Product Description
Understanding the visitor experience provides essential insights into how museums can affect people’s lives. Personal drives, group identity, decision-making and meaning-making strategies, memory, and leisure preferences, all enter into the visitor experience, which extends far beyond the walls of the institution both in time and space. Drawing upon a career in studying museum visitors, renowned researcher John Falk attempts to create a predictive model of visitor experience, one that can help museum professionals better meet those visitors’ needs. He identifies five key types of visitors who attend museums and then defines the internal processes that drive them there over and over again. Through an understanding of how museums shape and reflect their personal and group identity, Falk is able to show not only how museums can increase their attendance and revenue, but also their meaningfulness to their constituents. ... Read more

Product Description
This work presents the development of science and technology through the study of 100 key inventions (selected from the Science Museum Collections), each one a milestone of industrial history. All the objects are illustrated in full colour, backed up in many instances by historical pictures in black and white. Together with the illustrations is an informative and easily understandable text placing each object in its historical context and explaining its function and workings. These texts are by experts in their fields and there is also an introduction by Neil Cossons, Director of the Science Museum. Between them they give a detailed overview of the way we arrived at our modern world.;The aim of this book is to present the developments in science technology and medicine to as wide a readership as possible, including the younger reader on whom the future of technology depends.;Among the 100 objects included in the book are: Huygen's aerial telescope; Hauksbee's air pump; Arkwright's spinning machine; Boulton and Watt's rotative engine; Ramsden's three-foot theodolite; Trevithick's high-pressure engine; Stephenson's Rocket; Parson's steam turbine; Babbage's difference engine; Bell's Osborne telephone; the Kodak camera; Marconi's transmitter; the Benz car; Baird's TV apparatus; the safety bicycle; the Merlin aircraft engine; the first hovercraft; the original radar receiver; the supersonic airliner, Concorde; and the first brain scanner. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Outstanding!
As a History of Technology student, I find this book everything I could hope for in a compellation. It examines a great deal of information, but each innovation gets its own pages. This allows the reader to pick it up read about the importance of an innovation and its impact on society and then put it down. This book skips the somewhat tedious (I am not saying unimportant!) development facts of the innovation and personal story of the inventor.
The book also has a great deal of color pictures. You may scoff (as some of my professors have) but pictures of mechanical devices can give a very clear picture of how it works.
I think the book is a great addition to any person's collection that is interested in technology. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
Since public museums came into being in the late 18th century, artists have looked upon them with a mixture of reverence, complicity, suspicion, and disdain. In The Museum as Muse, artists of many persuasions speak their minds about museums, their functions and spaces, their practices and politics, and their relationship to the art they contain. More than 60 artists are represented by a wide range of works: photographs of museum patrons by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Elliot Erwitt; "personal museums" and "cabinets of curiosities" by Charles Wilson Peale, Marcel Duchamp, and Claes Oldenburg; fantasies of the destruction or transformation of museums by Hubert Robert, Ed Ruscha, and Christo; and more, including works created especially for this project by contemporary artists, and an anthology of statements and writings by artists about museums. This volume was published to accompany an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Artists Incldue: Vito Acconci, Eve Arnold, Michael Asher, Lothar Baumgarten, Barbara Bloom, Christian Boltanski, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Sophie Calle, Janet Cardiff, Anne Cartier-Bresson, , Joseph Cornell, Jan Dibbets, Lutz Dille, Marcel Duchamp, Kate Ericson, Elliot Erwitt, Larry Fink, Andrea Fraser, General Idea, Hans Haacke, Richard Hamilton, Susan Hiller, Komar and Melamid, Louise Lawler, Jac Leirner, Zoe Leonard, Sherrie Levine, El Lissitzky, Allan McCollum, Vik Muniz, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Jeff Wall, amongst others.

