Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Visitor-Centered Exhibitions and Edu-Curation in Art Museums

Visitor-Centered Exhibitions and Edu-Curation in Art Museums promotes balanced practices that are visitor-centered while honoring the integrity and powerful storytelling of art objects. Book examples present best practices that move beyond the turning point, where curation and education are engaged in full and equal collaboration. With a mix of theory and models for practice, the book: • provides a rationale for visitor-centered exhibitions; • addresses important related issues, such as collaboration and evaluation; and, • presents success stories written by educators, curators, and professors from the United States and Europe. • introduces the edu-curator, a new vision for leadership in museums with visitor-centered exhibition practices. The book is intended for art museum practitioners, including educators, curators, and exhibitions designers, as well as higher education faculty and students in art/museum education, art history, and museum studies. Review Visitor-Centered Exhibitions and Edu-Curation in Art Museums is a breakthrough publication in the maelstrom that includes studies on audience engagement, museum education, free-choice learning, meaning-making, relevancy, and curatorial voice. Villeneuve and Rowson-Love masterfully weave together a mélange of educator, curator, interpreter, evaluator, museum director, and academic voices in a way that gives proportionate weight to each discipline. Ostensibly tailored for art museums and academics, Visitor-Centered Exhibitions and Edu-Curation in Art Museums is broadly applicable to museums of many disciplines and international as well as national audiences. The authors highlight the urgency and the value in enabling informal learners to see the world through a non-normative lens. Further, they blur the false dichotomy between educators and curators finding common ground that gives us hope for the future of museums and their value in crossing borders, healing divides, and discovering newfound possibilities for developing sustainable, dynamic organizations that are an essential component of the fabric of our society.--W. James Burns, Ph.D., Director, The University of Arizona Museum of Art The 19 essays in this collection introduce and explore the concept and impact of 'edu-curation' with regard to exhibition development in art museums. Edu-curation promotes equal collaboration between art museum educators and curatorial staff. Villeneuve and Love developed the concept of edu-curation, the tenets of which draw from feminist systems theory. The collection is divided into five parts: 'Foundations: The Need for Edu-Curation, ' 'Readiness: Structuring Your Approach, ' 'Collaboration in Action, ' 'Seeing inside the Process, ' and 'Sustaining Engaged Organizational Learning.' The essays emphasize implementation of sustainable edu-curatorial practices. The book includes both theoretical essays pertaining to the philosophy supporting edu-curation and essays presenting models and case studies of edu-curation in practice. Ancillary materials include black-and-white illustrations and graphics. This study, with its innovative research, will be of interest to museum professionals in educational, curatorial, and exhibitions-related roles, as well as to educators and students in the fields of museum studies, education, and art history. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.--CHOICE This book tackles the sticky arena of art museum exhibition development with a compilation of essays by respected professionals who have long experience experimenting with new practices for developing visitor-centered experiences with art. The authors importantly predict new needs for visitor-centered museums and offer multiple examples of engaged practices between educators, curators, and interpretive planners that encourage them slip in and out of their disciplinary boundaries to support shared authority. Readers will come away with u