Richard Sandell - Museums, Equality and Social Justice

The last two decades have seen concerns for equality, diversity, social justice and human rights move from the margins of museum thinking and practice, to the core. The arguments both moral and pragmatic for engaging diverse audiences, creating the conditions for more equitable access to museum resources, and opening up opportunities for participation, now enjoy considerable consensus in many parts of the world. A growing number of institutions are concerned to construct new narratives that represent a plurality of lived experiences, histories and identities which aim to nurture support for more progressive, ethically-informed ways of seeing and to actively inform contemporary public debates on often contested rights-related issues. At the same time it would be misleading to suggest an even and uncontested transition from the museum as an organisation that has been widely understood to marginalise, exclude and oppress to one which is wholly inclusive. Moreover, there are signs that momentum towards making museums more inclusive and equitable is slowing down or, in some contexts, reversing.

Museums, Equality and Social Justice aims to reflect on and, crucially, to inform debates in museum research, policy and practice at this critical time. It brings together new research from academics and practitioners and insights from artists, activists and commentators to explore the ways in which museums, galleries and heritage organisations are engaging with the fast-changing equalities terrain and the shifting politics of identity at global, national and local levels and to investigate their potential to contribute to more equitable, fair and just societies.

Richard Sandell is Professor and Head of the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester and his research interests focus on museums, human rights and equality. He is Series Editor, with Christina Kreps, of Museum Meanings. His books include Museums, Society, Inequality (2002); Museums, Prejudice and the Reframing of Difference (2007); Museum Management and Marketing with Robert Janes (2007) and, with Jocelyn Dodd and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Re-Presenting Disability: Activism and Agency in the Museum (2010).

Eithne Nightingale is Head of Equality and Diversity at the V&A and has worked in equal opportunities, education, community development and museums for over 30 years. She has taken a lead on museum-wide equality strategies; collaborated with culturally diverse communities on initiatives encompassing collections research, public programming and partnership development; and has written and lectured extensively on diversity in museums both in the UK and internationally.

Series Editors

Richard Sandell and Christina Kreps

Museums have undergone enormous changes in recent decades; an ongoing process of renewal and transformation bringing with it changes in priority, practice and role as well as new expectations, philosophies, imperatives and tensions that continue to attract attention from those working in, and drawing upon, wide ranging disciplines.

Museum Meanings presents new research that explores diverse aspects of the shifting social, cultural and political significance of museums and their agency beyond, as well as within, the cultural sphere. Interdisciplinary, cross-cultural and international perspectives and empirical investigation are brought to bear on the exploration of museums relationships with their various publics (and analysis of the ways in which museums shape and are shaped by such interactions).

Theoretical perspectives might be drawn from anthropology, cultural studies, art and art history, learning and communication, media studies, architecture and design and material culture studies amongst others. Museums are understood very broadly to include art galleries, historic sites and other cultural heritage institutions as are their relationships with diverse constituencies.

The focus on the relationship of the museum to its publics shifts the emphasis from objects and collections and the study of museums as text, to studies grounded in the analysis of bodies and sites; identities and communities; ethics, moralities and politics.

Also in the series:

Museum Making
Narratives, Architectures, Exhibitions
Edited by Suzanne MacLeod, Laura Hourston Hanks and Jonathan Hale

Museums in a Troubled World
Renewal, Irrelevance or Collapse?
Robert R. Janes

Heritage and Identity
Engagement and Demission in the Contemporary World
Edited by Marta Anico and Elsa Peralta

Museums and Community
Ideas, Issues and Challenges
Elizabeth Crooke

Recoding the Museum
Digital Heritage and the Technologies of Change
Ross Parry

Rethinking Evolution in the Museum
Envisioning African Origins
Monique Scott

Museums and Education
Purpose, Pedagogy, Performance
Eilean Hooper-Greenhill

Museum Texts
Communication Frameworks
Louise Ravelli

Reshaping Museum Space
Architecture, design, exhibitions,
Edited by Suzanne MacLeod

Pasts Beyond Memory
Evolution, Museums, Colonialism
Tony Bennett

Liberating Culture
Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Museums, Curation and Heritage Preservation
Christina F. Kreps

Re-imagining the Museum
Beyond the Mausoleum
Andrea Witcomb

Colonialism and the Object
Empire, Material Culture and the Museum
Edited by Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn

First published 2012
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2012 Richard Sandell and Eithne Nightingale for selection and editorial matter; individual contributions, the contributors.