Museum Studies for a Post-Pandemic World demonstrates that digital literacy, creativity, and resilience, as the COVID-19 pandemic has so vividly illustrated, are now vital components of the classroom and of the curator’s toolbox. Museum studies students are increasingly asked to engage with new team dynamics and collaborative models, often relocated to the virtual world. Authored by academics, cultural heritage partners, students, and alumni, the chapters in this volume move beyond a consideration of the impact of digitisation to envision new strategies and pedagogies for fuller, more sustainable approaches to cultural literacy, exhibition, and visitor engagement. International case studies present models of collaborative practices between teams of diverse sizes and professional backgrounds. The volume demonstrates that the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the use of a variety of pedagogically and culturally significant hybrid and virtual models that provide innovative learning modalities to meet the needs of future generations of digital native patrons. This book offers meaningful strategies that will help academic and cultural heritage institutions engaged in museum studies to survive — and even thrive — in the face of future disasters by expanding programme accessibility beyond the physical confines of their buildings. Museum Studies for a Post-Pandemic World will be of interest to students and researchers engaged in the study of museums, the arts, cultural management, and education. It should also be of interest to museum practitioners around the world.

Change is Required: Preparing for the Post-Pandemic Museum is a book about the future of American museums. Like other institutions, museums and zoos, historic sites, gardens, and arboreta, were powerfully affected by the nested crises of the pandemic. These unprecedented crises challenged American museums. Adapting to novel circumstances and uncertainty became the order of the day; improvisation in policy and practice the new norm. Amidst upheavals and disruptions, a number of American museums have charted new directions for themselves and their communities. Many museums have taken a decisive turn to digital programming. Others have taken a turn toward community, developing new kinds of collaborations with their neighbors and local audiences. Still others have moved issues of equity and justice—internally and in the world—to the center of their institutional concerns. In every part of the country—and in every type of museum--museum workers are challenging old assumptions, conventional narratives, and customary practices as they look to the future. In Change Is Required, a unique array of 50 museum professionals--representing different disciplines, positions, and experiences--share their thinking about assessing needs and possibilities, managing people and resources, and building productive new relationships with neighbors, communities, and partner organizations. These authors argue that change is necessary--inside and beyond the museum. It is futile and unproductive to default to the old “normal.” To achieve greater relevance, impact, equity, and inclusiveness, museums need to reconsider their leadership models, organizational culture, internal structures, and community collaborations Bristling with personal passion, informed by experience, and focused on the future, the essays in this volume convey the urgency to rethink traditional museum practice, offering visionary—yet practical—routes to future museum success in a volatile, complex, and ambiguous world. In its depth and range, this book constitutes an invitation to join in the growing, lively discourse about possible futures for museums in America. The invitation extends not only to museum professionals, but to all those interested in cultural affairs and institutions.

Drawing on Elaine Heumann Gurian’s fifty years of museum experience, Centering the Museum calls on the profession to help visitors experience their shared humanity and find social uses for public buildings, in order to make museums more central and useful to everyone in difficult times. Following the same format as Civilizing the Museum, this new volume includes material written especially for a re-emergent time and relevant public lectures not included in the author’s previous book. Divided into six separate content clusters, with over twenty different essays, the book identifies many small, subtle ways museums can become welcoming to more—and to all. Drawing on her extensive experience as a deputy director, senior advisor to high-profile government museums, lecturer and teacher around the world, the author provides recommendations for inclusive actions by intertwining sociological thinking with practical decision-making strategies. Writing reflectively, Elaine also provides heritage students and professionals with insights that will help move their careers and organizations into more equitable, yet successful, terrain. Centering the Museum will be an excellent companion volume to Civilizing the Museum and, as such, will be a useful support for emerging museum leaders. It will be especially interesting to academics and students engaged in the study of cultural administration, as well as museum and heritage practitioners working around the world.

A comprehensive review of current and possible future deaccessioning practices in 26 chapters written by highly experienced museum professionals, commentators and lawyers.

"On a cold and clear afternoon in January 1865, a roaring fire swept through the Smithsonian Institution. The flames at the Smithsonian, however, were merely an omen of things to come for museums in the United States. Beset by challenges ranging from pandemic and war to fire and economic uncertainty, museums have sought ways to emerge from crisis periods stronger than before, occasionally carving important new paths forward in the process. Hampered by troubling problems, museum leaders made different choices while remaining committed to versions of the museum idea. This book explores the concepts of "crisis" as it relates to museums in the United States, exploring how museums have dealt with challenges ranging from depression and war to pandemic and philosophical uncertainty. Fires, floods, and hurricanes have all upended museum plans and forced people to ask difficult questions about U.S. cultural life. With chapters exploring the First World War and 1918 influenza pandemic, Great Depression, Second World War, 1970 Art Strike in New York City, as well as more recent controversies in U.S. museums, this book takes a new approach to understanding museum history. By diving deeply into the nature of museum changes emerging from these key challenges, historian Samuel J. Redman argues that museums and other cultural institutions can use their history to prepare for challenges lying ahead"--

This is an open access book. With the progress of social civilization, social science and its research are becoming more and more important. Theoretically and practically, the study of social phenomena and social problems and the development of prosperous social sciences are the eternal themes of human beings. At present, social science research and its results can hardly meet the needs of social development, especially the unscientific evaluation of social science results, which has aroused great concern from all walks of life, and has produced dirt and questions on social science, thus affecting the proper development of social science. Max Weber once said that "the most important function of social science in modern times is to keep people "clear-headed" and to resist the delusions of "prophetic legislators". " Humanities and arts are the process of perceiving, realizing, thinking, manipulating, and expressing objective or subjective objects through capturing and excavating, feeling and analyzing, integrating and applying, or displaying the stage results in the form obtained through feeling (seeing, hearing, smelling, touching). The social sciences and humanities and arts contain content that will directly affect our lives and the way society functions. And by reacting to today's increasingly intricate problems and situations through systematic and professional discussions, they will further contribute to the improvement of institutions and the development of society. By thinking about issues and looking at problems and the world from different perspectives by putting the two together, it may be possible to have more comprehensive, appropriate, and better responses; for example, the development of laws requires a deeper understanding of the environment in which they are implemented; international trade requires a certain understanding of the customs of different countries; and the development of tax and economic policies requires a certain understanding of the population, consumer demand, etc.