The Things about Museums constitutes a unique, highly diverse collection of essays unprecedented in existing books in either museum and heritage studies or material culture studies. Taking varied perspectives and presenting a range of case studies, the chapters all address objects in the context of museums, galleries and/or the heritage sector more broadly. Specifically, the book deals with how objects are constructed in museums, the ways in which visitors may directly experience those objects, how objects are utilised within particular representational strategies and forms, and the challenges and opportunities presented by using objects to communicate difficult and contested matters. Topics and approaches examined in the book are diverse, but include the objectification of natural history specimens and museum registers; materiality, immateriality, transience and absence; subject/object boundaries; sensory, phenomenological perspectives; the museumisation of objects and collections; and the dangers inherent in assuming that objects, interpretation and heritage are ‘good’ for us.

The Things about Museums constitutes a unique, highly diverse collection of essays discussing how objects are constructed in museums, the ways in which visitors may directly experience those objects, how objects are utilised within particular representational strategies and forms, and the challenges and opportunities presented by using objects to communicate difficult and contested matters.

Museum Matters tells the story of Mexico's national collections through the trajectories of its objects. The essays in this book show the many ways in which things matter and affect how Mexico imagines its past, present, and future.

Surveying over thirty different positions in the museum profession, this is the essential guide for anyone considering entering the field, or a career change within it. From exhibition designer to shop manager, this comprehensive survey views the latest trends in museum work and the broad-ranging technological advances that have been made. For any professional in the field, this is a crucially useful book for how to prepare, look for and find jobs in the museum profession.

Beyond their often beautiful exhibition halls, many museums contain vast, hidden spaces in which objects may be stored, conserved, or processed. Museums can also include unseen archives, study rooms, and libraries which are inaccessible to the public. This collection of essays focuses on this domain, an area that has hitherto received little attention. Divided into four sections, the book critically examines the physical space of museum storage areas, the fluctuating historical fortunes of exhibits, the growing phenomenon of publicly visible storage, and the politics of objects deemed worthy of collection but unsuitable for display. In doing so, it explores issues including the relationship between storage and canonization, the politics of collecting, the use of museum storage as a form of censorship, the architectural character of storage space, and the economic and epistemic value of museum objects. Essay contributions come from a broad combination of museum directors, curators, archaeologists, historians, and other academics.

Displaced Things in Museums and Beyond looks anew at the lives, effects and possibilities of things. Starting from the perspectives of things themselves, it outlines a particular, displacement approach to the museum, anthropology and material culture. The book explores the ways in which the objects are experienced in their present, displaced settings, and the implications and potentialities they carry. It offers insights into matters of difference and the hope that may be offered by transformative encounters between persons and things. Drawing on anthropological studies of ritual to conceptualise and examine displacement and its implications and possibilities, Dudley develops her arguments through exploration of displaced objects now in museums and dislocated or exiled from their prior geographical, historical, cultural, intellectual and personal contexts. The book’s approach and conclusions are relevant far beyond the museum, showing that even in the most difficult of circumstances there is agency, distinction and dignity in the choices and impacts that are made, and that things and places as well as people have efficacy and potency in those choices. In Displaced Things, displacement emerges as fundamental to understanding the lives of things and their relationships with human beings, and the places, however defined, that they make and pass within. The book will be essential reading for academics and students engaged in the study of museums, heritage, anthropology, culture and history.

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