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In a companion book to the new PBS series starring Lily Tomlin, readers learn about sound and how it is made as Ms. Frizzle's class spends the night in a sounds museum that turns out to be haunted.TV tie-in. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Magic School Bus--Sound
This is a great book to use when you are teaching students about sound.I read it to my third graders during the standardized unit on "sound."They loved the way the author combined entertainment with information. After I read the book to the children, I put it in the classroom library.Even my lower level readers were eager to check the book out and read it for themselves.

Kids who love noise will love this book
This title is a good choice for introducing children to Ms. Frizzle and her class of diverse personalities. Kids learn from this book that we hear sound when objects vibrate and that sound is dampened when vibration is hindered. Eventually the class dons magic glasses that allow them to see soundwaves. The students notice that higher sounds have waves that are close together whereas lower sounds have waves spread much further apart. The concepts aren't difficult to grasp and the plot is entertaining.

This book became an instant favorite of my daughter when she was two and a half years old. It still interests both my son and daughter now that they are five and a half and three and a half respectively. They love reading the noises in the spooky forest where the bus grinds to a halt outside the museum and they never tire of hearing sounds emanating from the audible books inside the museum.

The straightforward science and noisy read make this a great introductory title. Once children are familiar with Ms. Frizzle hook them with other Magic School Bus books where the morphing antics of the bus play a more central role. An animation of MSB in the Huanted Museum is also available.
... Read more

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National Museums is the first book to explore the national museum as a cultural institution in a range of contrasting national contexts. Composed of new studies of countries that rarely make a showing in the English-language studies of museums, this book reveals how these national museums have been used to create a sense of national self, place the nation in the arts, deal with the consequences of political change, remake difficult pasts, and confront those issues of nationalism, ethnicity and multiculturalism which have come to the fore in national politics in recent decades.

National Museums combines research from both leading and new researchers in the fields of history, museum studies, cultural studies, sociology, history of art, media studies, science and technology studies, and anthropology. It is an interrogation of the origins, purpose, organisation, politics, narratives and philosophies of national museums.

Customer Reviews (1)

Mostly a directory
"Natural History Museums: An Illustrated Guide to over 350 Museums in the Eastern United States" by G.W. Bates is unfortunately, a little more than a directory or mailing list of such museums.In the center ofthe book are photos, generally of exhibits, of about 25 museums.However,there is no information on hours, nor any descriptions of exhibits, etc. Moreover, with a nominal publishing date of 1992, most of the addresses areprobably 15 years old at this time (mid-2000), and so, many, if not mosthave probably changed.Apparently, Volume 2 was never printed, which alsolimits the utility of the book as a mailing list. ... Read more

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Why has it taken so long to make computers work for the museum sector?

And why are museums still having some of the same conversations about digital technology that they began back in the late 1960s?

Does there continue to be a basic ‘incompatibility’ between the practice of the museum and the functions of the computer that explains this disconnect?

Drawing upon an impressive range of professional and theoretical sources, this book offers one of the first substantial histories of museum computing. Its ambitious narrative attempts to explain a series of essential tensions between curatorship and the digital realm.

Ultimately, it reveals how through the emergence of standards, increased coordination, and celebration (rather than fearing) of the ‘virtual’, the sector has experienced a broadening of participation, a widening of creative horizons and, ultimately, has helped to define a new cultural role for museums. Having confronted and understood its past, what emerges is a museum transformed – rescripted, re calibrated, rewritten, reorganised.

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When French revolutionaries sacked royal holdings at the end of the 18th century, they began the largest transfer of artistic goods in world history. By 1850 many "repossessed" treasures had come to rest in a new institution, the public museum, where they were assigned educational tasks. Anne Higonnet's book begins at this turning point in the history of art, but it looks instead at another new institution, the collection museum. Emerging in London with the Wallace Collection, the collection museum spread rapidly in Gilded Age America. To the discontent of many Europeans, cash-flush Americans like J.P. Morgan and Henry Clay Frick went on collecting campaigns that netted masterpiece after masterpiece, along with the furniture and fittings of dozens of aristocratic residences.From the outset, these collectors planned to present their trophies to the public as museums in which they could dictate each and every detail of the arrangements. Drawing on a decade of research, Higonnet weaves letters, auction records and photographs into an engrossing account of the founding of both renowned and obscure collection museums. She also explores how these collectors stoked the tremendous values accorded paintings by Raphael, Titian, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Velazquez, Gainsborough and Reynolds. ... Read more

