Museums And Their Communities

Museums and their Communities brings together a collection of readings from practitioners and researchers, working across a range of disciplines, which explore and illuminate the complex and evolving relationships between museums and the diverse communities they represent, serve and with which they engage. This collection of high quality, provocative and stimulating readings draws together thinking, practice and case studies relating to many different kinds of museum. Through wide ranging, international contexts it examines the ways in which museums operate as sites of community representation, identity and memory. The Reader considers the shifting institutional priorities of the museum from a focus on collections to a growing concern for audience needs and expectations. It reflects on areas of contestation and addresses a number of timely questions which are increasingly challenging museum practitioners and scholars: Who are the museum's communities? What needs and challenges do these constituencies present? What is the impact upon the museum of competing community interests? How do issues of power and control affect communities and influence the messages museums attempt to communicate? Museums and their Communities provides a focused consideration of the challenges and opportunities facing museums that wish to engage with their community responsibilities.Watson, Sheila is the author of 'Museums And Their Communities ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780415402590 and ISBN 041540259X.