Visiting the Art Museum: A Journey Toward Participation is a book about the visitor experience. It is written as a companion for visitors to and inside the art museum. The volume engages readers in transforming a common experience, the museum visit, into a sophisticated epistemological inquiry. The study of the visitor experience through an epistemological approach consists of the untangling of the academic disciplines that study and inform each step of this experience: urban studies, architecture, design, art history, art education, and nonprofit management. This journey follows a transformative bottom-up trajectory from experiential to epistemological, and, finally, reveals itself as empowering. The book unfolds as an edited volume, with chapters by different authors who are enthusiastic scholars in each discipline and addresses undergraduate students as citizens, master’s students as professionals, and scholars as teachers and researchers. Each reader will discover a kaleidoscopic world made of ideas, values, and possibilities for participation.