Alongside the diversity of concepts and methodologies offered by various disciplines and diverse forms of practical expertise, is also the distinctive feature of museum studies – its engagement with the past, present, and future world of museums. Such work, to varying extents, confronts researchers and academics with the actual concerns, predicaments, objects, spaces, media, and people all, in various ways, involved in museum collections and exhibitions. Increasingly, this means actual collaboration, and the development of methodological approaches to enable this. Examples in these volumes include those who consider themselves to be primarily academics, artists, or activists being directly involved in the production of collections, media (e.g., new media apps or forms of display), and exhibitions. The nature of museum work is, inevitably, collaborative, but in some cases it also involves more explicit attempts to work with those who have had little previous engagement in museum worlds and draws on methodology and ethical insight from disciplines such as social and cultural anthropology to do so. Such actual engagement – coupled with what we see as more fluid traffic between academia and museums also powers new forms of theorizing and practice. This productive mobility affords museum studies its characteristic – and, in our view, especially exciting – dynamic.
Organization of the International Handbooks
As we originally planned these International Handbooks, dividing their coverage into the four volumes of Theory, Practice, Media, and Transformations made good sense as a way of grouping key areas of work within the field. Our idea was that Theory would bring together work that showed central areas of theorizing that have shaped museum studies so far, together with those that might do so in the future. We envisaged Practice as attending especially to areas of actual museum work, especially those that have tended to be ignored in past theorizing, not in order to try to reinstate a theory/practice division but, rather, to take the opportunity to transcend it through theorizing these too. We saw Media as the appropriate label to cover the crucially important area for museums of their architecture, spaces, and uses of diverse media primarily, though not exclusively, for display. Transformations was intended to direct its attention especially to some of the most important social, cultural, political, and economic developments that are shaping and look likely to reshape museums in the future.
In many ways, what has resulted fits this original remit. We always knew that there would inevitably be areas of convergence: in particular, that theory can derive from practice, and vice versa; that the development and expansion of social media is propelling some of the most significant transformations in museums, and so forth. Yet it is probably true to say that there are more synergies than we had imagined, perhaps because museum work has itself become more open to change, new ideas and practice, and unconventional practitioners and participants, from what would previously have been considered outside. To make distinctions between practitioners and theorists continues to make sense in some contexts. What we see, however, is an increasing band of critical practitioners and practice-based researchers – those who operate in both worlds, drawing inspiration for new practice from areas of theorizing as well as from adaptations of cases from elsewhere. Equally they use practice to think through issues such as the nature of objects, the role of media, or sensory potentials.
It is interesting to note that at an analytical level, the volumes all contain chapters that give emphasis to specific cases and argue for the importance of paying close attention to grounded process – what actually happens, where, who, and what is involved. Although not all are informed by theoretical perspectives of actor network theory or assemblage theory, there is much here that recognizes the significance of material forms not just as objects of analysis but as agents in processes themselves. There is also much work across the volumes that gives explicit attention to the affective dimensions of museums, exploring, for example, how different media or spaces might afford certain emotional engagements. The sensory is also given new levels of consideration in what we see as, collectively, a more extensive attempt to really get to grips with the distinctiveness of museums as a medium, as well as with their sheer variety.
Various forms of collaborative engagement with specific groups – sometimes called communities – as well as with individual visitors, is also a notable theme cutting across the various volumes. Certainly, the idea of a generic “audience” or “public” seems to be less present as a central but abstract focus than in the past. Divisions along lines of gender or class are made less frequently than they might have been in earlier critical perspectives – though when they are, this is often done especially well and powerfully, as, for example, in some contributions to the discussion of museum media. Interestingly, and this is a comment on our times as well as on social and political developments in which museums are embroiled, the work with “communities” is framed less in terms of identity politics than would probably have been the case previously. No longer, perhaps, is the issue so much about making presence seen in a museum, increasingly it is more about mutually enriching ways of working together, and about pursuing particular areas or issues of concern, such as those of the environment or future generations. Yet politics is certainly not absent. Not only is the fundamental question about whose voice is represented in the museum a thoroughly political one, the chapters also show political concerns over relatively subtle matters such as methodology and reformulations of intimacy, as well as over questions of sponsorship, money-flow in the art world, the development of mega-museums in Gulf states, environmental destruction, and so forth. Indeed, there is a strong current of work that positions the museum as an activist institution and that shows its potential as such – something perhaps indicative of at least one future direction that more museums might take.
One thing that is clear from these volumes, however, is that there is no single trajectory that museums have taken in the past. Neither is there a single track along which they are all heading, nor one that those of us who have contributed would agree that they should necessarily all take. The diversity of museums themselves, as well as of those who work in, on, and with them, and of the perspectives that these volumes show can be brought to bear upon them – as well as their very various histories, collections, contexts, personnel, publics, and ambitions – has inspired the diversified museum studies represented in these International Handbooks. Our hope is that this more diversified museum studies can contribute not only to new ways of understanding museums but also to new, and more varied, forms of practice within them – and to exciting, challenging futures, whatever these might be.
Acknowledgments
Producing these International Handbooks of Museum Studies has probably been a bigger and more demanding project than any of us had anticipated at the outset. Assembling together so many authors across four different volumes, and accommodating so many different timetables, work dynamics, styles, and sensitivities has been a major task over more years than we like to recall for both us as general editors, and even more especially for the editors of our four volumes: Andrea Witcomb, Kylie Message, Conal McCarthy, Michelle Henning, Annie E. Coombes, and Ruth B. Phillips. As general editors, our first thanks must be to the volume editors, who have done a remarkable task of identifying and eliciting so many insightful and illuminating contributions from such a wide field, and of working with authors – not all of whom were experienced in academic writing and many of whom were already grappling with hectic schedules – to coax the best possible chapters from them. We thank our volume editors too for working with us and what may sometimes have seemed overly interventionist assistance on our part in our push to make the volumes work together, as well as individually, and for all contributions, as well as the International Handbooks as a whole, to be a substantial contribution to the field. We also thank our volume editors for sharing so much good humor and so many cheering messages along the way, turning what sometimes felt like relentless chasing and head-aching over deadlines into something much more human and enjoyable. All of the contributors also deserve immense thanks too, of course, for joining the convoy and staying the journey. We hope that it feels well worth it for all concerned. Without you – editors and contributors – it couldn’t have happened.
There is also somebody else without whom it couldn’t have happened. This is Gill Whitley. Gill joined the project in 2012 as Project Editor. In short, she transformed our lives through her impeccable