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The art collector as a trophy hunter aspiring to immortality...
This beautiful book tells the story of how the most famous private (and later public) art collections in the world were formed: taking such examples as the Frick Collection in NYC, the Huntington Library in California, the Condé Museum in Chantilly, France, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and the Wallace collection in London, it traces the portrait of the wealthy (always) and prescient (sometimes) individuals who were behind their creation and defines what the author calls the "collection museum" which makes the visitor feel "at home with art", as opposed to the encyclopedic and often daunting giant institutions epitomized by the Louvre or the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The book is full of high-quality illustrations, not only of the works of art, but also of the settings they were hung in (the collector's home, often built as a museum to-be) and the author also details the way the works were acquired, with interesting lines that show the influence of such figures as Duveen and Berenson (the dealer and the expert) in the forming of most of America's greatest private collections at the turn of the XXth century. Berenson's sly maneuvering when he successfully attempts to sell two Raphael paintings to Isabella Stewart Gardner in spite of her husband's reluctance is, in this regard, absolutely fascinating...

The last chapter shows how the concept of the collection museum is still pervading among today's patrons of the arts, such as Ronald Lauder and his Neue Galerie in NYC or Elie Broad who will soon have his own contemporary art museum in Los Angeles. ... Read more

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This book focuses on background, funding, and issues dealing with arts, humanities, and museum services and especially on their roles in strengthening communities. ... Read more

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Acclaimed architect Renzo Piano's vision for the new California Academy of Sciences is one of hope and grand ambition: to create a model for sustainable design at an unprecedented scale. This is the story of an architectural masterpiece detailing the intricacies of form and function: its 2.5-acre rooftop gardenthe 60 000 photovoltaic cells designed to power the buildingand its use of natural light and ventilation. When the new museum is unveiled in September 2008this celebratory book will serve as both resource and reminder of how humans can live and work in harmony with nature. ... Read more

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Five Star book.
As I am unable to travel or walk about the new Academy of Sciences,this bookis a wonderful way to visit and learn about the new exhibits.Of special interest was mention of Alvin Seale,first curator of Steinhart Aquariam. In my youth he was a special friend of mine and related many stories about his South Seas adventures.I recommend the book for young people as it will give them a desire to visit the Academy in person. ... Read more

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This single-volume museum studies reference title explores the ways in which museums are shaped and configured and how they themselves attempt to shape and change the world around them.

Written by a leading group of museum professionals and academics from around the world and including new research, the chapters reveal the diverse and subtle means by which museums engage and in so doing change and are changed. The authors span over 200 years discussing national museums, ecomuseums, society museums, provincial galleries, colonial museums, the showman’s museum, and science centres. Topics covered include: disciplinary practices, ethnic representation, postcolonial politics, economic aspiration, social reform, indigenous models, conceptions of history, urban regeneration, sustainability, sacred objects, a sense of place, globalization, identities, social responsibility, controversy, repatriation, human remains, drama, learning and education.

Capturing the richness of the museum studies discipline, Museum Revolutions is the ideal text for museum studies courses, providing a wide range of interlinked themes and the latest thought and research from experts in the field. It is invaluable for those students and museum professionals who want to understand the past, present and future of the museum.

