Collecting together a group of talented writers, Museum, Media, Message considers, in depth, the most up-to-date approaches to museum communication including: museums as media; museums and audience; and the evaluation of museums. Addressing the need for museums to develop better knowledge of visitor experience, this volume introduces a broad range of issues, and presents the ultimate how, why and who of museum communication. Museum, Media, Message combines philosophical discussion, practical examples and case studies and examines museum communication in three sections: analyzing how museums and galleries construct and transmit complex systems of value through processes of collection and exhibition raising philosophical and management issues and exploration of work with specific audiences introducing methods for studying the audiences’ experiences of communication events in museums. Perfect for people who want to develop a more critical and informed professional museum practice, and for students looking to enhance their skills of analysis and reflection, this book is of value to anyone interested in the current debates and issues of this new and growing field.

Visitor engagement and learning, outreach, and inclusion are concepts that have long dominated professional museum discourses. The recent rapid uptake of various forms of social media in many parts of the world, however, calls for a reformulation of familiar opportunities and obstacles in museum debates and practices. Young people, as both early adopters of digital forms of communication and latecomers to museums, increasingly figure as a key target group for many museums. This volume presents and discusses the most advanced research on the multiple ways in which social media operates to transform museum communications in countries as diverse as Australia, Denmark, Germany, Norway, the UK, and the United States. It examines the socio-cultural contexts, organizational and education consequences, and methodological implications of these transformations.

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

Museums today find themselves within a mediatised society, where everyday life is conducted in a data-full and technology-rich context. In fact, museums are themselves mediatised: they present a uniquely media-centred environment, in which communicative media is a constitutive property of their organisation and of the visitor experience. The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Media and Communication explores what it means to take mediated communication as a key concept for museum studies and as a sensitising lens for media-related museum practice on the ground. Including contributions from experts around the world, this original and innovative Handbook shares a nuanced and precise understanding of media, media concepts and media terminology, rehearsing new locations for writing on museum media and giving voice to new subject alignments. As a whole, the volume breaks new ground by reframing mediated museum communication as a resource for an inclusive understanding of current museum developments. The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Media and Communication will appeal to both students and scholars, as well as to practitioners involved in the visioning, design and delivery of mediated communication in the museum. It teaches us not just how to study museums, but how to go about being a museum in today’s world. The book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access at www.taylorfrancis.com. It has been made available under a a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

The Disobedient Museum: Writing at the Edge aims to motivate disciplinary thinking to reimagine writing about museums as an activity where resistant forms of thinking, seeing, feeling, and acting can be produced, and to theorize this process as a form of protest against disciplinary stagnation. Drawing on a range of cultural, theoretical, and political approaches, Kylie Message examines potential links between methods of critique today and moments of historical and disciplinary crisis, and asks what contribution museums might make to these, either as direct actors or through activities that sit more comfortably within their institutional remit. Identifying the process of writing about museums as a form of activism, that brings together and elaborates on cultural and political agendas for change, the book explores how a process of engaged critique might benefit museum studies, what this critique might look like, and how museum studies might make a contribution to discourses of social and political change. The Disobedient Museum is the first volume in Routledge’s innovative ‘Museums in Focus’ series and will be of great interest to scholars and students in the fields of Museum, Heritage, Public History, and Cultural Studies. It should also be essential reading for museum practitioners, particularly those engaged with questions about the role of museums in regard to social activism and contentious contemporary challenges.

Grounded in the strengths of its first edition, this book has been restructured to include new papers and recent articles, and presents front-running theory and practice as it addresses the relationships of museums and galleries to their audiences.