Routledge The User Perspective on Twenty-First-Century Art Museums

The User Perspective on Twenty-First Century Art Museums explains contemporary museums from the whole gamut of user experiences, whether users are preserving art, creating an exhibit, visiting, or part of institutions that use the architecture for branding. Fourteen museums from the United States, Europe, China, and Australia represent new construction, repurposed buildings, and additions, offering examples for most museum design situations. Each is examined using interviews with key stakeholders, photographs, and analyses of press coverage to identify lessons from the main user groups. User groups vary from project to project depending on conditions and context, so each of the four parts of the book features a summary of the users and issues in that section for quick reference. The book concludes with a practical, straightforward lessons-learned summary and a critical assessment of twenty-first-century museum architecture, programming, and expectations to help you embark on a new building design. Architects, architecture students, museum professionals, and aficionados of museum design will all find helpful insights in these lessons and critiques. Review "For Georgia Lindsay a "user" is not only a visitor or staff member but also someone who never actually enters the museum, the city hosting the museum, the ecological system it affects and even the art it houses. Her detailed narrative addressing various programming and design issues raised by 14 cases of 21st century museums inspires one to think and reflect, rather than to follow set guidelines or checklists. If only more building types were analyzed in such an inclusive, insightful and engaging manner!" - Karen A. Franck, Professor, New Jersey Institute of Technology and co-author of Memorials as Spaces of Engagement About the Author Georgia Lindsay is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Environmental Design Program at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is co-editor of Revisiting "Social Factors": Advancing Research into People and Place. She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.