Reculturing Museums

<p><em>Reculturing Museums</em> takes a unified sociocultural theoretical approach to analyze the many conflicts museums experience in the 21st century. Embracing conflict Ash asks: What can practitioners and researchers do to create the change they want to see when old systems remain stubbornly in place?</p><p>Using a unified sociocultural cultural-historical activity-theoretical approach to analyzing historically bound conflicts that plague museums each chapter is organized around a central contradiction including finances (<i>Who will pay for museums?</i>) demographic shifts (<em>Who will come to museums?</em>) the roles of narratives (<i>Whose story is it?</i>) ownership of objects (<em>Who owns the artifact?</em>) and learning and teaching (<i>What is learning and how can we teach equitably</i>?). The <i>reculturing</i> stance taken by Ash promotes social justice and equity ‘making change’ first within museums called <i>inreach</i> rather than outside the museum<i> </i>called<i> outreach</i>; challenges existing norms; is sensitive to neoliberal and deficit ideologies; and pays attention to the structure agency dialectic.</p><p>Reculturing Museums will be essential reading for academics students museum practitioners educational researchers and others who care about museums and want to ensure that <i>all</i> people have equal access to the activities objects and ideas residing in them. </p>