Essay by Kynaston McShine.
Foreword by Glenn D Lowry.Amazon.com Review
The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect is the stunningcatalog that accompanies an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Artduring the spring of 1999. The show takes an insightful look at theway different artists deal with the ideas, concepts, and criticisms of"the public museum." The collected artists span both generations anddegrees of fame, from French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson to popartist Claes Oldenburg to contemporary artists Gillian Wearing andMark Dion. The show, and by extension the book, illustrates the impactthat the invention of the museum (just 200 years ago) has had on artmaking. It is fascinating to peer through the eyes of individualartists whose personal and intimate visions are both outside of themuseum and inextricably linked to it by their choice of career. Theartwork in the exhibition is wide-reaching and the reproductions forthe book are beautiful. Hiroshi Sugimoto's black-and-white photoseries of natural-history museum dioramas; a taxidermied polar bearand a seal on a bed of fake ice; and a re-creation of underwater sealife are all exquisite in their quiet and choreographedother-worldliness. This book should not be missed; it offers a greatchance to look at art by artists who use their work to address thecomplexities of their own relationships with the massive institutionsthat are our museums. --Jennifer Cohen

296 pages, 114 full-color images, 132 black-and-white images ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An Overview of The Show
I attended this exhibit at the MoMA and was thrilled to see so many great artists interpreting what museums and "the institution" means. For some artists, the act of collecting is very private...like JosephCornell and his many obsessive boxes, or Christian Boltanski and hismelancholy installation of forgotten photographs. In another personalpiece, Sophie Calle interviewed various staff members at a museum whereprized artworks by the Old Masters were stolen about how they now feel inthe artworks' absence.The snoop in me wished that the audience could seewhat all the boxes contained in pieces such as Herbert Dristel's"Museum of Drawers", which houses over 500 miniature pieces ofartwork by many of my favorite artists from the 60's and 70's.The BarbaraBloom installation "The Reign of Narcissism" was hilarious anddisturbing.It consists of a museum within a museum, with all pieces anddecor dedicated to herself and her own likeness.Claes Oldenburg's"Mouse Museum", another amazing installation, consists of varioussculptures and found "junkstore-type" objects that the artist hasaccumulated.The shape of the walk-in structure of Oldenburg's"Museum" is Mickey Mouse's head!An absurd and fun commentary onpop culture! This show would not have beencomplete without the work ofMarcel Duchamp, a pioneer in calling into question the value of"original" artwork and the importance that institutions place onit."L.H.O.O.Q." (the Mona Lisa with a mustache) and many ofDuchamp's Valises containing miniature reproductions of his own work andreadymades are represented here.Vito Acconci decided to use the MoMA as apost office and in a separate piece, tried to infringe upon museum-goer'spersonal space by standinguncomfortably close to people while they weretrying to be cultured and study the 'Art'.Overall, it was a fascinatingexhibit.The subversive, but good-humored mockery of what humans do withand in the presence of art made me feel somewhat self-conscious as I waswandering the galleries, but that seemed to be the point!

a very inspirational title
This book's subject matter is right on the money. I haven't read it, but Museums have everything to do with the production of art nowadays. Museums and catalogs or big, glossy ads. Because that's where the authority of theprinted page meets its audience. And Kynaston McShine is such a cool name. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description

Product Description
Tells how to plan a museum visit, gives advice on appreciating paintings, sculptures, and museum buildings themselves, and discusses special shows, permanent collections, and different types of museums.Amazon.com Review
A glance at this book's table of contents gives you an idea of its intentions: "Developing your own pace; Where to begin; Displays can dramatize--but don't let them fool you; There's no rule on how long it takes to appreciate a masterpiece." David Finn encourages museumgoers to rely on their own impressions. In the first sentence of the first chapter, he writes that there is "no right or wrong way to visit a museum." Finn gives a general overview of the layout of a museum and uses illustrations from museums around the world to present basic art history concepts and ways of looking at artwork. With practical information he encourages museum visitors to feel comfortable, confident, and develop their own sensibilities in a museum--instead of relying on someoneelse's. "Discrimination," Finn writes, "is a necessary component of appreciation." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A how to book and that's about it
David Finn's How to Visit a Museum is a good starter book for one who wants a quick starter course in museums and art. What to look for and how to view art. I think this would be a great book for teachers and new art students. I bought this book second hand and enjoyed it as a quick refresher course. However as a whole it seemed more of a short book for tourists, as I finished it in sitting. However if you want to read a book before you travel to a large museum I would highly recommend this as a starter book for a journey into the world of art.

