MGMM General Resources: Ethics

Cultural Heritage Ethics provides cutting-edge arguments built on case studies of cultural heritage and its management in a range of geographical and cultural contexts. Moreover, the volume feels the pulse of the debate on heritage ethics by discussing timely issues such as access, acquisition, archaeological practice, curatorship, education, ethnology, historiography, integrity, legislation, memory, museum management, ownership, preservation, protection, public trust, restitution, human rights, stewardship, and tourism.

In Decolonizing Museums, Amy Lonetree examines the complexities of these new relationships with an eye toward exploring how museums can grapple with centuries of unresolved trauma as they tell the stories of Native peoples. She investigates how museums can honor an Indigenous worldview and way of knowing, challenge stereotypical representations, and speak the hard truths of colonization within exhibition spaces to address the persistent legacies of historical unresolved grief in Native communities.

The volume represents diverse strands in museum activity from exhibitions to marketing, as ethics is embedded in all areas of the museum sector. What the contributions share is an understanding of the contingent nature of museum ethics in the twenty-first century--its relations with complex economic, social, political and technological forces and its fluid ever-shifting sensibility.

This outstanding comparative study on the curating of "difficult knowledge" focuses on two museum exhibitions that presented the same lynching photographs. Through a detailed description of the exhibitions and drawing on interviews with museum staff and visitor comments, Roger I. Simon explores the affective challenges to thought that lie behind the different curatorial frameworks and how viewers' comments on the exhibitions perform a particular conversation about race in America.

Using examples from all over the world, Religious Objects in Museums is the first book to examine how religious objects are transformed when they enter the museum, and how they affect curators and visitors. It examines the full range of meanings that religious objects may bear - as scientific specimen, sacred icon, work of art, or historical record.

Featuring a wide range of valuable case studies, Exhibiting the German Past offers a unique perspective on the developing relationship between museums and visual media.

Phillips dissects seminal exhibitions of Indigenous art to show how changes in display, curatorial voice, and authority stem from broad social, economic, and political forces outside the museum and moves beyond Canadian institutions and practices to discuss historically interrelated developments and exhibitions in the United States, Britain, Australia, and elsewhere.

What are the "right ways" to preserve heritage? Are the aims and purposes of museums necessarily at odds with those of First Nations? This thoughtful book explores the concept of museum conservation in light of cultural repatriation issues, and helps readers understand the complex relationship between museums and Aboriginal peoples.