Revisiting Museums of Influence
"What all the examples, indeed all the portraits, have in common is not praise for impressive design or novelty of effect per se, but for the way these contribute to what the museum is attempting to achieve. Or, to quote portrait 36 on how videos and games are used to address sensitive issues in The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum (36), they are ‘as precisely targeted as acupuncture’".
"Dutch National Maritime Museum (30), have devised, in addition to temporary exhibitions, a rota of medium term (two- to three-year) exhibitions, which means that over time, the displays can be renewed in phases, responding to public interests and new research".
The concept of ‘public quality’
"The literatures on audience development and exhibition communication focuses on how museums can make their exhibitions and activities more attractive and accessible, while much work on social inclusion focuses on how to engage specific targeted groups (for example, Serrell 2016; Black 2012; Doubt et al. 2019), without addressing the overall fact that none of these strategies seems to have had a lasting or widespread impact on visitor profiles. Many celebrated examples of engagement with disenfranchised audiences are sustained by exceptional, additional funding, so that they never become ‘core’ and cease when the money dries up. What a museum really values is revealed during times of financial cutbacks. This is part of the reason why EMYA focuses on the long-term displays of new or renewed museums – it is clearer whether access is built into the core displays and functioning of the museum, rather than bolted on".
"Museums are only in the most literal sense about the past; they preserve the things from the past we want to bring with us into the future, the things we rescue from the wreckage of change, the fragments we have shored against our ruin. The act of preservation is a profound statement about our values in the present and about the future we hope to build".
"These recognise that the key factor in inclusivity is not specific techniques of communication or marketing, but of the museum’s imagined community – the social groups who know they will be welcome".
"What may be emerging from these portraits is a new vision of museum storytelling based on an institutional culture of generosity and courageous intellect, a curatorship of the heart, and what might be called a connoisseurship of the human".
References
Abt, J. (2006). The Origin of the Public Museum, in Macdonald, S. (Ed.), A Companion to
Museum Studies. Oxford. Blackwell, pp. 115–134.
Anderson, G. (2004). Reinventing the Museum: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the
Paradigm Shift. Lanham, MD. Altamira Press.
Appadurai, A. (1986). Commodities and the Politics of Value, in Appadurai, A. (Ed.), The Social Life
of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–63.
Benedikter, R. (2004). Privatisation of Italian Cultural Heritage. International Journal of
Heritage Studies 10, 369–389.
Black, G. (2012). Transforming Museums in the Twenty-First. Abingdon. Routledge.
Bourdieu, P. & Darbel, A. (with Schnapper, D.) (1991 [1966]). The Love of Art: European Art
Museums and Their Public (transl.). Cambridge. Polity Press.
Camarero, C., Garrido, M. J., & Vicente, E. (2011). How Cultural Organizations’ Size and
Funding Influence Innovation and Performance: The Case of Museums. Cultural Economics
35, 247–266.
Chew, N. (2017). The Art of Accomplishing Miracles: Forty Years of the European Museum of the
Year Award and the Council of Europe Museum Prize, 1977–2017, in Gnedovsky, M. (Ed.),
pp. 14–46.
Council of Europe Website. Available from: https://70.coe.int/home/#912 [accessed 29
April 2019].
Introduction 25
Crofts, S. (2017). It Could Be You…. Building Surveying Journal July/August, 32–33.
Dissanayake, E. (2003). The Core of Art: Making Special. Journal of the Canadian Association for
Curriculum Studies 1(2), 13–38.
Doubt, D., Wenye, S., & Sarahann, Y. (2019). Museums as Points of Connection: How
Institutions in North America and Europe Engage with Diaspora Communities.
The Museum Scholar. 3/1. Available from: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/
57866b6debbd1aedaf92e668/t/5da75e9b0f48e53d3b87b3ce/1571249820833/TMS_
vol3_Doubt_Sun_Yeh.pdf [accessed 4 May 2020].
Eid, H. (2019). Museum Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship: A New Model for a Changing Era.
Abingdon. Routledge.
Falk, M. & Katz-Gerro, T. (2016). Cultural Participation in Europe: Can We Identify Common
Determinants? Journal of Cultural Economics 40, 127–162.
Gambaro, A. (2017). The Council of Europe Core Values at the Heart of European Museums, in
Gnedovsky, M. (Ed.), pp. 9–13.
Gnedovsky, M. (Ed.). (2017a). The Spirit of EMYA, Zagreb. European Museum Forum,
pp. 47–59.
Gnedovsky, M. (2017b). Forty Years of the European Museum of the Year Award and Council of
Europe Museum Prize 1977–2017. Zagreb. European Museum Forum.
Godin (2012). “Innovation Studies”: The Invention of a Specialty. Minerva 50(4), 397–421.
Hein, G. E. (1998). Learning in the Museum. London/New York. Routledge.
Hoggart, R. (1957). The Uses of Literacy. London. Chatto & Windus.
Horne, D. (1984). The Great Museum. Sydney. Pluto Press.
Hudson, K. (1977). Museums for the 1980s, A Survey of World Trends. New York. Holmes &
Meier.
Hudson, K. (1981). The Rüsselsheim Revolution. History Today 31(4), 48–49.
