ABSTRACT

Museums of the Arabian Peninsula offers new insights into the history and development of museums within the region. Recognising and engaging with varied approaches to museum development and practice, the book offers in-depth critical analyses from a range of viewpoints and disciplines.

Drawing on regional and international scholarship, the book provides a critical and detailed analysis of museum and heritage institutions in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Yemen. Questioning and engaging with issues related to the institutionalisation of cultural heritage, contributors provide original analyses of current practice and challenges within the region. Considering how these challenges connect to broader issues within the international context, the book offers the opportunity to examine how museums are actively produced and consumed from both the inside and the outside. This critical analysis also enables debates to emerge that question the appropriateness of existing models and methods and provide suggestions for future research and practice.

Museums of the Arabian Peninsula offers fresh perspectives that reveal how Gulf museums operate from local, regional and transnational perspectives. The volume will be a key reference point for academics and students working in the fields of museum and heritage studies, anthropology, cultural studies, history, politics and Gulf and Middle East Studies.

part I|51 pages

Museum trajectories

chapter 2|12 pages

Repositioning the past in the present

Notes on the development of Jordanian museography

chapter 3|20 pages

Heritage in the crosshairs

Can Yemen’s museums survive?

part II|56 pages

Development models and policies

chapter 5|18 pages

Qatar’s accelerated museum developmental model

Rhetoric, actors and expertise

chapter 7|16 pages

Location and nation

Embodying Kuwait’s national narrative

part III|52 pages

Cross-border practices

chapter 8|17 pages

Transnational museologies in the UAE

New models or historicised global practice?

chapter 9|20 pages

Beyond museum walls

Envisioning a role for Gulf institutions as instigators of cross-cultural diplomacy

chapter 10|13 pages

Dubai’s Alserkal Avenue

Cultural district or cultural diaspora?

part IV|51 pages

Community engagement and professional practice

chapter 11|10 pages

Motivations of museum visitors

A case study of Sharjah Museums

chapter 12|24 pages

From ‘academic lectures’ to ‘hands-on learning’

A case study in the practical application of ‘appropriate museology’