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Museums are at the heart of the nation's cultural life, bastions of Britishness in almost every major city and town. Together they detail myriad aspects of our heritage: from lawnmowers to cuckoo clocks, pencils to chairs, there seems to be no end to the subject matter deemed worthy of collection and public display. This overview of museums in Britain traces their development from'cabinets of curiosity'to large scale visitor attractions, taking in broad social shifts and trends as well as the collectors, eccentrics and visionaries and the legacies they have left behind.

Re-Imagining the Museum presents new interpretations of museum history and contemporary museum practices. Through a range of case studies from the UK, North America and Australia, Andrea Witcomb moves away from the idea that museums are always'conservative'to suggest they have a long history of engaging with popular culture and addressing a variety of audiences. She argues that museums are key mediators between high and popular culture and between government, media practitioners, cultural policy-makers and museums professionals. Analyzing links between museums and the media, looking at the role of museums in cities, and discussing the effects on museums of cultural policies, Re-Imagining the Museum presents a vital tool in the study of museum practice.

The book is concerned with how, during four demanding, dislocating and world-changing years, that most Victorian of institutions, the museum, was forced or prompted to meet the extraordinary test of war on the home front. Museums were no more immune from the pressures of war than any other institution and the changes in museums during this period, some long term, others transitory, do much to explain the nature and character of museums in Britain today. Their history reveals and reflects the broader history of the home front, and the willing, stumbling, confused efforts to do the right thing at the right time. They were far away from the fighting, the despair and degradation of the battlefields. But they were in some measure not only close to, but part of, a society carrying both its fears and expectations for those operating in a war which disassembled all their lives. The discussion covers the progress of museums from just before the advent of war in August 1914 to the immediate post-war period, 1920, although this is set in the context of museum developments before and after this span of time. Museums are considered in relation to the tensions and prevalent conditions of this period. Further, the nature and effect of the experience of them and the public services they provide, in both the long and short term, are examined.