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Since public museums came into being in the late 18th century, artists have looked upon them with a mixture of reverence, complicity, suspicion, and disdain. In The Museum as Muse, artists of many persuasions speak their minds about museums, their functions and spaces, their practices and politics, and their relationship to the art they contain. More than 60 artists are represented by a wide range of works: photographs of museum patrons by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Elliot Erwitt; "personal museums" and "cabinets of curiosities" by Charles Wilson Peale, Marcel Duchamp, and Claes Oldenburg; fantasies of the destruction or transformation of museums by Hubert Robert, Ed Ruscha, and Christo; and more, including works created especially for this project by contemporary artists, and an anthology of statements and writings by artists about museums. This volume was published to accompany an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Artists Incldue: Vito Acconci, Eve Arnold, Michael Asher, Lothar Baumgarten, Barbara Bloom, Christian Boltanski, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Sophie Calle, Janet Cardiff, Anne Cartier-Bresson, , Joseph Cornell, Jan Dibbets, Lutz Dille, Marcel Duchamp, Kate Ericson, Elliot Erwitt, Larry Fink, Andrea Fraser, General Idea, Hans Haacke, Richard Hamilton, Susan Hiller, Komar and Melamid, Louise Lawler, Jac Leirner, Zoe Leonard, Sherrie Levine, El Lissitzky, Allan McCollum, Vik Muniz, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Jeff Wall, amongst others.

Essay by Kynaston McShine.
Foreword by Glenn D Lowry.Amazon.com Review
The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect is the stunningcatalog that accompanies an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Artduring the spring of 1999. The show takes an insightful look at theway different artists deal with the ideas, concepts, and criticisms of"the public museum." The collected artists span both generations anddegrees of fame, from French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson to popartist Claes Oldenburg to contemporary artists Gillian Wearing andMark Dion. The show, and by extension the book, illustrates the impactthat the invention of the museum (just 200 years ago) has had on artmaking. It is fascinating to peer through the eyes of individualartists whose personal and intimate visions are both outside of themuseum and inextricably linked to it by their choice of career. Theartwork in the exhibition is wide-reaching and the reproductions forthe book are beautiful. Hiroshi Sugimoto's black-and-white photoseries of natural-history museum dioramas; a taxidermied polar bearand a seal on a bed of fake ice; and a re-creation of underwater sealife are all exquisite in their quiet and choreographedother-worldliness. This book should not be missed; it offers a greatchance to look at art by artists who use their work to address thecomplexities of their own relationships with the massive institutionsthat are our museums. --Jennifer Cohen

296 pages, 114 full-color images, 132 black-and-white images ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An Overview of The Show
I attended this exhibit at the MoMA and was thrilled to see so many great artists interpreting what museums and "the institution" means. For some artists, the act of collecting is very private...like JosephCornell and his many obsessive boxes, or Christian Boltanski and hismelancholy installation of forgotten photographs. In another personalpiece, Sophie Calle interviewed various staff members at a museum whereprized artworks by the Old Masters were stolen about how they now feel inthe artworks' absence.The snoop in me wished that the audience could seewhat all the boxes contained in pieces such as Herbert Dristel's"Museum of Drawers", which houses over 500 miniature pieces ofartwork by many of my favorite artists from the 60's and 70's.The BarbaraBloom installation "The Reign of Narcissism" was hilarious anddisturbing.It consists of a museum within a museum, with all pieces anddecor dedicated to herself and her own likeness.Claes Oldenburg's"Mouse Museum", another amazing installation, consists of varioussculptures and found "junkstore-type" objects that the artist hasaccumulated.The shape of the walk-in structure of Oldenburg's"Museum" is Mickey Mouse's head!An absurd and fun commentary onpop culture! This show would not have beencomplete without the work ofMarcel Duchamp, a pioneer in calling into question the value of"original" artwork and the importance that institutions place onit."L.H.O.O.Q." (the Mona Lisa with a mustache) and many ofDuchamp's Valises containing miniature reproductions of his own work andreadymades are represented here.Vito Acconci decided to use the MoMA as apost office and in a separate piece, tried to infringe upon museum-goer'spersonal space by standinguncomfortably close to people while they weretrying to be cultured and study the 'Art'.Overall, it was a fascinatingexhibit.The subversive, but good-humored mockery of what humans do withand in the presence of art made me feel somewhat self-conscious as I waswandering the galleries, but that seemed to be the point!

a very inspirational title
This book's subject matter is right on the money. I haven't read it, but Museums have everything to do with the production of art nowadays. Museums and catalogs or big, glossy ads. Because that's where the authority of theprinted page meets its audience. And Kynaston McShine is such a cool name. ... Read more

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This exciting new series recognizes the tremendous potential of museum-based histories and the ways in which they can engage people with ideas about the past. People encounter and use museums on many different levels - personal, social and intellectual - ... Read more

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Grounded in the solid strengths of its first edition, this updated and revised second edition, collates recent and important articles that address the relationships of museums and galleries to their audiences.