Hudson, K. (1986 [2009]). Measuring the Good Museum, in Negri, M., Niccolucci, F., &
Sani, M. (Eds.), Quality in Museums. Milan. ARCHAEOLINGUA, pp. 22–24.
Hudson, K. (1987). Museums of Influence. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
Hudson, K. (1997 [2009]). The Concept of Public Quality in Museums, in Negri, M.,
Niccolucci, F., & Sani, M. (Eds.), Quality in Museums. Milan. ARCHAEOLINGUA,
pp. 18–21.
Hudson, K. (2015 [1998]). The Museum Refuses to Stand Still. Museum International 261–264,
136–143.
Janes, R. & Sandell, R. (Eds.) (2019). Museum Activism. Abingdon. Routledge.
Judt, T. (2005). Postwar; A History of Europe since 1945. London. Vintage.
Kaelble, H. (2013). A Social History of Europe 1945–2000. New York. Berghahn.
Kidd, J., Cairns, S., Draco, A., Ryall, A., & Stearn, M. (Eds.). (2014). Challenging History in the
Museum. Abingdon. Routledge.
Knell, S., MacLeod, S., & Watson, S. (2007). Museum Revolutions. Abingdon. Routledge.
Kolb, D. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience at the Sources of Learning and Development.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Prentice-Hall.
Lorente, J. P. (2002). Urban Cultural Policy and Urban Regeneration: The Special Case
of Declining Port Cities—Liverpool, Marseilles, Bilbao, in Crane, D., Kawashima, N.,
& Kawasaki, K. (Eds.), Global Culture: Arts, Media, Policy, and Globalization. New York.
Routledge, pp. 93–104.
Lorente, J. P. (2012). The Development of Museum Studies in Universities: From Technical
Training to Critical Museology. Museum Management and Curatorship 27(3), 237–252.
Mathur, S. & Singh, K. (Eds.). (2014). No Touching, No Spitting, No Praying: The Museum in
South Asia. New Delhi. Routledge India.
26 Mark O’Neill et al.
Modest, W., Thomas, N., Prlić, & Augustat, C. (Eds.). (2019). Matters of Belonging, Ethnographic
Museums in a Changing Europe. Leiden. Sidestone Press.
Minihan, J. (1977). The Nationalization of Culture, The Development of State Subsidies to the Arts
in Great Britain. London. Hamish Hamilton.
National Institute for Museums and Public Collections. (2020). Investments in the Development
of Museums. Warsaw. Polish Ministry of Culture.
Negri, M. (2016). La grande rivolutione dei musei europei. Venice. Marsilio Editori.
Negri, M.(Ed.). (2017). A Tiger in a Museum Is Not a Tiger: An Anthology of the Thoughts of
Kenneth Hudson (1916–1999). Milan. European Museum Academy. Available from:
www.academia.edu/36031145/A_TIGER_IN_A_MUSEUM_IS_NOT_A_TIGER
[accessed 4 May 2020].
Paddon, H. (2014). Redisplaying Museum Collections: Contemporary Display and Interpretation in
British Museums. Abingdon. Routledge.
Poulot, D. (2013). Another History of Museums: from the Discourse to the Museum-Piece.
Anais do Museu Paulista 21(1), 27–47.
Rocco, F. (2013). Temples of Delight. The Economist. Available from: https://www.economist.
com/node/21591704/sources [accessed 4 May 2020].
Rybczynski, W. (2008). When Buildings Try Too Hard. Wall Street Journal. Available from:
www.wsj.com/articles/SB122731149503149341 [accessed 22 April 2020].
Serrell, B. (2016). Judging Exhibitions: A Framework for Assessing Excellence. Abingdon. Routledge.
Simmons, J. E. (2016). Museums: A History. Lanham. Rowman & Littlefield.
Steiner, G. (1971). Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes towards the Redefinition of Culture. London.
Faber and Faber.
Tamen, M. (2001). Friends of Interpretable Objects. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press.
Ther, P. (2018).X Europe since 1989, A History. Woodstock. Princeton University Press.
Van Geert, F., Canals, A., & González, Y. N., (2018) La representación multicultural del indígena en los museos de comunidad latinoamericanos., Boletín Americanista., 2 (/77), pp
185–202.
Van Mensch, P. (2018). Private Collection as Public Challenge, in von Roth, D. & Escherich,
L. (Eds.), Private Passion – Public Challenge: Musikinstrumente sammeln in Geschichte und
Gegenwart. Heidelberg. arthistoricum.net.
Vicente, E., Camarero, C., & Garrido, M. J. (2012). Insights into Innovation in European
Museums. Public Management Review 14(5), 649–679.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge.
Cambridge University Press.
Were, G. & King, J. C. H. (Eds.). (2014). Extreme Collecting. New York. Berghahn Books.
Weil, S. E. (1999). From Being about Something to Being for Somebody: The Ongoing
Transformation of the American Museum. Daedalus 128(3), 229–258.
Williams, R. (2000). Lost Icons: Reflections on Cultural Bereavement. Edinburgh. T.T. Clark.
Wouters, C. (2007). Informalization: Manners and Emotions since 1890. London. Sage.