Storytelling Exhibitions


Book Description

Storytelling Exhibitions describes the role and practice of modern 'spatial storytellers' and looks at the potential of exhibitions to shape our understanding of the world. It explains how curators, designers, artists and scientists combine to tell powerful stories through exhibition design. Exhibition designer and educator Philip Hughes shows how contemporary tools and technologies - digital reconstruction, 3D scanning and digital archives – interweave with traditional forms of informing, displaying and promoting to create powerful narrative spaces. Whether telling stories of politics, trends, society, war, science or history, Storytelling Exhibitions provides inspiration and guidance on designing installations which change the way we think. Examples included from: Te Papa, Wellington, New Zealand National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, USA Weltmuseum Wien, Austria Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, US Lascaux: Centre International de l'Art Pariétal in Montignac, France Stapferhaus, Lenzburg, Switizerland Micropia, Amsterdam, Netherlands ...and many more




Storytelling in Museums


Book Description

With chapters written by a diverse set of practitioners from across the museum field and around the world, Storytelling in Museums explores the efficacy and ethics of storytelling in museums. The book shows how museums use personal, local, and specific stories to make visitors feel welcome while inspiring them to engage with new ideas and unfamiliar situations. At the same time, the book explores the responsibilities of museum practitioners toward the storytellers included in their narratives and how those responsibilities shift over time and manifest in different contexts. The book’s eighteen chapters represent a conversation among a diverse set of professionals for whom storytelling connotes their daily museum practice. As educators, collectors, curators, designers, marketers, researchers, planners, and collaborators, the authors of this book consider the “real work” of storytelling from every angle. From the inclusion of personal stories in educational programs to the meta-narratives on display in exhibitions, this book balances practical examples with ethical considerations, placing the praxis of storytelling within the larger context of the 21st century museum. The book moves beyond advocacy for storytelling as an essential part of the museum’s toolkit to explore the many ways in which museums use personal stories, and multiple storytelling techniques, to support the larger public narratives embedded in their missions. The contributors demonstrate how museums that emphasize storytelling from multiple angles can serve as a kind of counterpoint to our tendency to fixate on singular images of things we know little about. They encourage museums to both acknowledge that they cannot control the narrative and to embrace their power to contribute to it through the multivalent, multivocal stories they choose to share.




Simon at the Art Museum


Book Description

A little boy visits an art museum for the first time in this fun, sweet picture book about first experiences and seeing things from new perspectives. Simon is having a great time at the museum with his parents. There are slippery, slidey floors! Pigeons flying around the reflecting pool! And cheesecake in the café! But they’re not really here for any of that. No, Simon has to look at art. And more art. So. Much. Art. There’s so much art that soon Simon needs to take a break and finds somewhere to sit. From his bench, he begins to notice how many different people are visiting the museum and the many different ways they react to the art they see. Some people are alone. Some are in groups. Some people smile. Some shake their heads. Some even shed a tear. And Simon is right in the center of it, watching until he’s inspired to give all the art another try. By the end of the day, he may even find a piece that can rival a slice of cheesecake!




The Museum


Book Description

DIVÂ /div When I see a work of art, something happens in my heart! As a little girl tours and twirls through the halls of the art museum, she finds herself on an exciting adventure. Each piece of art evokes something new inside of her: silliness, curiosity, joy, and ultimately inspiration. When confronted with an empty white canvas, she is energized to create and express herself—which is the greatest feeling of all. With exuberant illustrations by Peter H. Reynolds, The Museum playfully captures the many emotions experienced through the power of art, and each child’s unique creative process. UPraise for The Museum/u "Verde and Reynolds deliver a simple premise with a charming payoff... this “twirly-whirly†? homage to a museum is, on balance, a sweet-natured and handsome celebration." —Kirkus Reviews "Debut author Verde makes an engaging case for understanding art as an experience rather than an object." —Publishers Weekly "The rhymed text captures the excitement of a being sparked by art.†? —Booklist "Communicates a fresh, playful, childlike perspective on art and normalizes childlike responses to it. The idea that posing, laughing, and curious questions are all appropriate museum behavior may be a new one for both children and parents, and knowing this is sure to make for more enjoyable museum visits." —School Library Journal "For parents who have trouble communicating the excitement of art to their children, The Museum can serve as the starting point for a conversation. The book is also a wonderful reminder of visual art’s power to encourage and empower self-expression. Children and adults will finish this book excited about their next art experience, and perhaps tempted to dance through the halls of a museum in the near future." —Bookpage "This playful picture book pays tribute to the joyous effect art can have on the viewer." —Shelf-Awareness




Museum Making


Book Description

Over recent decades, many museums, galleries and historic sites around the world have enjoyed an unprecedented level of large-scale investment in their capital infrastructure, in building refurbishments and new gallery displays. This period has also seen the creation of countless new purpose-built museums and galleries, suggesting a fundamental re-evaluation of the processes of designing and shaping of museums. Museum Making: Narratives, Architectures, Exhibitions examines this re-making by exploring the inherently spatial character of narrative in the museum and its potential to connect on the deepest levels with human perception and imagination. Through this uniting theme, the chapters explore the power of narratives as structured experiences unfolding in space and time as well as the use of theatre, film and other technologies of storytelling by contemporary museum makers to generate meaningful and, it is argued here, highly effective and affective museum spaces. Contributions by an internationally diverse group of museum and heritage professionals, exhibition designers, architects and artists with academics from a range of disciplines including museum studies, theatre studies, architecture, design and history cut across traditional boundaries including the historical and the contemporary and together explore the various roles and functions of narrative as a mechanism for the creation of engaging and meaningful interpretive environments.




