Professor Emerita Helen Rees Leahy
Centre for Museology
School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
University of Manchester
Manchester, UK
CONTRIBUTORS
Alice Barnaby, University of Bedfordshire, UK
John Bell, University of Maine, USA
Brigitte Biehl-Missal, BSP Business School Berlin Potsdam, Germany
Fiona Candlin, Birkbeck, University of London, UK
Jenny Chamarette, Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Luigina Ciolfi, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Maeve Connolly, Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Ireland
Rupert Cox, University of Manchester, UK
Steffi de Jong, University of Cologne, Germany
Wolfgang Ernst, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany
Ivan Gaskell, Bard Graduate Center, New York City, USA
Seth Giddings, Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, UK
Beryl Graham, University of Sunderland, UK
Bettina Habsburg-Lothringen, Universalmuseum Joanneum, Austria
Beat Hächler, Swiss Alpine Museum, Switzerland
Karin Harrasser, University of Art and Design Linz, Austria
Michelle Henning, University of West London, UK
Peter Higgins, Land Design Studio, UK
Amy Holdsworth, University of Glasgow, UK
Andrew Hoskins, University of Glasgow, UK
Erkki Huhtamo, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Jon Ippolito, University of Maine, USA
Petra Tjitske Kalshoven, University of Manchester, UK
Nils Lindahl Elliot, independent scholar, UK
Sue Perks, Perks Willis Design, UK
Nancy Proctor, Baltimore Museum of Art, USA
Mark W. Rectanus, Iowa State University, USA
Dirk vom Lehn, King’s College London, UK
Haidee Wasson, Concordia University, Canada
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This volume of the International Handbooks of Museum Studies could not have been compiled without the extensive help of Gill Whitley, project manager for Wiley Blackwell, the copy-editor Jacqueline Harvey, and the Handbooks’ editors Sharon Macdonald and Helen Rees Leahy. I would also like to thank Jen Rhodes who was an invaluable research assistant during the early development of the project, and Niall Hoskins, who translated Beat Hächler’s chapter. Both Jen and Niall were funded by the Digital Cultures Research Centre at the University of the West of England, Bristol, and I would like to thank the then director of the center, Professor Jon Dovey, and especially the research administrator, Nick Triggs, for making this possible. The project was also made possible by the research leave I received from the faculty of Arts, Creative Industries and Education at the University of the West of England, and by the support of my ex-colleagues in Media and Cultural Studies. For a long time, this was a wonderfully diverse research and teaching environment in which it was possible to teach classes such as “The Politics of Collecting and Display” along side the history and practice of photography and new media, and to follow the most unusual research paths with encouragement. Although many of us have now gone on to other places and roles, and this tolerant and stimulating environment has changed, it strongly informed my view that museum studies and media studies have interesting things to say to each other. My work on this book was facilitated by the support, understanding, and intellectual companionship of Jane Arthurs, Helen Kennedy, Gillian Swanson, Richard Hornsey, and Rehan Hyder. Above all, this book would have been impossible without the many kindnesses of my partner John Parish, and of my daughters Honor and Hopey Parish. Finally, I am immeasurably grateful to all the contributors, many of whom must have wondered at times if this book would ever actually materialize, for their patience with my editorial lapses and nitpicking, and for their generosity in the production of these chapters. They are academics, artists, curators, exhibition designers, and museum directors, and their chapters are very different but all, I believe, offer fascinating insights into media in the museum, museums’ relationship to different media, and how media concepts inform museum practice.
GENERAL EDITORS’ PREFACE TO MUSEUM STUDIES AND THE INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOKS OF MUSEUM STUDIES
Museum Media
As general editors of The International Handbooks in Museum Studies, we – Sharon Macdonald and Helen Rees Leahy – are delighted that Museum Media is now appearing in paperback, as a self-standing volume. So too are the other volumes, which is testament to the strength of these volumes individually, as well as collectively, and to the importance of the issues that they each address. Museum Media clearly concerns a fundamental area of museum studies – museums can be said to in a sense be media, as well as to deploy a wide range of different forms of media. Despite the fact that media are fundamental to museums – and thus to museum studies – there is not, however, an established consensus on precisely what might be covered under the label “museum media”. One reason for this is the relative recency of museum studies as a field. A second reason is that museum studies draws on a wide range of disciplines, each themselves renewing their toolkits in various ways, resulting in new impulses for thinking about the media in museums. In addition, and perhaps of most significance, is the fact of change in the media available for use in museums. This results in fresh thinking about the possibilities for deploying such media, as well as for consideration of its potential consequences not only for engaging new audiences but also for rethinking what the museum already does, as well as what it might do in new ways.
Confronted by the fast-changing world of new media, as well as fascinating redeployments of older media, the editor of Museum Media, Michelle Henning, in consultation with us as general editors, faced a task of how to achieve a volume that would cover approaches that have become central to consideration of museum media, while also being sure to include as much as possible of the new directions and ideas that have been emerging in recent years. That this was achieved so well is evident from the resulting volume. The range of topics included and the ways in which they are tackled, provide a sound and also cutting-edge coverage of museum media.