http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
viii, 408 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.
For more than two centuries museums have preserved art, artifacts and natural specimens, engaged and educated the public and provided resources for research in areas from art history to zoology. Inside the Lost Museum explains the work of museums, collecting, preserving, displaying and using collections, by considering their remarkable history. Museums make choices about what's worth saving. Inside the Lost Museum explores those choices, and the processes, from donation to purchase to expedition, that shape collections. Once collected, museum objects are numbered, cataloged and conserved, and sometimes deaccessioned, processes that have their own hows and whys. Museums display art and artifact in many ways, from dioramas and period rooms to paintings on white walls and visual storage. Inside the Lost Museums reveals the meanings of those choices, and the ways that they have changed and continue to change, shaped by new technologies and ideologies. It also argues for the the value of museum collections for research, teaching and community-building. Woven through Inside the Lost Museum is the story of the Jenks Museum of Brown University, a nineteenth-century museum of natural history, anthropology and "curiosities" that disappeared a century ago. The Jenks Museum's history, and a recent effort to reimagine that museum as art, science and history, serves as a framework for understanding museums' long record of usefulness and service. Inside the Lost Museum considers the lessons museum history holds for museums today and tomorrow.
Introduction: Explore -- Part I. Collect: Why collect? -- Collectable -- Acquisitions -- In the field -- Who collects? -- Part II. Preserve: Into the storeroom -- Paperwork -- The ethics of objects -- Part III. Display: Objects, stories and visitors -- Objects on display -- Organizations and juxtapositions -- Explanations and encounters -- Setting the scene -- Turned inside out: visible storage -- Part IV. Use: What use is a museum? -- Museums make communities -- Learning from things -- Teaching with things -- The promise of museums -- Coda: Consider.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Jenks Museum of Natural History and Anthropology.