Promotional Information

This vibrant examination of the museum’s role as contemporary narrator of our past reveals that our perceptions of history and ourselves are shaped as much by how a museum presents information as by what information it presents.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction: Perspectives on Museums and Historical Consciousness in Canada / Viviane Gosselin and Phaedra Livingstone

Part 1: Programming Historical Consciousness

2 The Royal Ontario Museum, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Critical Public Engagement / Susan Ashley

3 The Voices of the Canoe Project: Weaving Together Indigenous and Western Historical Knowledge Traditions / Jill Baird and Damara Jacobs-Morris

4 The Torrington Gopher Hole Museum: A Model Institution / Lianne McTavish

5 Public Pedagogy and the Museum: The Canadian Museum of Immigration at 21, for Example / Brenda Trofanenko

Part 2: Measuring Historical Consciousness

6 Changing Views? Emotional Intelligence, Registers of Engagement, and the Museum Visit / Laurajane Smith

7 Using Museum Resources and Mobile Technologies to Develop Teens’ Historical Thinking: Formative Evaluation of an Innovative Educational Set-up / Marie-Claude Larouche

8 Museums as In-Between Institutions: Can They Be Trusted? / Lon Dubinsky and Del Muise

9 The Concept of Historical Consciousness Applied to Museums: A Case Study of the Exhibition People of Québec ... Then and Now / Pierre-Luc Collin, Claire Cousson, and Lucie Daignault

Part 3: Instrumentalizing Historical Consciousness

10 Controversy as Catalyst: Administrative Framing, Public Perception, and the Late-Twentieth-Century Exhibitionary Complex in Canada / Phaedra Livingstone

11 The Gift of Historical Consciousness: Museums, Art, and Poverty / Simon Knell

12 Museums and the Responsibility Gap / Robert R. Janes

13 Out of the Box and Into the Fold: Museums, Human Rights, and Changing Pedagogical Practices / Jennifer Carter

14 Epilogue: The Blossoming of Canadian Museology and Historical Consciousness / Phaedra Livingstone and Viviane Gosselin

Index

About the Author

Viviane Gosselin is curator of contemporary culture at the Museum of Vancouver and associate researcher at the UBC Centre for the Study of Historical Consciousness.

Phaedra Livingstone is a museologist who has worked in, taught about, and conducted research on museums and heritage settings internationally since 1990.

Contributors: Susan Ashley, Jill Baird, Jennifer Carter, Pierre-Luc Collin, Claire Cousson, Lucie Daignault, Lon Dubinsky, Damara Jacobs-Morris, Robert R. Janes, Simon Knell, Marie-Claude Larouche, Lianne McTavish, Del Muise, Laurajane Smith, and Brenda Trofanenko

Reviews

Viviane Gosselin and Phaedra Livingstone have created, for the first time ever, a book that looks at the relationship between museums and the concept of historical consciousness. In doing so, they are pioneering both museological and historical literature, and greatly contributing to an under-researched field.
*Museum Management and Curatorship*