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.
A comprehensive bibliographic reference for students and others wishing to investigate the contemporary literature on museums and collections. The references are systematically arranged into sections including collections management, communication and exhibitions, museum education, material culture, the museums profession and museum management. Compiled from the research and teaching materials of the Department of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester it provides an essential resource for anyone studying, or working in, museums. Containing more than 4,000 references, this new bibliography provides ready access to the literature whether you are developing a disaster plan or visitor survey, or studying the history of museum education.
The Native American tribes of what is now the southeastern United States left intriguing relics of their ancient cultural life. Arrowheads, spear points, stone tools, and other artifacts are found in newly plowed fields, on hillsides after a fresh rain, or in washed-out creek beds. These are tangible clues to the anthropology of the Paleo-Indians, and the highly developed Mississippian peoples. This indispensable guide to identifying and understanding such finds is for conscientious amateur archeologists who make their discoveries in surface terrain. Many are eager to understand the culture that produced the artifact, what kind of people created it, how it was made, how old it is, and what its purpose was. Here is a handbook that seeks identification through the clues of cultural history. In discussing materials used, the process of manufacture, and the relationship between the artifacts and the environments, it reveals ancient discoveries to be not merely interesting trinkets but by-products from the once vital societies in areas that are now Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, the Carolinas, as well as in southeastern Texas, southern Missouri, southern Illinois, and southern Indiana. The text is documented by more than a hundred drawings in the actual size of the artifacts, as well as by a glossary of archeological terms and a helpful list of state and regional archeological societies.
This book sets a new standard as a work of reference. It covers British and Irish art in public collections from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the end of the nineteenth, and it encompasses nearly 9,000 painters and 90,000 paintings in more than 1,700 separate collections. The book includes as well pictures that are now lost, some as a consequence of the Second World War and others because of de-accessioning, mostly from 1950 to about 1975 when Victorian art was out of fashion. By listing many tens of thousands of previously unpublished works, including around 13,000 which do not yet have any form of attribution, this book becomes a unique and indispensable work of reference, one that will transform the study of British and Irish painting.
Ideas regarding the role of the museum have become increasingly contentious. In the last fifteen years, scholars have pointed to ways in which states (especially imperialist states) use museums to showcase looted artefacts, to document their geographic expansion, to present themselves as the guardians of national treasure, and to educate citizens and subjects. At the same time, a great deal of attention has been paid to reshaping national histories and values in the wake of the collapse of the Communist bloc and the emergence of the European Union. (Re)Visualizing National History considers the wave of monument and museum building in Europe as part of an attempt to forge consensus in politically unified but deeply divided nations. This collection explores ways in which museums exhibit emerging national values and how the establishment of these new museums (and new exhibits in older museums) reflects the search for a consensus among different generational groups in Europe and North America. The contributors come from a variety of countries and academic backgrounds, and speak from such varied perspectives as cultural studies, history, anthropology, sociology, and museum studies. (Re)Visualizing National History is a unique and interdisciplinary volume that offers insights on the dilemmas of present-day European culture, manifestations of nationalism in Europe, and the debates surrounding museums as sites for the representation of politics and history.
This is the first comprehensive, one-volume encyclopedia in English devoted to pre-Columbian archaeology of the Mesoamerican culture area. In more than 500 articles by the major experts in the field, this work brings the most recent scholarship to an examination of regional environments and their cultural evolution. Entries range from the familiar