Two books

In the last couple of weeks I’ve received a couple of books. I’ve not read much of them as my PhD reading has been disappearing down Chawton story rabbit holes. But I thought I might share them here, while they are still fresh.

The first especially, because if you buy The Museum Blog Book, you’ll be buying my words! (I won’t get any money, the sum total of my payment is the book itself, the delivery of that was a pleasant enough surprise though.) Its a chunky book, almost 700 pages of bloggy goodness. As I mentioned, I haven’t had time to read much. Given the relative shortness of each piece it feels like a bedside book that I should dip into of an evening. Some of the title intrigue me though, so I thought I’d post a few links here. If you follow them you’ll read them before I do:

Visitors, apps, post visit experiences … and a rethink of digital engagement, seems the closest to my own work and my own point of view. Museums, we need to talk, is a great looking, challenging but loving poem, from technologist Chad Weinard. Is negotiating not a museum thing? intrigues because I think the collegiate culture of cultural heritage sometimes obfuscates plain speaking and can inspire passive aggression.  I have no idea yet whether that’s what the piece is about though.

I have to mention Michelle Obama, Activism and Museum Employment, if only because a colleague thought the erstwhile First Lady had actually written the piece, and that I was sharing a book with her, which indeed would have been cool. It’s no less cool to the sharing a book with Rose Paquet Kinsley, Aletheia Wittman and Porchia Moore, the actual authors. I’m intrigued by the title of On Place and Proximity, but I’ll likely read The New Museum Conversation is Not About You first.

The second book was handed to me the day before yesterday. I’d met its author, Clare Hughes of Feilden Clegg Bradly Studios through work a couple of years ago and was very impressed. Since then, she has been around the world with Winston Churchill Memorial Trust bursary, examining the museum experiences and postulating upon its future. She spoke at an internal National Trust conference last month, and copies of her book, Made You Look, Made You Stare, were prizes for our Move Teach and Inspire awards. Its a really accessible and insightful illustrated record of her museological  travels.