1. Introduction: museums and museology
- Preziosi, Donald, and Claire J. Farago. (ed) 2004. ‘What are museums for?’, in Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum. Ashgate. Pp. 1-10.
- Edson, Gary. 2014. “Museums Are Wonderful Places: An Introduction.” Museum International 66 (1–4): 7–18. PDF .
- Witcomb, Andrea, and Message, Kylie. 2015. “Introduction. Museum Theory. An Expanded Field.” In Museum Theory. The International Handbooks of Museum Studies, edited by edited by Sharon Macdonald and Helen Rees Leahy, 1 :xxxvi–lxiii. PDF
Suggested reading: Thomas, Nicholas. 2016. The Return of Curiosity. What Museums are Good For in the 21st Century. Reaktion Books, 144p.
2. Historical perspectives: museum origins and development
- Abt, Jeffrey. 2007. “The Origins of the Public Museum.” In A Companion to Museum Studies, ed. Sharon Macdonald, P. 115–134. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. mmary
- Shelton, Anthony. 2006. “Museums and Anthropologies: Practices and Narratives.” In A Companion to Museum Studies, by MacDonald, Sharon, P. 64–80. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Ekman, M. (2018). “The birth of the museum in the Nordic countries. Kunstkammer museology and museography”. Nordisk Museologi, (1): 5-26.
Suggested reading: John E. Simmons. 2016. Museums: A History. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 326p.
3. Museum objects: the material and the immaterial in museums
- Dudley, Sandra H. 2013. “What, or Where, Is the (Museum) Object? Colonial Encounters in Displayed Worlds of Things.” In The International Handbooks of Museum Studies, 1:3:41–62.
- Salmond, A. 2012. “Digital Subjects, Cultural Objects: Special Issue Introduction.” Journal of Material Culture 17 (3): 211–28.
Seminar reading on the material and immaterial
Dorrian, Mark. 2014. “Museum Atmospheres: Notes on Aura, Distance and Affect.” The Journal of Architecture 19 (2): 187–201.
4. Exhibition analysis and exhibition review. "Learning by doing museology. The involved critic"
- Albena Yanevas 2003. "When a bus met a museum: following artists, curators and workers in art installation". Museum and Society 1: 116-26
- Mordhorst,C. 2009."The power of presence: the Cradle to Grave installation at the British Museum. Museum&Society,7(3): 194-205.
- J?rgensen, Dolly, blogpost, “Museum narratives are not neutral”
5. Museum functions: the social roles of museums
- Marstine Janet, 2011, “The contingent nature of the new museum ethics” in Marstine, Janet (ed) Routledge Companion to Museum Ethics Routledge. Pp 3-25.
- Janes, Robert R., and Richard Sandell (eds). 2019. ‘Posterity has arrived’, chapter 1 in Museum Activism. Routledge. P.1-22. Available online via Googlebooks.
- Museums Association, UK, “What Is Advocacy?” Online also in PDF
Seminar reading on museums social roles
Campolmi, I. (2016), Institutional Engagement and the Growing Role of Ethics in Contemporary Curatorial Practice. Museum International, 68: 68-83. PDF
6. Museums in the Anthropocene
- Robin, L., Avango, D., Keogh, L., M?llers, N. and Trischler, H. (2017). “Displaying the Anthropocene in and beyond museums”. In J. Newell, L. Robin and K. Wehner (Eds.), Curating the future: Museums, communities and climate change (pp. 252–266). New York: Routledge.
- Cameron, Hodge og Salazar (2013), Representing climate change in museum space and places, WIREs Climate Change, 4, 9-21. DOI:10.1002/wcc.200.
7. Decolonizing museology (part 1): cross-cultural perspectives on museums, and repatriation
- Kreps, Christina F. 2006. Non-Western Models of Museums and Curation in Cross-cultural Perspective. In A companion to museum studies, ed. Sharon Macdonald, 457-472. Wiley-Blackwell. Online through Oria
- Arvanitis, Kostas, and Louise Tythacott (eds) 2014. ‘Introduction’, Museums and Restitution: New Practices, New Approaches. Farnham: Ashgate. Pp.1-18.
- Clifford, James. 1997. “Museums as Contact Zones.” In Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Harvard University Press.p.188-219.
Seminar reading on decolonization
- Boast, Robin. 2011. “Neocolonial collaboration: Museum as Contact Zone Revisited.” Museum Anthropology 34 (1): 56–70.
9. Art museums and artists as curators and activists + seminar
- Adamopoulou Areti & Esther Solomon. 2016. “Artists-as-Curators in Museums: Observations on Contemporary Wunderkammern.” THEMA. La Revue Des Musées de La Civilisation. p.35-49. 14s
- Corrin, Lisa. 1994. “Mining the Museum - Artists Look at Museums, Museums Look at Themselves.” In Mining the Museum: An Installation by Fred Wilson. 22S
- Bal, Mieke. 2006. “Exposing the Public.” In A Companion to Museum Studies, Sharon Macdonald. Blackwell. (online via Oria) p.525-542 17s
Seminar reading on artists as curators and activists
- Chong, Derrick. 2015. “Tate and BP – Oil and Gas as the New Tobacco?: Arts Sponsorship, Branding, and Marketing.” In The International Handbooks of Museum Studies, 179–201. .