Museum Basics

The International Handbook

Timothy Ambrose, Crispin Paine

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351869416
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Kunst
• Subtopic: Museumswissenschaft

This fourth edition of Museum Basics has been produced for use in the many museums worldwide that operate with few professional staff and limited resources. The fourth edition has been fully updated to reflect the many changes that have taken place in museums around the world over the last six years.

Drawing from a wide range of practical experience, the authors provide a basic guide to all aspects of museum work, from audience development and learning, through collections management and conservation, to museum management and forward planning. Museum Basics is organised on a modular basis, with over 100 units in eight sections. It can be used both as a reference work to assist day-to-day museum management, and as the key textbook for pre-service and in-service museum training programmes, where it can be supplemented by case studies, project work and group discussion. This edition includes over 100 diagrams to support the text, as well as a glossary, sources of information and support and a select bibliography. Museum Basics is also supported by its own companion website, which provides a wide range of additional resources for readers.

Museum Basics aims to help the museum practitioner keep up to date with new thinking about the function of museums and their relationships with the communities they serve. The training materials provided within the book are also suitable for pre-service and in-service students who wish to gain a full understanding of work in a museum.

Section 1
Introductory

Unit 1
About this book

The Purpose of Museum Basics

As with previous editions, the main purpose of this fourth edition of Museum Basics is to provide an outline of good practice for museums of all types that have few professional staff and limited financial resources. Museums internationally have common needs and face common challenges. Individually and collectively they care for a unique resource – their collections and the information associated with them – which represents a significant part of the world’s cultural and natural heritage. This book and its accompanying website have been produced to help museums care for those collections, provide public access to them and encourage engagement with them in different ways.

The original edition of Museum Basics, published in 1993, was written in association with the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and in consultation with a wide variety of museum workers in many different countries. Their ideas and comments on themes and topics, text and layout, helped shape and substantiate the first edition and increased its relevance to museums in countries that have different traditions of museum development. The second and third editions, published in 2006 and 2012, built on their earlier inputs and similarly benefited from comments and advice from other professional colleagues at international level.

This fourth edition of Museum Basics takes into account key developments that have occurred within the professional, cultural, social and economic environment of museums and allied cultural organisations over the past six years. These include:

• the wider social, cultural and economic contexts within which museums are working
• the continuing increase in the number of museums of all sizes and types worldwide
• new information and communications technologies, the widening use of the Internet and the continuing development of social media and mobile technologies
• macro-political and macro-economic changes, including the impacts of globalisation and armed conflict
• the use of private finance and philanthropy in museum development
• the continuing growth of in-country and international tourism, and
• the recognition of the widespread need for appropriate pre-service training and in-service professional development and training for museum workers at all levels.

The Organisation and Structure of Museum Basics

This new edition has provided the opportunity to revise the text, add a number of new units, review the range of process diagrams illustrating the text, and update the information on supporting resources. The companion Museum Basics website has been revised in parallel with the fourth edition and provides additional resources for readers (www.routledge.com/cw/ambrose).

In this edition of Museum Basics, we have maintained the organisation of the book in eight sections. Each section moves from a general introduction to more specific issues. The units within the different sections may be read individually or in groups as a basic introduction to the subject being studied. Individual units may be used as study texts within pre-service and in-service training programmes and have been written to reflect the training curriculum developed by ICOM’s International Committee for the Training of Personnel (ICTOP). For each unit, signposts to related units are provided. Similar ideas and suggestions recur in different units. This is a deliberate approach designed to encourage readers to think about their application to different aspects of museum work.

The book also includes a glossary of terms used in the text. Understandably, there are variations in the use of terms in museum work internationally. Every effort has been made to make the text as applicable as possible internationally, but readers should refer to the glossary where there is any doubt about the meaning or use of a word or phrase. We have included special key word descriptions throughout the text to explain particular terms in detail.

Museum Basics is supported by suggestions for further reading in the different topic areas. These have been restricted to key textbooks which are likely to be reasonably available to readers and which may make a useful addition to museum libraries. Other resources are to be found on the companion website.

The coverage of Museum Basics is purposely wide-ranging. It is based on ideas and approaches that are already being used every day throughout the world in museums with few staff and limited budgets. It places particular emphasis on:

• managing collections – the unique resource of museums – efficiently and effectively
• achieving an appropriate balance between caring for and managing collections and making them as widely accessible as possible to public audiences
• market research, marketing and communications, audience development, audience engagement and audience participation – approaches to museum work that may be unfamiliar in some countries
• caring for visitors and users and meeting their intellectual, emotional and physical needs appropriately
• managing staff and volunteers, and
• managing physical assets and financial resources.

All of these aspects of museum work have received increasing attention in recent years. Their emphasis is a reflection of the significant increase in the number of museums being established and re-developed worldwide and the massive growth in international tourism which has led to broader public and professional understanding of the role and value of museums.

Keeping up to Date

In the face of rapid change and development, keeping up to date with new ideas, changing practice and agreed standards, and learning from other museums about success and failure represent considerable challenges for museum staff. This is true especially in small museums where access to information, time for reading and opportunities for training are often restricted. Museum Basics and its companion website will therefore continue to be regularly revised to help museum staff keep up to date with the changing contexts in which they are working.