Interested in art? Not sure what to do? Check out this book.
Ever felt obliged to stop by an art museum while on vacation just because you were in the area, but then you weren't quite sure what to do once you got there?If so, this may be the book for you.David Finn's easy-to-read text presents many thoughtful ideas on how to really get something out of your next trip to a museum.The book is filled with copious photographs of artwork and art museums (some in color, some black and white, all reproduced with the high quality you'd expect from Abrams) that do an excellent job of complimenting the points made in the text.It's a book you'll want to read cover-to-cover at least once, and then come back and sample bits over and over again - just the way you may end up visiting your local art museum once you've read this fine book ... Read more

Product Description
Indigenous museums and cultural centres have sprung up across the developing world, and particularly in the Southwest Pacific. They derive from a number of motives, ranging from the commercial to the cultural political (and many combine both). A close study of this phenomenon is not only valuable for museological practice but, as has been argued, it may challenge our current bedrock assumptions about the very nature and purpose of the museum. This book looks to the future of museum practice through examining how museums have evolved particularly in the non-western world to incorporate the present and the future in the display of culture. Of particular concern is the uses to which historic records are put in the service of community development and cultural renaissance. ... Read more

Product Description
There are books about how to use Twitter, but none about the best ways in which museums, galleries and cultural organisations large and small are using Twitter to involve and expand their audiences. This unique book - written by some of the museum community's most experienced and creative users of Twitter - remedies this. The development of this publication has been overseen by a distinguished Editorial Advisory Board, and it has been written by some of the museum community's most experienced and creative Twitter users on three continents. The book is in two sections. The first provides everything museum users need to know to have a successful Twitter presence; gives guidance on a maze of organisational and policy issues; and deals with advanced options like integrating audio and video, using third-party applications, measuring results, undertaking research, and integration with other social media platforms. The second section provides in-depth case studies from some of the world's most successful museum users - information and inspiration that will help users build both followers and the kind of positive results any museum hopes for! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Mostly a directory
"Natural History Museums: An Illustrated Guide to over 350 Museums in the Eastern United States" by G.W. Bates is unfortunately, a little more than a directory or mailing list of such museums.In the center ofthe book are photos, generally of exhibits, of about 25 museums.However,there is no information on hours, nor any descriptions of exhibits, etc. Moreover, with a nominal publishing date of 1992, most of the addresses areprobably 15 years old at this time (mid-2000), and so, many, if not mosthave probably changed.Apparently, Volume 2 was never printed, which alsolimits the utility of the book as a mailing list. ... Read more

Product Description
Written over a thirty-five year career, the essays in Civilizing the Museum introduce students to thepowerful, sometimes contested, and often unrealized notion that museums should welcome all because they house the collective memory of all.
Drawing on her experience working in and with museums in the US and throughout the world, Author Elaine Heumann Gurian explores the possibilities for making museums more central and relevant to society.
The twenty-two essays are organized around five main themes:
* museum definitions
* civic responsibility and social service
* architectural spaces
* exhibitions
* spirituality and rationality.
And these themes address the elements that would make museums more inclusive such as:
* exhibition technique
* space configurations
* the personality of the director
* the role of social service
* power sharing
* types of museums
* the need for emotion humor and spirituality.
Without abandoning the traditional museum processes, Gurian shows how museums can honor tradition whilst embracing the new.
Enriched by her experience in groundbreaking museums, Gurian has provided a book that provokes thought, dialogue and action for students and professionals in the field to realize the inclusive potential of museums. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An Important Book
"Civilizing the Museum" is an important book that looks at the ways in which the public and museums interact with each other in the historical and contemporary moment. Gurian looks critically at what museums are and what they could and should be. Her call for free admission to museums is one which points the way to a more participatory sense of what it means to be a public institution. Gurian has been at the forefront of the critical conversation around the evolving role of public museums for many years, offering much insight, analysis and advise to those both working in these institutions and those frequenting them. An invaluable book that provides rich food for thought. ... Read more

Product Description

National Museums is the first book to explore the national museum as a cultural institution in a range of contrasting national contexts. Composed of new studies of countries that rarely make a showing in the English-language studies of museums, this book reveals how these national museums have been used to create a sense of national self, place the nation in the arts, deal with the consequences of political change, remake difficult pasts, and confront those issues of nationalism, ethnicity and multiculturalism which have come to the fore in national politics in recent decades.

