Museum Provision and Professionalism

by Kavanagh,Gaynor

• ISBN13: 9780415112802
• ISBN10: 041511280X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1994-11-17
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Museums are public places where objects, images and memories are kept and shared. They exist in infinite variety and contradiction. They can be places of great excitement or great boredom, and they can be sharply insightful or hopelessly bland. Museums are anything that the political climate and the imagination allows them to be. Museum Provision and Professionalismbegins with an introduction discussing the broad areas of museums provision and professionalism and then provides a series of thought-provoking papers on museums. The editor has included material that is in some way influencing museum development. The selection highlights aspects of current professional concern and includes articles and extracts on how the museum is defined, thoughts on the museum, the museums profession, professionalism, codes of ethical conduct and institutional standards. The papers which make up this volume give ample evidence of the variety of views that exist about museums. They alsodemonstrate that museums and museum professionals are moving forward with energy and conviction.

Table of Contents

List of figures
List of tables
Series preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction	p. 1
Some definitions of 'museum'	p. 15
The Museums Charter	p. 17
The museum as a staging ground for symbolic action	p. 21
How sweet it is: cultural politics in Barbados	p. 26
A sense of purpose: rethinking museum values and strategies	p. 33
The principles of museum administration	p. 41
Museums for the year 2000: a case for continuous revolution	p. 47
Museum futures	p. 51
Piero della Francesca and the trainspotters	p. 55
Making up is hard to do	p. 62
Museum as dialogue	p. 67
The future of history museums	p. 71
The proper business of the museum: ideas or things?	p. 82
Visiting and evaluating museums	p. 90
The museum scene	p. 97
The National Audit Office report on museums: Britain's museums 'deliver the product'	p. 103
Public palaces or private places?	p. 107
Purpose of museums and special characteristics of independents	p. 112
Higher concerns	p. 116
Curatorial identity	p. 127
Defining curation	p. 142
Cross-community curatorial competences	p. 147
The American art director as professional: results of a survey	p. 154
Museum sector workforce survey: an analysis of the workforce in the museum, gallery and heritage sector in the United Kingdom	p. 164
Image and self-image	p. 172
Museum director as manager	p. 177
The state of pay	p. 186
Are you sitting comfortably? Are equal opportunities a luxury?	p. 192
Women and museums	p. 212
Common ground	p. 227
A new professionalism	p. 231
Scholarship or self-indulgence?	p. 237
Scholarship and the public	p. 247
The ongoing pursuit of professional status	p. 251
Ethics: constructing a code	p. 257
Tentative code of museum ethics	p. 265
Code of ethics for museums	p. 271
Code of professional ethics	p. 277
Code of conduct for museum professionals	p. 293
Setting standards for museums	p. 307
Registration Scheme for museums and galleries in the United Kingdom. Second phase: Draft for Consultation	p. 311
No objects, no money, no venue, no problem	p. 324
Guidelines on disability and quality of service for museums and galleries in the United Kingdom	p. 326
Code of practice for museum authorities	p. 336
Performance assessment in museums	p. 345
Further reading	p. 353
Index	p. 354
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.