This book provides a thorough introduction to what is known about why people visit museums, what they do there, and that they learn. It offers recommendations and guidelines to help museum staff understand their clientele and their interactions with them.

The study of the museum visitor has undergone radical transformation. Each author here has asked unfamiliar questions and responded with fresh answers. Some of these questions involve the visitor's identity, what she brings to her museum experience. Can we gain entry into this experience? Does more technology really increase access to the objects themselves? Others probe the very nature of museum going and exhibition making, demanding that we reexamine the traditional exhibition to reposition the visitor and her meaning-making at the centre. The volume provokes imaginative research and encourages new conclusions.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.

The Art Gallery on Stage is the first book to consider the representation of the art gallery on the contemporary British stage and to discuss how playwrights have begun to regard it as inspiration, location, focus or theme in an ever-more intense game of cross-fertilization. The study analyzes the impact on dramatic form and theatrical presentation of what has been a paradigmatic shift in the way art galleries and museums display their collections and how these are perceived, establishing a hitherto unexplored connection between modes of exhibiting and modes of representation. It traces a trajectory from plays that were initially performed in traditional theatres in accordance with a naturalistic play structure to plays that favour of a radical reconfiguration of visual representation. Indeed, since the beginning of the new millennium, playwrights and theatre-makers have increasingly experimented with new dramatic forms and site-specific venues, while forging collaborations with art makers and curators. The book focuses on plays from the 1980s onwards, such as Howard Barker's Scenes from an Execution, Nick Dear's The Art of Success, Alan Bennett's A Question of Attribution, Timberlake Wertenbaker's Three Birds Alighting on a Field and The Line, David Edgar's Pentecost, Martin Crimp's Attempt on Her Life, Rebecca Lenkiewicz's Shoreditch Madonna and The Painter, David Leddy's Long Live the Little Knife, and Tim Crouch's My Arm, An Oak Tree and England, and considers the vital contribution to the field made by set designers. Ultimately, through this study, we come to understand how modern drama can offer a set of interpretative tools to enhance our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the social construction of art and, furthermore, the potential of theatre and the gallery space to question our fundamental cultural assumptions and values.

Canvasses past and contemporary problems of cultural representation and the relationship between the artist, the museum and society.

Visitor-Centered Exhibitions and Edu-Curation in Art Museums promotes balanced practices that are visitor-centered while honoring the integrity and powerful storytelling of art objects. Book examples present best practices that move beyond the turning point, where curation and education are engaged in full and equal collaboration. With a mix of theory and models for practice, the book: • provides a rationale for visitor-centered exhibitions; • addresses important related issues, such as collaboration and evaluation; and, • presents success stories written by educators, curators, and professors from the United States and Europe. • introduces the edu-curator, a new vision for leadership in museums with visitor-centered exhibition practices. The book is intended for art museum practitioners, including educators, curators, and exhibitions designers, as well as higher education faculty and students in art/museum education, art history, and museum studies.

A guide for museum and gallery staff in the development of provision for their visitors, to ensure survival into the next century.

Welcoming Museum Visitors with Unapparent Disabilities exploreshow international cultural organizations (i.e. museums, aquariums, art centers) serve individuals with mental health and neurodiverse challenges. Opening chapters present the status of mental health in society and the need for inclusive design. Organized by unapparent disability, the book includes: a medical definition of the condition as defined by the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 11th Revision (ICD-11) by the World Health Organization; a brief introduction to that condition; personal accounts of the condition and challenges faced when visiting a museum, exhibition, and/or participating in a program; and, global case studies which describe how the hidden disability was supported/addressed and lessons learned.

Researching Visual Arts Education in Museums and Galleries brings together case studies from Europe, Asia and North America, in a way that will lay a foundation for international co-operation in the future development and communication of practice-based research. The research in each of the cases directly stems from educational practice in very particular contexts, indicating at once the variety and detail of practitioners' concerns and their common interests.

Insights from Visitor Studies: A purpose-oriented model for museums provides a systematic overview of the value of visitor studies and, for the first time in English, a comprehensive overview of the development of visitor studies in mainland China. This book emphasizes the importance of approaching visitor studies with a focus on purpose-oriented way and introduces the PSD model based on it. Zhao suggests that when museums aim to use the results of visitor research to gain support, or when they want to conduct a visitor evaluation to address a specific issue, they can follow the logical sequence of Purpose, Standpoint, and Dimension for analysis and identification. This approach will help museums derive maximum value from previous research or enhance the effectiveness of evaluations in practice. Throughout this process, Zhao not only consolidates literature from various cultural backgrounds into a unified framework, but also strives to incorporate existing terminology from the field of visitor studies to the greatest extent possible. Insights from Visitor Studies: A purpose-oriented model for museums examines the value of visitor studies for museum practice. It will be of great interest to museum practitioners to design transparent visitor research and evaluation practices. It will also assist academics and students engaged in the study of museums, heritage and tourism.