Museums & Museum Studies

Exhibition-making is now synonymous with image-making, communication, and the creation of a powerful experience. Approaches is devoted to the conceptual themes of narrative space, performative space, and simulated experience. Techniques covers the practical concerns of display, lighting, color, sound, and graphics. Photographs, drawings, and diagrams of exhibitions from around the world are included.

"This book describes the skills needed to become an exhibition designer, including: developing a brief and working with clients; design principles for graphics, circulation, lighting and accessibility; presenting ideas to clients; and the practicalities of production. A wealth of visual material includes photographs of completed exhibitions by world-renowned designers, concept drawings, computer renderings, charts and tables of information..." -

1.1.The Exhibition Development Process / Gail Dexter Lord / Maria Piacente -- ch. 2 The Purpose of Museum Exhibitions / Gail Dexter Lord / Maria Piacente -- 2.1.Exhibitions as a Function of Museums / Barry Lord -- 2.2.Museum Exhibitions as the Communication of Meaning / Barry Lord -- 2.3.Modes of Exhibition Apprehension / Barry Lord --etc.

This book identifies the theatrical and scenographic principles of exhibitions as narrative space and inspires a new approach to exhibition design. Narrative Environments approaches the field from three angles: theoretical-philosophical, cultural-historical and in terms of daily design practice.

For better or worse, museums are changing from forbidding bastions of rare art into audience-friendly institutions that often specialize in blockbuster exhibitions designed to draw crowds. Explores such issues as group exhibitions, video and craft, and the ways that architecture influences the nature of the exhibitions under its roof.

The artists of the past seventy years have often turned their attention, both creatively and critically; to a reappraisal of the ideas and systems of classification traditionally associated with curatorship and display... Includes recent projects that make use of grand architectural spaces within the museum, as well as those that explore off-site locations and the internet.

"[Leslie Bedford's] view of exhibitions as interactive, emotional, embodied, imaginative experiences opens a new vista for those designing them. Using examples both from her own work at the Boston Children's Museum and from other institutions around the globe, Bedford offers the museum professional a bold new vision built around narrative, imagination, and aesthetics, merging the work of the educator with that of the artist."

How can museums capture visitors' attention? And how can their attention be sustained? In this important volume, leading visitor researcher and educational psychologist Stephen Bitgood proposes a model--the attention-value model--that will help museum practitioners create more effective museum environments. A major advance beyond earlier efforts, the attention-value model shows how both personal and exhibit design variables influence the capture, focus, and engagement of attention. Bitgood also offers extensive background in the visitor attention literature, details of his extensive testing of the attention-value tool, and guidelines for its application.

Describes the growing intimacy between architecture and new types of art--particularly multimedia installations that take place in and on the surfaces of buildings--and to capture the sensual charge that is being designed and built into architectural surfaces and interior spaces today.

This book explores how digital culture is transforming museums in the 21st century. Offering a corpus of new evidence for readers to explore, the authors trace the digital evolution of the museum and that of their audiences, now fully immersed in digital life, from the Internet to home and work.

When does an artist's creation become art, and where? Does it occur in the solitary confines of an artist's studio or does it require the context of an art gallery's white cube?