Publication
Simon Knell (ed.). Museums and the Future of Collecting (London: Ashgate (Routledge), 2004).
About
The contributions to this book review collecting practices in museums and suggest future directions. First published in 1999, in response to an international conference held at the Department of Museum Studies, University of Leicester, entitled ‘Carry on Collecting?’, the perspectives here come from museum practitioners and academics. They deal with such varied topics as the international trade in fossils, the representation of subcultures, policies for the small museum, connoisseurship, inferences from collecting studies and histories, disciplinarity, nationhood, collaborative methodologies and so on. In this second edition I made a number of significant improvements: the whole book has been reformatted, original illustrations added, subheads have been restored, notes now appear at the foot of the page, and I have produced a new index. I also made some additions to the text: Rebecca Duclos’s paper had some content restored, and I added an innovative paper on ranking collections by Martin Wickham and a substantial new introductory chapter of my own. One of the most popular books in the Ashgate list, the second edition had the rare honour of being published in paperback.
Access
The book was DTP’d by me. Free access is given to chapter 1 via the link below.
Simon Knell 