Virtual Issues – Curator

Virtual Issues are a deep dive into the Curator archives about a single theme, synthesizing articles from the past for today’s urgent museum topics. Every article referenced by the Virtual Issues will be open access for all readers for a limited time.

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It’s Not Just for the Children: On Engaging Culturally Diverse Families at Museums

The authors study how the museum field has historically prioritized Anglo families in research, exhibit design and programming.

Increasing Museum Capacities for Serving Non-White Audiences

Nick Martinez surveys the history of the relationship between museums and communities of color in the United States, particularly those identifying as Black and African American.

The “Rich Gay”? Small Museums & Funding “Difficult” History

The authors compare the prevalence of LGBTQIA identities in the general public and the museum workforce with the lack of funding for exhibitions and programming around LGBTQIA topics.

Welcome to the Museum: Reflecting on Representation & Inclusion in Museum Evaluation

Alice Anderson and Michelle Mileham’s Virtual Issue examines how museums have embraced people with different identities (or not) in the last few decades.

Defining the Museum: Struggling with a New Identity

Cataloging an evolving definition for museums and what that could mean for the future of ICOM’s new definition.

The Human Condition: Health, Wellness, & Emotional Connection in Museums

The museum field has addressed illness, disability, death, and overall health with a variety of techniques.

You Love Them, but You Don’t Know Them: Recognizing & Welcoming Lived Experiences

Whether museums want it to be or not, their audiences are composed of diverse social categories that must be embraced and represented.

Virtual Issue: Sonic

In July 2019, Curator: The Museum Journal published a special issue called Sonic. As part of that issue, we explored our archives and uncovered seven papers where sound experience in museums was a central subject of scholarly study. These papers were made open access from July 1st, 2019 – December 31st, 2019.

Music in Museums

I saw the first major survey of Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson’s work at an exhibition organized by the Hirshhorn in Washington D.C., at the end of 2016. The talk of the exhibition was Woman in E (2016), featuring a succession of live performers rotating through a perpetual strumming of that single note on an electric guitar.

Where are the objects? Why is this a museum? What allows us to claim special educational status for these charming play spaces?: Turning to Curator for answers

As a museum educator who has spent two decades thinking about object-based education, I found the shift to children’s museums challenging. Where are the objects? Why is this a museum? What allows us to claim special educational status for these charming play spaces? To find answers, I turned to the literature. This virtual issue contains findings of my search: nine articles, selected from the Curator archives, on the topic of children’s museums.