Narratives of Community: Museums and Ethnicity

This groundbreaking book brings together a collection of essays on the revolution taking place in museums around the world as they look anew at the ways communities are represented. It highlights a fundamental shift occurring in 21st century museums: how they confront existing assumptions about people, and the pioneering ways they work with specific groups to narrate oral histories, tell ancestral stories and keep memories from the past alive.

The philosophical thread, woven through each essay, expresses a rejection of popular claims that minority people are necessarily silent, neglected and ignorant of the processes of representation. This book showcases contemporary museums as spaces of dialogue, collaboration, reclamation and storytelling. It acknowledges the radical efforts many museums and communities make to actively engage with and overthrow existing misconceptions, on the important subject of race and ethnicity.

Among the fifteen highly-respected authors sharing their analysis and experience are:

Kate Craddy, Director of the Galicia Jewish Museum, Poland
Victoria Dickenson, Chief Knowledge Officer, Canadian Museum for Human Rights
Annette B Fromm, Associate Professor and Coordinator of Museum Studies at Florida International University and President of the International Committee of Museums of Ethnography.
Carmita Icasiano, Curator and Collections Manager, Cultural Centre of the Philippines
Magdalena Mieri, Director of the Program in Latino History & Culture, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
Alison Taylor, Head of Inclusion and Diversity, Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry
Dr Marzia Varutti, Honorary Visiting Fellow at the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester.

And among the innovative museum programmes featured in the book are:

African American Civil War Memorial Freedom Foundation and Museum
Ethnic Minority Museums, People’s Republic of China
Galicia Jewish Museum, Poland
Herbert Art Gallery and Museum
McCord Museum of Canadian History in Montreal
Museo ng Kalinangang Pilipino
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of Singapore
Red Location Museum, South Africa
Sabah Museum, Borneo
Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History
San Diego History Center

The publication’s editor, Dr Olivia Guntarik, teaches in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University in Australia. She completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne and is currently writing a book on memory and migration. She writes regularly on place, remembering and cultural reflection and her research has been published in the Journal of Media Practice and Narrative Inquiry.

Publication details
Title: Narratives of Community: Museums and Ethnicity
Editor: Dr Olivia Guntarik
ISBN: 978-1-907697-05-0 (paperback) | 978-1-907697-06-7 (hardback)
Pages: 432
Paperback and hardback editions available: Now
Publisher: MuseumsEtc
Price: £44.95 (paperback), £84.95 (hardback) + £5 worldwide shipping

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Narratives of Community: Museums and Ethnicity