Museums in a Digital Age

Abstract

This useful collection of previously published essays appears in a series of course readers in museum studies edited by Simon Knell. The goal of this particular anthology is to illuminate the impact of digital media on museum exhibitions and on the conserving of digital artifacts in museums. Knell’s explanation of the general goals of the series ends with a citation from Michel Foucault as a guide to each volume’s efforts to update museum studies curricula. With that directive, it is inevitable that the series will have to navigate between the most mundane practical concerns, in this case how to run a museum’s digital collections and exhibitions, and more theoretical issues involving the implications of conserving an ephemeral digital heritage and putting exhibitions online. The two overlapping conflicts, or contradictions, of museum studies (i.e., practical versus theoretical and the virtual versus actual objects) challenge Museums in a Digital Age to get these concerns to address each other or at least to speak the same language.