On Museum Ethics
Name
2024-10-30_OnMuseumEthics_Preprint_FINAL.pdf
Description
visibility:open
Size
226.29 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (CRC64NVME)
A8mVck/qhP4=
Resource type
Preprint
Creator (person)
Parker, Harry
Date published
October 31, 2024
Abstract
This preprint discusses some of the recent literature on museums and ethics. It identifies three main categories into which this work falls: firstly, a practically oriented literature produced by and for current professionals and schools of management; secondly, a more critical, social-scientific strand; and thirdly, a more historically oriented strand. The paper discusses some of their similarities and differences, but it also suggests that, cutting across all this work, two main models of 'ethics' are at work. These models are, firstly, a hierarchical model, in which museums, patrons, and the public, are all thought to sit in a fundamentally unequal relationship; and secondly, a transactional model, in which the relationships between museums and the external world are thought to be based on reciprocity and exchange. The paper ends by suggesting that neither model is totally adequate to capture the full complexity of what museums do and argues for an approach to understanding museum ethics that relies less on abstract models than on placing ethical claims in their proper context.
Project(s)
Museums and Industry: Long Histories of Collaboration (MaILHoC)
Funder
| Funder name | Awards |
Joint Programming Initiative on Cultural Heritage | |
Publisher
Science Museum Group
Official URL
Rights statement
In Copyright