National Museums combines research from both leading and new researchers in the fields of history, museum studies, cultural studies, sociology, history of art, media studies, science and technology studies, and anthropology. It is an interrogation of the origins, purpose, organisation, politics, narratives and philosophies of national museums.

Product Description

Why has it taken so long to make computers work for the museum sector?

And why are museums still having some of the same conversations about digital technology that they began back in the late 1960s?

Does there continue to be a basic ‘incompatibility’ between the practice of the museum and the functions of the computer that explains this disconnect?

Drawing upon an impressive range of professional and theoretical sources, this book offers one of the first substantial histories of museum computing. Its ambitious narrative attempts to explain a series of essential tensions between curatorship and the digital realm.

Ultimately, it reveals how through the emergence of standards, increased coordination, and celebration (rather than fearing) of the ‘virtual’, the sector has experienced a broadening of participation, a widening of creative horizons and, ultimately, has helped to define a new cultural role for museums. Having confronted and understood its past, what emerges is a museum transformed – rescripted, re calibrated, rewritten, reorganised.

Product Description

This single-volume museum studies reference title explores the ways in which museums are shaped and configured and how they themselves attempt to shape and change the world around them.

Written by a leading group of museum professionals and academics from around the world and including new research, the chapters reveal the diverse and subtle means by which museums engage and in so doing change and are changed. The authors span over 200 years discussing national museums, ecomuseums, society museums, provincial galleries, colonial museums, the showman’s museum, and science centres. Topics covered include: disciplinary practices, ethnic representation, postcolonial politics, economic aspiration, social reform, indigenous models, conceptions of history, urban regeneration, sustainability, sacred objects, a sense of place, globalization, identities, social responsibility, controversy, repatriation, human remains, drama, learning and education.

Capturing the richness of the museum studies discipline, Museum Revolutions is the ideal text for museum studies courses, providing a wide range of interlinked themes and the latest thought and research from experts in the field. It is invaluable for those students and museum professionals who want to understand the past, present and future of the museum.

Product Description
This book brings together hitherto uncollected work on one of the most important developments in museology in the past century: collaborative research involving museums and members of ethnographic source communities, and the development of a new curatorial praxis which incorporates source community needs and perspectives.Using case studies of research projects as well as overview essays exploring the issues, common problems, and lessons of this type of research, this book will provide the first overview of work in this emerging field.
... Read more

Product Description
Museums display much more than artifacts; Museum Culture makes us on a tour through the complex of ideas, values and symbols that pervade and shape the practice of exhibiting today. Bringing together a broad range of perspectives from history, art history, critical theory and sociology, the contributors to this new collection argue that museums have become a central institution and metaphor in contemporary society.
Discussing exhibition histories and practice in Western Europe, the former Soviet Union, Israel and the United States, the authors explore the ways in which museums assign meaning to art through various kinds of exhibitions and display strategies, examining the political implications of these strategies and the forms of knowledge they invoke and construct. The collection also discusses alternative exhibition forms, the involvement of some museums with the more spectacular practices of mass media culture, and looks at how museums construct their public. ... Read more

Product Description
Addresses a number of questions about the natural world and how we relate to it, as exemplified in the collections of biological and geological material held in museums and scientific institutions throughout the world. The book explores the scientific, cultural and monetary values of natural science collections with the primary aim of informing and influencing Government of those collections policy on the care, use and development of those collections. The input of thought, knowledge and experience has produced a focused consensus output in the form of a set of recommendations. These recommendations have been presented to the United Kingdom's national museum advisory body, The Museums and Galleries Commission. It is hoped that these might also be taken to equivalent governmental organizations in other countries. This will reflect both the international representation at this conference, and the international currency of knowledge represented by natural science collections.

Also available:

Four Centuries of Geological Travel: The Search for Knowledge on Foot, Bicycle, Sledge and Camel - Special Publication no 287 - ISBN 186239234X
The Making of the Geological Society of London - Special Publication 317 - ISBN 9781862392779

The Geological Society of London

Founded in 1807, the Geological Society of London is the oldest geological society in the world, and one of the largest publishers in the Earth sciences.

The Society publishes a wide range of high-quality peer-reviewed titles for academics and professionals working in the geosciences, and enjoys an enviable international reputation for the quality of its work.