Design is Storytelling


Book Description

A playbook for creative thinking, created for contemporary students and practitioners working across the fields of graphic design, product design, service design and user experience. Design is Storytelling is a guide to thinking and making created for contemporary students and practitioners working across the fields of graphic design, product design, service design, and user experience. By grounding narrative concepts in fresh, concrete examples and demonstrations, this compelling book provides designers with tools and insights for shaping behaviour and engaging users. Compact, relevant and richly illustrated, the book is written with a sense of humour and a respect for the reader's time and intelligence. Design is Storytelling unpacks the elements of narrative into a fun and useful toolkit, bringing together principles from literary criticism, narratology, cognitive science, semiotics, phenomenology and critical theory to show how visual communication mobilizes instinctive biological processes as well as social norms and conventions. The book uses 250 illustrations to actively engage readers in the process of looking and understanding. This lively book shows how designers can use the principles of storytelling and visual thinking to create beautiful, surprising and effective outcomes. Although the book is full of practical advice for designers, it will also appeal to people more broadly involved in branding, marketing, business and communication.




Museums, Narratives, and Critical Histories


Book Description

In response to systemic racism and institutions’ implications in histories of colonialism, nationalism, and exclusion, museum curators have embraced new ways of storytelling to face entangled memories and histories. Critical museum practices have consciously sought to unsettle established forms of representation, break with linear narratives of progress, and experiment with new modes of multivocal, multimedia, and subjective storytelling. The volume features analyses of narratives and narration in museums and heritage institutions today, as well as visions for future museum practices on a local, regional, national, transnational, and global scale. It is divided into three sections: Narrative Theory and Temporality, Ruptures and Repair, and Difficult Memories and Histories. Essays from a variety of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences examine museum practices in history, memorial, anthropological, and art museums across six continents. They develop narratological categories, reflect on immersive and virtual narratives, challenge colonial violence and hegemonic forms of representation, query the performance of heritage, parse exhibition design, and unearth techniques to express narratives of social justice.




Islamic Heritage Architecture IV


Book Description

Islamic architecture has enriched design with a wide variety of structural shapes, including among others, unique arches, a wide variety of vaults and domes, which allow for new forms to be developed. This volume deals with the design of many types of buildings in Islamic countries, including not only the better known public buildings like mosques, mausoleums, citadels and forts, but also houses and gardens, engineering works such as bridges and dams, irrigation systems and many others which have also had a profound impact on society. There is much to learn from past experiences to arrive at solutions that are environmentally sound and sustainable in the long term. As conventional energy resources become scarce, the Islamic design heritage can offer invaluable lessons on how to deal in an efficient manner with cases of hard and extreme environments. Traditional architecture and urban environments in most Islamic countries are now being eroded by overemphasis on a global type of architecture and city planning. Consequently, many regions are losing their identity. The included research reviews these developments in the light of what the classical Islamic urban designs and architectures have to offer modern society.




Storytelling Exhibitions


Book Description

Storytelling Exhibitions describes the role and practice of modern 'spatial storytellers' and looks at the potential of exhibitions to shape our understanding of the world. It explains how curators, designers, artists and scientists combine to tell powerful stories through exhibition design. Exhibition designer and educator Philip Hughes shows how contemporary tools and technologies - digital reconstruction, 3D scanning and digital archives – interweave with traditional forms of informing, displaying and promoting to create powerful narrative spaces. Whether telling stories of politics, trends, society, war, science or history, Storytelling Exhibitions provides inspiration and guidance on designing installations which change the way we think. Examples included from: Te Papa, Wellington, New Zealand National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, USA Weltmuseum Wien, Austria Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, US Lascaux: Centre International de l'Art Pariétal in Montignac, France Stapferhaus, Lenzburg, Switizerland Micropia, Amsterdam, Netherlands ...and many more




Reculturing Museums


Book Description

Reculturing Museums takes a unified sociocultural theoretical approach to analyze the many conflicts museums experience in the 21st century. Embracing conflict, Ash asks: What can practitioners and researchers do to create the change they want to see when old systems remain stubbornly in place? Using a unified sociocultural, cultural-historical, activity-theoretical approach to analyzing historically bound conflicts that plague museums, each chapter is organized around a central contradiction, including finances ("Who will pay for museums?"), demographic shifts ("Who will come to museums?"), the roles of narratives ("Whose story is it?"), ownership of objects ("Who owns the artifact?"), and learning and teaching ("What is learning and how can we teach equitably?"). The reculturing stance taken by Ash promotes social justice and equity, ‘making change’ first, within museums, called inreach, rather than outside the museum, called outreach; challenges existing norms; is sensitive to neoliberal and deficit ideologies; and pays attention to the structure agency dialectic. Reculturing Museums will be essential reading for academics, students, museum practitioners, educational researchers, and others who care about museums and want to ensure that all people have equal access to the activities, objects, and ideas residing in them.