The Educational Role of the Museum has been entirely restructured and new papers have been added which make this an up-to-date presentation of front-running theory and practice.

Covering broad themes relevant to providing for all museum visitors, and also focusing specifically on educational groups, the book is set in four sections which sequentially:

• chart the development of museum communication
• relate constructivist learning theory to specific audiences with different learning needs
• apply this learning theory to the development of museum exhibitions
• pose questions about the way museums conceptualize audiences.

For any student of museum studies, and for professionals too, this book fuses theory with practice in a way that can only serve to enhance their knowledge of the field.

Customer Reviews (1)

Good Museum Theory Book
Educational Role of the Museum, is a book filled with articles about museums theory.Each article is written by a different person and this variety of perspective is nice to have in one volume.Generally a good book, dry at times, but that is to be expected.I anticipate using this book for years to come, especially when I need to refresh myself on certain museum related topics. ... Read more

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Science communication, as a multidisciplinary field, has developed remarkably in recent years. It is now a distinct and exceedingly dynamic science that melds theoretical approaches with practical experience. Formerly well-established theoretical models now seem out of step with the social reality of the sciences, and the previously clear-cut delineations and interacting domains between cultural fields have blurred. Communicating Science in Social Contexts examines that shift, which itself depicts a profound recomposition of knowledge fields, activities and dissemination practices, and the value accorded to science and technology.

Communicating Science in Social Contexts is the product of long-term effort that would not have been possible without the research and expertise of the Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST) Network and the editors. For nearly 20 years, this informal, international network has been organizing events and forums for discussion of the public communication of science.

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Indigenous museums and cultural centres have sprung up across the developing world, and particularly in the Southwest Pacific. They derive from a number of motives, ranging from the commercial to the cultural political (and many combine both). A close study of this phenomenon is not only valuable for museological practice but, as has been argued, it may challenge our current bedrock assumptions about the very nature and purpose of the museum. This book looks to the future of museum practice through examining how museums have evolved particularly in the non-western world to incorporate the present and the future in the display of culture. Of particular concern is the uses to which historic records are put in the service of community development and cultural renaissance. ... Read more

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Hands-on science centers are one of America's newest and most popular types of museums. Beginning with a history of the science center movement in the United States, this book then presents detailed entries on more than 260 museums and sites where the visiting public can touch, handle, and interact with exhibits or objects in entertaining and educational ways. Each entry includes a description of the center's hands-on exhibits, programs, and events, along with contact information, hours, and ticket information. The book contains 75 photographs of the exhibits in action. ... Read more

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“Fascinating examination of the museum’s unconventional role in contemporary art....Highly recommended.”—Library JournalThis book examines one of the most important and intriguing themes in art today: the often obsessive relationship between artist and museum.

From Marcel Duchamp’s “Portable Museum” (Boîte en valise) of the early 1940s to Damien Hirst’s distinctive use of vitrine displays in the 1990s, the artists of the past seventy years have often turned their attention—both creatively and critically—to a reappraisal of the ideas and systems of classification traditionally associated with curatorship and display.

The works included here, accompanied by quotations from the writings of individual artists, offer a wide-ranging coverage of projects by established and emerging figures alike, including Christian Boltanski, Sophie Calle, Tracey Emin, Hans Haacke, Donald Judd, Olafur Eliasson, and Takashi Murakami. The book has been updated to include recent projects that make use of grand architectural spaces within the museum, as well as those that explore off-site locations and the internet. 239 color, 51 b&w illustrations ... Read more

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Stephen E. Weil has long been considered one of the museumcommunity's most insightful (and frequently wittiest) commentators.In this volume of twenty-nine recent essays, his overarching concernis that museums be able to "earn their keep"-that they make themselvesmatter-in an environment of pontentially shrinking resources. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

great book for museum studies
Book was in great condition, as seller promised. It arrived promptly after I ordered. Book is used a lot in museum studies courses.