No book about museums and their work can pretend to be comprehensive. While this fourth edition of Museum Basics has been designed to address the main, day-to-day concerns of museum directors and managers, and has been written with the museum with limited resources in mind, there will inevitably be other themes or topics that readers will want to explore. The authors and publishers are concerned that later editions and the companion website accurately reflect needs in the field. We therefore continue to welcome suggestions for future editions and additions to the Museum Basics website that readers and reviewers may wish to make. Please write to the authors, care of Routledge, 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX14 4RN, United Kingdom. Alternatively, you may email the authors directly at [email protected] or [email protected].

One of the best characteristics of the international museums community is the willingness to share ideas and network information about good practice. This fourth edition of Museum Basics and its companion website have built on this commonwealth of expertise and experience and we trust that future editions will continue to do so.

Key words

Museum director – the term ‘museum director’ is used to describe the senior member of staff who has overall responsibility for the museum’s day-to-day operation and who reports to the museum’s governing body.

Museum manager – the term ‘museum manager’ is used to describe any member of staff with responsibility for managing assets and resources – people, finance, collections, buildings or equipment. The term has been used throughout Museum Basics to demonstrate that many people manage resources and contribute to a museum’s efficiency and effectiveness.

Unit 2
About museums

Related units – Units 3–10

The Growth of Interest in Museums

In countries throughout the world, millions upon millions of people – visitors and residents – visit museums each year. Growing recognition of the cultural, social, educational, economic and political value of museums and their work means that the number of museums of all kinds increases year by year. Their popularity is assured. It is not the purpose of Museum Basics to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the striking upsurge of museum developments worldwide in the last 75 years or so. However, it is this growth of interest in museums and allied cultural institutions that provides the broad context within which Museum Basics will be used. It is appropriate therefore that we comment briefly on museums in their wider context in the twenty-first century.

In professional museum circles, the arguments rage as to whether there are too many museums chasing limited resources, whether quantity and growth damage quality and sustainability, and whether new forms of management and partnership are required to cater for a cost-effective scale of provision. Patterns of historical development and of current provision vary from country to country. In Europe, for example, it is estimated that for each museum that existed in 1950 there are some four today. Since the late 1970s, China has seen some 3,500 new museums built. In the United States of America there are now some 36,000 museums. In other parts of the world, museum development is only just beginning. Understanding the history of museum development in one’s own country and in the different parts of the world is an essential part of professional development.

National Policy Towards Museums

Museums in every country should ideally operate within a national policy for museums that has been and continues to be informed by appropriate comparisons with other countries. A national museums policy provides a shared framework within which museums can be appropriately developed and financed. While the form and scale of museum provision differ from one country to another, so too do standards – standards of collections management, standards of user service and standards of museum management and administration. In developing national policies towards museums, the development and distribution of museums, the financial and other resources that they require, and the range and quality of services to the public that they should provide, all need to be considered with reference to international standards. Comparing and contrasting standards of museum provision in a balanced way is a critical professional concern.

Whatever policy framework they are operating within, museums in all countries need appropriate financial resources to enable them to carry out the full spectrum of their responsibilities and attain appropriate standards of operation. These include training and professional development programmes for governing bodies and staff at all levels, effective methods of collections care and management, high-quality facilities and services for users, strong planning regimes and a commitment to sustaining existing audiences and developing new ones through well-considered learning and marketing initiatives. All of these are essential if a country’s museums are to flourish to the benefit of the country and its people, and their visitors.

The status and standing of a country today are in large part measured by the attention it pays to its cultural policies and its investment in its cultural facilities. Alongside cultural and social development, in-country and international tourism – and the widespread economic gains it can bring if managed sensitively and sustainably – now represents a major reason for investment in museums and their work throughout the world. Museums as key cultural attractors have an important contribution to make to the development of tourist destinations, whether those destinations are countries, regions, cities and towns, villages or areas of countryside. Museums can make a major difference to the ways in which visitors experience tourist destinations and residents appreciate their own history and heritage.

Museums and Identity

Throughout the world, concern for national, regional and local identity is of particular significance in museum development. Through their displays and exhibitions and their programmes, museums can serve to reflect change and continuity in cultural values and cultural identity. Taken as a whole, museum collections represent a unique resource that reflects the different stages of a country’s historical development, its achievements and progress, and the challenges it has met internally and externally through time.

As keepers of the collective memory (see Unit 3), museums can play a valuable role in providing an understanding of identity and in fostering a sense of belonging at national and local level. In the face of immense and often painful political, economic and cultural change in many countries, their museums can provide a valuable sense of connection between the past and the present and serve as a springboard for the future.

As a cultural phenomenon, museums have a long history. Perceptions of their role and value have changed through time as the political, economic, social and cultural environment around them has altered and developed. Today, museums in urban and rural settings, both individually and collectively, make important contributions to the social, cultural and economic life and well-being of a country (see Unit 4). Identifying and articulating those contributions and the benefits that accompany them within a clear policy framework helps to build the case-for-support for museums at all levels.

Unit 3
Types of museums

Related unit – Unit 2

Museums in History

Museums are the treasure-houses of the human race. They store the memories of the world’s peoples, their cultur...