Inside the Lost Museum : Curating, Past and Present / Steven Lubar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lubar, Steven, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jenks Museum of Natural History and Anthropology.

Museum techniques.

Curatorship.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (408 pages) : illustrations, photographs

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

For more than two centuries museums have preserved art, artifacts, and natural specimens, engaged and educated the public, and provided resources for research in areas from art history to zoology. Inside the Lost Museum explains the work of museums--collecting, preserving, displaying, and using collections--by considering their remarkable history. Museums make choices about what's worth saving. Inside the Lost Museum explores those choices, and the processes--from donation to purchase to expedition--that shape collections. Once collected, museum objects are numbered, cataloged, and conserved, and sometimes deaccessioned--processes that have their own hows and whys. Museums display art and artifact in many ways, from dioramas and period rooms to paintings on white walls and visual storage. Inside the Lost Museums reveals the meanings of those choices, and the ways that they have changed and continue to change, shaped by new technologies and ideologies. It also argues for the value of museum collections for research, teaching, and community-building. Woven through Inside the Lost Museum is the story of the Jenks Museum of Brown University, a nineteenth-century museum of natural history, anthropology and "curiosities" that disappeared a century ago. The Jenks Museum's history, and a recent effort to re-imagine that museum as art, science and history, serves as a framework for understanding museums' long record of usefulness and service. Inside the Lost Museum considers the lessons museum history holds for museums today and tomorrow.--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction: Explore

PART I. Collect

1. Why Collect?

2. Collectable

3. Acquisitions

4. In the Field

5. Who Collects?

PART II. Preserve

6. Into the Storeroom

7. Paperwork

8. The Ethics of Objects

PART III. Display

9. Objects, Stories, and Visitors

10. Objects on Display

11. Organizations and Juxtapositions

12. Explanations and Encounters

13. Setting the Scene

14. Turned Inside Out

Part IV. Use

15. What Use Is a Museum?

16. Museums Make Communities

17. Learning From Things

18. Teaching with Things

19. The Promise of Museums

Coda: Critique

NOTES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

INDEX

Notes:

Includes index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Aug 2018)

ISBN:

9780674983298

0674983297

9780674982901

0674982908

OCLC:

1054881064