Introducing Museum Studies by Fyfe HARDBACK 9780745642123

Introducing Museum StudiesAuthor(s): Gordon Fyfe\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: John Wiley and Sons Ltd, United Kingdom\nImprint: Polity Press\nISBN-13: 9780745642123, 978-0745642123\nSynopsis\nIntroducing Museum Studiesis the first introductory textbook for museum studies. Providing a wide-ranging and original overview of museums from a historical and contemporary perspective, it covers key topics such as the history of the museum, the museum as a public space, visitors, and communities.\n\nThe book shows how museums, far from being neutral collections, exhibit objects which convey powerful symbolic meanings. This cultural turn away from the object as athing in itselfhas placed museums at the centre of debates about public culture, citizenship, inclusion and repatriation. Museums are becoming increasingly reflexive given the awareness of the social and political role they serve and their ability to reflect the problems of our time. Gordon Fyfe shows how and why this reflexivity creat.