The Thing about Museums: Objects and Experience, Representation and Contestation - Paperback

by Sandra Dudley (Editor), Amy Jane Barnes (Editor), Jennifer Binnie (Editor)

The Things about Museums constitutes a unique, highly diverse collection of essays discussing how objects are constructed in museums, the ways in which visitors may directly experience those objects, how objects are utilised within particular representational strategies and forms, and the challenges and opportunities presented by using objects to communicate difficult and contested matters.

Author Biography

Sandra Dudley is Senior Lecturer in the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester. Recent books include Materialising Exile: material culture and embodied experience among Karenni refugees in Thailand (Berghahn 2010) and Museum Materialities (ed., Routledge 2010).

Amy Jane Barnes has recently completed doctoral research on the collection, interpretation and display of visual culture of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in contemporary British museums (University of Leicester 2009).

Jennifer Binnie is currently a PhD student at University of Leicester, looking at the impact which art within museums and galleries may have upon wellbeing.

Julia Petrov is a PhD student at the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester. Her project traces the development of dress exhibitions in museums in England and North America over the twentieth century.

Jennifer Walklate is a PhD student in the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester. Her AHRC funded research explores and compares the production of temporal experiences in museums and works of literature.