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What Are Museums For?

What Are Museums For?

By Jon Sleigh

“Cannot recommend this heartfelt, generous and expansive book enough. Never didactic or patronising, Sleigh is endlessly curious, thought provoking and socially conscious – the perfect guide to our museums and the people who make them today!” Esme Ward, Director of Manchester Museum

  • Description

    The days when museums were dusty, stuffy institutions displaying their wealth and wisdom to a reverential public are over. Museums today are a cultural battleground. Who should decide what is put on display and how it is presented? Who gets to set the narrative?

    In this passionately argued book, Jon Sleigh maintains that museums must be for all people and inclusion must be at the heart of everything they do. But what does good inclusion look like in practice? Cleverly structured like a museum tour, Sleigh uses seven illustrative museum objects from seven very different museums to explore such wide-ranging issues as trust-building, representation, digital access, conflicting narratives, removal from display and restitution.

  • Contents

    1. Introduction: The Emotional Museum Encounter

    2. The Classical Museum

    3. The Museum in Service of Others

    4. The Digital Museum

    5. The Museum and Trust

    6. The Queer Museum

    7. The Changing Museum

    8. The Future Museum?

Product details

About the author

Jon Sleigh is a freelance arts and heritage Learning Curator, working nationally connecting audiences with artworks and collections for their advocacy. He was formerly Learning Officer for the Arts Council Collection based at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

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