The Contemporary Museum

Shaping Museums for the Global Now

Buch | Hardcover

258 Seiten

2018
Routledge (Verlag)
978-0-8153-6492-4 (ISBN)

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The Contemporary Museum adopts a presentist outlook that challenges traditional assumptions about the museum, whilst simultaneously recognising that the actions of the museum must not be determined by professional or institutional creed, but by contemporary social need.

The Contemporary Museum issues a challenge to those who view the museum as an artefact of history, constrained in its outlook as much by professional, institutional and disciplinary creed, as by the collections it accumulated in the distant past. Denying that the museum can locate its purpose in the pursuit of tradition or in idealistic speculation about the future, the book asserts that this can only be found through an ongoing and proactive negotiation with the present: the contemporary.

This volume is not concerned with any present, but with the peculiar circumstances of what it refers to as the ‘global contemporary’ – the sense of living in a globally connected world that is preoccupied with the contemporary. To situate the museum in this world of real and immediate need and action, beyond the reach of history, the book argues, is to empower it to challenge existing dogmas and inequalities and sweep aside old hierarchies. As a result, fundamental questions need to be asked about such things as the museum’s relationship to global time and space, to systems and technologies of knowing, to ‘the life well lived’, to the movement and rights of people, and to the psychology, permanence and organisation of culture.

Incorporating diverse viewpoints from around the world, The Contemporary Museum is a follow-up volume to Museum Revolutions and, as such, should be essential reading for students in the fields of museum and heritage studies, cultural studies, communication and media studies, art history and social policy. Academics and museum professionals will also find this book a source of inspiration.

Simon Knell is Professor of Museum Studies and the senior academic in School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester. He has also acted as Head of Department and Dean of Arts.

Introduction: museums for the global contemporary

PART I: A WORLD OF EQUALS

1. Modernisms: Curating art’s past in the global present; 2. Indigenisation: Reconceptualising museology; 3. Islam: Islamic art, the Islamic world – and museums; 4. Xenophobia: Museums, refugees and fear of the other; 5. Diplomacy: Museums and international exhibitions

PART II: PRESENT PASTS

6. Transience: Curating ephemeral art; 7. Performances: Contemporary encounters in historic spaces; 8. Transhistoricism: Using the past to critique the present; 9. Pasts: Authoring national histories in the contemporary city

PART III: WHO WE ARE

10. Disability: Museums and our understandings of difference;11. Contact: Framing prostitution in a city museum; 12. Small wins: Tactics for the contemporary museum; 13. Anxiety: Unease in the museum

Erscheinungsdatum	19.09.2018
Zusatzinfo	23 Halftones, black and white
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	174 x 246 mm
Gewicht	748 g
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater
	Reisen
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Hilfswissenschaften
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
ISBN-10	0-8153-6492-X / 081536492X
ISBN-13	978-0-8153-6492-4 / 9780815364924
Zustand	Neuware