The Things about Museums constitutes a unique, highly diverse collection of essays unprecedented in existing books in either museum and heritage studies or material culture studies. Taking varied perspectives and presenting a range of case studies, the chapters all address objects in the context of museums, galleries and/or the heritage sector more broadly. Specifically, the book deals with how objects are constructed in museums, the ways in which visitors may directly experience those objects, how objects are utilised within particular representational strategies and forms, and the challenges and opportunities presented by using objects to communicate difficult and contested matters. Topics and approaches examined in the book are diverse, but include the objectification of natural history specimens and museum registers; materiality, immateriality, transience and absence; subject/object boundaries; sensory, phenomenological perspectives; the museumisation of objects and collections; and the dangers inherent in assuming that objects, interpretation and heritage are ‘good’ for us.

List of illustrations  List of contributors  Preface Sandra Dudley  1. Introduction: museums and things Sandra Dudley  Part I: Objects and their creation in the museum  Introduction Jennifer Walklate  2. Romancing the Stones: earth science objects as material culture Hannah-Lee Chalk  3. What do we know about what we know? The museum ‘register’ as museum object Geoffrey N. Swinney  4. Emblematic museum objects of national significance: in search of their multiple meanings and values Marlen Mouliou and Despina Kalessopoulou  5. Musealization processes in the realm of art  Maria Lucia de Niemeyer Matheus Loureiro  6. Photography – museum: on posing, imageness, and the punctum Klaus Wehner  Part II Visitors’ engagements with museum objects  Introduction  Jennifer Binnie  7. Things and theories: the unstable presence of exhibited objects Chris Dorsett  8. Inexperienced museum visitors and how they negotiate contemporary art. A comparative study of two visitor-driven visual art presentations Marijke Van Eeckhaut  9. Illuminating narratives: period rooms and tableaux vivants Michael Katzberg  10. Magic objects/modern objects: heroes’ house museums Linda Young  11. ‘Do not touch’ – a discussion on the problems of a limited sensory experience with objects in a gallery or museum context Helen Saunderson  12. Living objects: a theory of museological objecthood Wing Yan Vivian Ting  13. The poetic triangle of objects, people and writing creatively: using museum collections to inspire linguistic creativity and poetic understanding Nikki Clayton and Mark Goodwin  14. Location and intervention: visual practice enabling a synchronic view of artefacts and sites Shirley Chubb  Part III The uses of objects in museum representations  Introduction Amy Jane Barnes  15. Spectacle and archive in two contemporary art museums in Spain Roger Sansi  16. Playing dress-up: inhabiting imagined spaces through museum objects Julia Petrov  17. Material object and immaterial collector: is there room for the donor-collector discourse in the museal space? Caroline Bergeron  18. Exhibiting absence in the museum Helen Rees Leahy  19. Arctic ‘relics’: the construction of history, memory and narratives at the National Maritime Museum Claire Warrior  Part IV Objects and difficult subjects  Introduction Julia Petrov  20. Challenged pasts and the museum: the case of Ghanaian kente Malika Kraamer  21. Standardizing difference: the materiality of ethnic minorities in the museums of the Peoples' Republic of China Marzia Varutti  22. Displaying the Communist Other: perspectives on the exhibition and interpretation of Communist visual culture Amy Jane Barnes  23. Reconsidering images: using the farm security administration photographs as objects in history exhibitions Meighen Katz  24. (Im)material practices in museums Alice Semedo  25. Heritage as pharmakon and the muses as deconstruction: - problematising curative museologies and heritage healing Beverley Butler  Afterword: A conversation with Sue Pearce Amy Jane Barnes and Jennifer Walklate