Museum Studies Blog

Interpreting Slavery with Children and Teens at Museums and Historic Sites, by Kristin L. Gallas. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. REVIEWED BY REBECCA MCGOVERN Museums can be highly emotional places. History is a brutal landscape that holds countless traumas and pains for an unquantifiable number of people. This landscape is particularly poignant when addressing the …

The Queer Museum: Radical Inclusion and Western Museology, by Erica Robenalt. Routledge, 2024. REVIEWED BY KAL DEMAREE  Authored by Erica Robenalt, The Queer Museum: Radical Inclusion and Western Museology delves into the role of LGBTQ+ representation and queer theory in museums. Through ideas of queer utopia and futurity, the book combines queer theory and museology …

Effective Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism Practices for Museums, edited by Cecile Shellman. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022  REVIEWED BY KINZIE WHIPPLE  In recent years, many museums have made countless efforts to appear more inclusive, but most of these efforts have fallen flat. Museum diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion consultant, Cecile Shellman, took the …

The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins, by Stefanos Geroulanos. New York, N.Y.: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2024.  REVIEWED BY G. BUTLER  “Theories of our past have shaped history and the world we live in today”: this is the thesis of NYU history professor Stefanos Geroulanos in his book The Invention …

Belitung: The Afterlives of a Shipwreck, by Natali Pearson. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2022.  REVIEWED BY THOMAS CRAIN  In Belitung: The Afterlives of a Shipwreck, Natali Pearson, an underwater cultural heritage researcher, attempts to untangle the many lives, contexts, and controversies of the Belitung shipwreck by exploring it through a unique contextual framework. The …

A New Role for Museum Educators: Purpose, Approach, and Mindset, edited by Elizabeth Wood. Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2023.  REVIEWED BY RINI SHIELDS   Elizabeth Wood’s A New Role for Museum Educators challenges us to take a critical look at theoretical foundations of museums’ educational purpose as well as new charges towards social justice and community inclusiveness. …

The Museum: A Short History of Crisis and Resilience, by Samuel J. Redman. New York: New York University Press, 2022. REVIEWED BY LAUREN FREIJE Museums exist in the context of the world around them. As museums have evolved to take their place as cultural institutions, they have been forced to respond to a multitude of …

Culture: The History of Us from Cave Art to K-Pop, by Martin Puchner. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2023.  REVIEWED BY SHANNON SUTTON  Culture: The History of Us from Cave Art to K-Pop by Martin Puchner follows the thread of art, religion, and society from paleolithic cave paintings in France to the …

Museum Education for Today’s Audiences: Meeting Expectations with New Models, edited by Jason L Porter and Mary Kay Cunningham. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2022.  REVIEWED BY SYDNEY COYNE  In the aftermath of 2020, museum professionals responded to drastic shifts in the field, reimaging their uses of technology and approaches to social inequities. Museum Education for …