The many areas in which we publish in include:

-Petroleum geology
-Tectonics, structural geology and geodynamics
-Stratigraphy, sedimentology and paleontology
-Volcanology, magmatic studies and geochemistry
-Remote sensing
-History of geology
-Regional geology guides ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Good collection of papers on the value of museum collections
This collection of conference papers was published in 1996, so some of the cost information is quite dated. However, the concepts and the issues presented in the book are still very relevant today (2008). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Museums in the context of historical scholarship
Nazi Germany in 1934 established the Gestapo museum, to help educate the public about the "Red menace."The museum displayed confiscated weapons from the German Communist Party, and displayed the methods they were concealed.The political motivation for this museum is apparent, to instill fear in the public about the communist threat.This is an extreme example of political influence on museums, but also an example of how museums can be manipulated to present an obscure message.Part I of Warren Leon and Roy Rosenzweig'sHistory Museums in the United States deals with the constraints imposed on museums, and the necessity for them to be evaluated like any historian would judge written work.The structure of Part I is separated by essays that deal with: gallery exhibitions, big-city museums, outside gallery, historical homes, and case studies concerned with the Gettysburg battlefield and EPCOT Center at Disneyland, and are evaluated like a book review.Despite the various methods of presenting and evaluating history, these essays, and their authors, hold a common purpose of critically evaluating museums as the "central means of presenting history to the public" (xiii).
The constraints of institution politics, audience, and financing influence museum presentations, and bind these museum critiques (xx).Part I covers different types of museum presentations, which range from gallery exhibitions to Disneyland.One of the fundamental problems of these presentations is the idea of museums as "shrines" (31).Whether the museum is trying to illustrate progress through technology, or promote the "great man" theory through historic houses, these presentations do not deal with the conflict and darker sides of history.To the credit of these presentations their employees are relatively trained and attempt to represent history accurately, but like professional historians can never get to the truth, because history is not about truth but the pursuit of it.The fundamental problem is when corporate ventures become involved as is the case with Gettysburg and more interestingly EPCOT center.
Michael Wallace argues, "The past is too important to be left to the private sector.If we wish to restore our social health, we had better get beyond Mickey Mouse history," and is the main argument of his essay, "Mickey Mouse History: Portraying the Past at Disney World," (179).Wallace's essay presents the fundamental problems of presenting history to the public, and a fundamental flaw in reviewing Disneyland as museum.Walt Disney's portrayal of history was utopian in nature; Disney wanted to improve the past not reproduce it; a Disney designer refers to this as "Disney Realism," which is possibly influenced by the Soviet Union's idea of "Socialist Realism," or the idea that art can mold the human soul (161).This is a fundamental problem with Corporate Disney, and their presentations at EPCOT center, which takes audiences from the dim past to a model society of the future; the audiences become participants in the corporate vision of the past and future (169).The problem resides with the audience.Is the audience there becomes of some fascination with the past or just entertainment?Wallace is correct that history should not be left to the private sector, but I doubt the majority of people view the world through the idea of "Disney Realism."
Leon and Rosenzweig's compilation of essays effectively place museums in the context of historical works that need to be reviewed and scrutinized; especially given the fact that museums are one of the core methods of presenting history to the public.The essays in Part I demonstrate the constraints of museum presentation, and the ultimate problem of corporate intervention and entertainment on historical presentation.History should not be in the hands of corporations, or authoritarian regimes, but the people who question, evaluate, and attempt to synthesize historical documentation, to obtain the closest interpretation of truth.

History Museums in the United States : A Critical Assessment
A must have! Being a new student to the museum studies field this book's importance can not be understated.The editors collected 15 essays from the most predominant scholars in the field of museum studies.If youdo not know who they are you will after reading this book.The bookprovides a great indrodution to all the problems, or another way of sayingit philosophical thinking ,that goes into developing museums and exhibits. Once you read this book you can concentrate on a specific area, but thisbook is a great overview. ... Read more

Product Description
How loud can you burp? Could we use animal poo to make electricity? Why is water wet, and is anything wetter than water? What's the deadliest disease in the world? What are clouds for? What's the difference between a brain and a computer? This is a wonderfully funny and informative book which helps us take a fresh look at the world (and universe) we live in, with no boring bits and an abundance of fascinating facts! ... Read more