Crisis, Reinvention and Resilience in Museums

This book explores museum crises. Through an investigation into the experience of the Imperial War Museum during the Second World War era, 1933-1950, it considers how crises disrupt museums and the contrasting defensive and revolutionary strategies which museums must adopt when mitigating crises. It is situated in a small but emergent literature concerning museums and crisis. Existing works mainly comprise contemporary studies on difficult museum experiences, predominantly financial difficulty, wherein the term crisis has been applied to describe an institution's general state of malaise. This book, by contrast, presents an innovative and groundbreaking historical case study on a single museum facing wholesale physical and ideological collapse, deploying original crisis concepts to analyse different critical situations and the pathology underlying them.

Explores crisis, reinvention and resilience in museums via a groundbreaking history of the Imperial War Museum Presents innovative and informative ways of understanding and resolving different museum crises Illustrates concepts and practices with an accessible, data-rich and detailed case study

Autorentext

Philip W. Deans is currently an Associate Lecturer at Newcastle University, UK.

Inhalt

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Key Framing Concepts.- Chapter 3 The Imperial War Museum 1917-1939.- Chapter 4: Continuing a Civic Service 1939-1945.- Chapter 5: Safeguarding the Collection 1933-1950.- Chapter 6: Reconceiving the Institution 1939.- Chapter 7: Planning the Reconception 1939-1941.- Chapter 8: Materialising the Reconception 1940-1948.- Chapter 9: Conclusions and Reflections.