ABSTRACT
Drawing on Elaine Heumann Gurian’s fifty years of museum experience, Centering the Museum calls on the profession to help visitors experience their shared humanity and find social uses for public buildings, in order to make museums more central and useful to everyone in difficult times.
Following the same format as Civilizing the Museum, this new volume includes material written especially for a re-emergent time and relevant public lectures not included in the author’s previous book. Divided into six separate content clusters, with over twenty different essays, the book identifies many small, subtle ways museums can become welcoming to more—and to all. Drawing on her extensive experience as a deputy director, senior advisor to high-profile government museums, lecturer and teacher around the world, the author provides recommendations for inclusive actions by intertwining sociological thinking with practical decision-making strategies. Writing reflectively, Elaine also provides heritage students and professionals with insights that will help move their careers and organizations into more equitable, yet successful, terrain.
Centering the Museum will be an excellent companion volume to Civilizing the Museum and, as such, will be a useful support for emerging museum leaders. It will be especially interesting to academics and students engaged in the study of cultural administration, as well as museum and heritage practitioners working around the world.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|46 pages
The Museum Visitor's Exhibition Quest: Personalization, Complexity, and Multiple Outcomes
chapter 2|14 pages
Introducing the Blue Ocean Museum
chapter 3|14 pages
The Importance of “And”
part II|83 pages
Museum Administration Techniques Must Mirror Philosophy: Fairness and Justice Toward Staff
chapter 6|22 pages
Boston Stories
chapter 7|16 pages
Curator—From Soloist to Impresario
chapter 8|8 pages
Wanting to Be Third on Your Block
chapter 9|14 pages
Intentional Civility 1
part III|53 pages
Museums Have Agency: Useful Activism in Museums
chapter 13|18 pages
Modeling Decency, Sir! 1
part IV|16 pages
Museums' Obligation to Provide Public Space: Placing Museums in a Broadened Civic Sphere
chapter 14|2 pages
One Meter Square
chapter 15|12 pages
Public Spaces for Strangers
part V|31 pages
Museums Are Part of Larger Systems: Dissolving Boundaries to Provide Coordinated Society-wide Benefits
chapter 16|11 pages
Museum Opportunities
part VI|49 pages
Memoir Snippets: The Professional Uses of Personal Experience