Europe’s national museums have since their creation been at the centre of on-going nation making processes. National museums negotiate conflicts and contradictions and entrain the community sufficiently to obtain the support of scientists and art connoisseurs, citizens and taxpayers, policy makers, domestic and foreign visitors alike. National Museums and Nation-building in Europe 1750-2010 assess the national museum as a manifestation of cultural and political desires, rather than that a straightforward representation of the historical facts of a nation. National Museums and Nation-building in Europe 1750-2010 examines the degree to which national museums have created models and representations of nations, their past, present and future, and proceeds to assess the consequences of such attempts. Revealing how different types of nations and states – former empires, monarchies, republics, pre-modern, modern or post-imperial entities – deploy and prioritise different types of museums (based on art, archaeology, culture and ethnography) in their making, this book constitutes the first comprehensive and comparative perspective on national museums in Europe and their intricate relationship to the making of nations and states.

Challenging History in the Museum explores work with difficult, contested and sensitive heritages in a range of museum contexts. It is based on the Challenging History project, which brings together a wide range of heritage professionals, practitioners and academics to explore heritage and museum learning programmes in relation to difficult and controversial subjects. The book is divided into four sections. Part I, ’The Emotional Museum’ examines the balance between empathic and emotional engagement and an objective, rational understanding of ’history’. Part II, ’Challenging Collaborations’ explores the opportunities and pitfalls associated with collective, inclusive representations of our heritage. Part III, ’Ethics, Ownership, Identity’ questions who is best-qualified to identify, represent and ’own’ these histories. It challenges the concept of ownership and personal identification as a prerequisite to understanding, and investigates the ideas and controversies surrounding this premise. Part IV, ’Teaching Challenging History’ helps us to explore the ethics and complexities of how challenging histories are taught. The book draws on work countries around the world including Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, England, Germany, Japan, Northern Ireland, Norway, Scotland, South Africa, Spain and USA and crosses a number of disciplines: Museum and Heritage Studies, Cultural Policy Studies, Performance Studies, Media Studies and Critical Theory Studies. It will also be of interest to scholars of Cultural History and Art History.

Museum Ethics considers the theoretical and practical elements of the philosophy of conduct in relation to critical contemporary issues and museums.

National Museums is the first book to explore the national museum as a cultural institution in a range of contrasting national contexts. Composed of new studies of countries that rarely make a showing in the English-language studies of museums, this book reveals how these national museums have been used to create a sense of national self, place the nation in the arts, deal with the consequences of political change, remake difficult pasts, and confront those issues of nationalism, ethnicity and multiculturalism which have come to the fore in national politics in recent decades. National Museums combines research from both leading and new researchers in the fields of history, museum studies, cultural studies, sociology, history of art, media studies, science and technology studies, and anthropology. It is an interrogation of the origins, purpose, organisation, politics, narratives and philosophies of national museums.

This book explores the function of the “everyday” in the formation, consolidation and performance of national, sub-national and local identities in the former socialist region. Based on extensive original research including fieldwork, the book demonstrates how the study of everyday and mundane practices is a meaningful and useful way of understanding the socio-political processes of identity formation both at the top and bottom level of a state. The book covers a wide range of countries including the Baltic States, Ukraine, Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and considers “everyday” banal practices, including those related to consumption, kinship, embodiment, mobility, music, and the use of objects and artifacts. Overall, the book draws on, and contributes to, theory; and shows how the process of nation-building is not just undertaken by formal actors, such as the state, its institutions and political elites.

Contemporary Museum Architecture and Design showcases 18 diverse essays written by people who design, work in, and study museums, offering a variety of perspectives on this complex building type. Throughout, the authors emphasize new kinds of experiences that museum architecture helps create, connecting ideas about design at various levels of analysis, from thinking about how the building sits in the city to exploring the details of technology. With sections focusing on museums as architectural icons, community engagement through design, the role of gallery spaces in the experience of museums, disability experiences, and sustainable design for museums, the collected chapters cover topics both familiar and fresh to those interested in museum architecture. Featuring over 150 color illustrations, this book celebrates successful museum architecture while the critical analysis sheds light on important issues to consider in museum design. Written by an international range of museum administrators, architects, and researchers this collection is an essential resource for understanding the social impacts of museum architecture and design for professionals, students, and museum-lovers alike.

During the half century following Malaysian independence in 1957, the country’s National Museum underwent a transformation that involved a shift from serving as a repository for displays of mounted butterflies and stuffed animals and accounts of the colonial experience to an overarching national narrative focused on culture and history. These topics are sensitive and highly disputed in Malaysia, and many of the country’s museums contest the narrative that underlies displays in the National Museum, offering alternative treatments of subjects such as Malaysia's pre-Islamic past, the history and heritage of the Melaka sultanate, memories of the Japanese Occupation, national cultural policy, and cultural differences between the Federation’s constituent states. In Museums, History and Culture in Malaysia, Abu Talib Ahmad examines museum displays throughout the country, and uses textual analysis of museum publications along with interviews with serving and retired museum officers to evaluate changing approaches to exhibits and the tensions that they express, or sometimes create. In addition to the National Museum, he considers museums and memorials in Penang, Kedah, Perak, Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Sabah, Kelantan and Terengganu, as well as memorials dedicated to national heroes (such as former Prime Ministers Tunku Abdul Rahman and Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, and film and recording artist P. Ramlee). The book offers rich and fascinating insights into differing versions of the country’s character and historical experience, and efforts to reconcile these sometimes disparate accounts.

Within the general framework of Cultural Psychology, this book provides different perspectives on the relationship between border and identity by experts from several disciplines (i.e. history, psychology, geography etc.). The book offers an “in- depth” comprehension of the intricacy of the border making process and how this affect the identity formation from a psychological, social and cultural point of views. The book takes a close look to some European countries as specimens to investigate the complex link between creation of national/ethnic identity and bordering process that evoke the more general question of the I-OTHER relation. This book provides an integrated insight into the complex phenomenon of borders and identity. The process of making and negotiating border and the identity formation on the border is analyzed as psychological, social, historical, and cultural phenomena. This Brief will be of interest to researchers and students as well as diplomats and administrative policy makers within the fields of political science, psychology, cultural psychology, and sociology.