An outstanding selection of informed and informative essays
Written by Stephen E. Weil experienced and witty commentator on the museum community who is currently the Scholar Emeritus in the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Education and Museum Studies, Making Museums Matter is an outstanding selection of informed and informative essays about the difference that museums make, their role in preserving and showcasing history and art to the public, cost-related problems plaguing museums today, and a great deal more. Making Museums Matter is enthusiastically recommended as a most thoughtful and authoritative treatise on these notable and noble institutions. ... Read more

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From its inception in the early nineteenth century, the museum has been more than a mere historical object; it has manufactured an image of history. The museum believes in history, yet it behaves as though history could be summarized and completed. This twofold process explains the paradoxical character of museums. They have been accused of being both too heavy with historical dust and too historically spotless, excessively historicizing artworks while cutting them off from the historical life in which artworks are born. Thus the museum seems contradictory because it lectures about the historical nature of its objects while denying the same objects the living historical connection about which it purports to educate. The contradictory character of museums leads the author to a philosophical reflection on history, one that reconsiders the concept of culture and the historical value of art in light of the philosophers, artists, and writers who are captivated by the museum. Together, their voices prompt a reevaluation of the concepts of historical consciousness, artistic identity, and the culture of objects in the modern period. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Congratulations
To be honest: several times I felt envy reading this book. Maleuvre analysis the beginning of a museum-culture in the 18th and 19thcentury and does this with an extraordinary knowledge of philosophy, art and literature, especially French literature. His question of departure is: In what social context surges the museum and what impact has its birth to the relation between subject and object, the artwork. That is what a museum does: Create a distance between the individual and the sculpture. From the first to the last page the book is written on a high philosophical level, combining literature (Balzac, Proust) with philosophy (Hegel, Heidegger, Walter Benjamin and others). I was reading it line by line, a pleasure that I did not have in the last months. Congratulations to the author for this brilliant opening to a very interesting field of (hopefully) other studies in the future.

a text aboutmuseums in the 19th c.
this book is centred on the 19th century. it explains the logic behind museums during this century drawing comparisons with the domestic interior and the work of Balzac. So its contents refers in its majority to the culture, at large, of the 19th century and how this transformed the institution of the museum during this time. Therefore it is not a text exclusively on museums but in the cultural dynamics that shaped it during that period of time. ... Read more

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Addresses a number of questions about the natural world and how we relate to it, as exemplified in the collections of biological and geological material held in museums and scientific institutions throughout the world. The book explores the scientific, cultural and monetary values of natural science collections with the primary aim of informing and influencing Government of those collections policy on the care, use and development of those collections. The input of thought, knowledge and experience has produced a focused consensus output in the form of a set of recommendations. These recommendations have been presented to the United Kingdom's national museum advisory body, The Museums and Galleries Commission. It is hoped that these might also be taken to equivalent governmental organizations in other countries. This will reflect both the international representation at this conference, and the international currency of knowledge represented by natural science collections.

Also available:

Four Centuries of Geological Travel: The Search for Knowledge on Foot, Bicycle, Sledge and Camel - Special Publication no 287 - ISBN 186239234X
The Making of the Geological Society of London - Special Publication 317 - ISBN 9781862392779

The Geological Society of London

Founded in 1807, the Geological Society of London is the oldest geological society in the world, and one of the largest publishers in the Earth sciences.

The Society publishes a wide range of high-quality peer-reviewed titles for academics and professionals working in the geosciences, and enjoys an enviable international reputation for the quality of its work.

The many areas in which we publish in include:

-Petroleum geology
-Tectonics, structural geology and geodynamics
-Stratigraphy, sedimentology and paleontology
-Volcanology, magmatic studies and geochemistry
-Remote sensing
-History of geology
-Regional geology guides ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Good collection of papers on the value of museum collections
This collection of conference papers was published in 1996, so some of the cost information is quite dated. However, the concepts and the issues presented in the book are still very relevant today (2008). ... Read more