Our books

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Our Greatest Artefact: The City. Essays on cities and museums about them. Marlen Mouliou, Ian Jones, Eric Sandweiss eds. Istanbul: CAMOC, 2013. This is an ebook of papers from our conferences in Istanbul, Shanghai, and Berlin. published by CAMOC and available here for free download.

Essays:

• Foreword, Ian Jones
• City museums, museum cities, modern cities, Giorgio Piccinato
• City museum, community and temporality: a historical perspective, Jean-Louis Postula
• This time it’s personal: city museums and contemporary urban life, Rainey Tisdale
• Involving citizens: a snapshot of some European city museums, Layla Betti
• City museums in the web 2.0 era: current challenges and possibilities, Marlen Mouliou
• The megacity: literary documentaries and urban topographies in the 21st century, Prachi More
• Feeling at home? A city with room for everyone?, Jette Sandahl
• Of cities and their faces: pavement exhibits and street museums in Québec City and Tunis, Habib Saidi
• The diversity of urban life and the Carnival of Hammarkullen: how global meets local in a suburb of the city of Gothenburg, Sweden, Mats Sjölin
• The City Museum of São Paulo: a new design for city museums in the era of the megacity, Maria Ignez Mantovani Franco
• A new urban cultural landmark, Zhang Lan
• City – Museum – Monument: presenting the city of Thessaloniki in the White Tower, Anastasia Tourta and Nicolaos Vranikas
• Understanding the Asian Culture Complex development in Gwangju within the city’s changing social and economic environment, Geuntae Park

City Museums and City Development. Ian Jones, Robert R. Macdonald, Darryl McIntyre eds. Lanham: Altamira Press, 2008.

Contributions from: Marie Louise Bourbeau, Caroline Butler-Bowden, Szu-yun Chang, Chi-jung Chu, Anja Dauschek, Geoffrey Edwards, Max Hebditch, Susan Hunt, Ian Jones, Jack Lohman, Marlen Mouliou, Gulchachak Rakhimzyanovna Nazipova, Chet Orloff, Georges Prévélakis, and Eric Sandweiss. 978-0-7591-1180-6 (hardback), 978-0-7591-1181-3 (paperback). Available for purchase directly from Altamira Press (there is a 15% discount for ICOM members).

Traditionally, city museums have been keepers of city history. Many have been exercises in nostalgia, reflecting city pride. However, a new generation of museums focuses increasingly on the city's present and future as well as its past, and on the city in all of its diversity, challenges, and possibilities. Above all, these museums are gateways to understanding the city—our greatest and most complex creation and the place where half the world's population now lives. In this book, experts in the field explore this 'new' city museum and the challenge of contributing positively to city development.

Endorsements:

"Cities need museums like people need memories: not as a repository of their past, but as a token of their identity and a guide to the future. Here is a unique survey of city museums from five continents to stimulate discussion about such museums' varied functions - from archiving to development workshops." 

Joseph Rykwert, Paul Philippe Cret Professor of Architecture Emeritus and Professor of Art History at the University of Pennsylvania and author, among other works, of The Seduction of Place: The City in the Twenty-First Century; The Idea of a Town: The Anthropology of Urban Form in Rome, Italy, and The Ancient World; The Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture.

"This book brings together the latest thinking and scholarship on a topic that is critical to the future of all museums. City museums, more than any other topic specific cultural institutions, carry not only the seeds of memory but bear the responsibility of reflecting the increasingly diverse populations they serve. These museums, through their programs, bring relevance to their various publics, serve as places of discussion and civil discourse, and ultimately inform and enlighten their citizens."

Sal Cilella, Director, Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, USA

Urban Life and Museums. Isabelle Vinson ed. A special edition of UNESCO’s Museum International, No 231, Paris September 2006. Papers from our Boston conference. Available for download through Wiley Online Library.

Essays:

• Real places in a virtual world, Robert Archibald
• City Museums: Do we have a role in shaping the global community?, Jack Lohman
• History, Ethnicity and Citizenship: The Role of the History Museum in the Multi-ethnic Country, Victoria Dickenson
• Museums of Cities and Urban Futures, Duncan Grewcock
• Museum, Motion and Emotion in the City, François Côté & Philippe Dubé (LAMIC) and Geoffrey Edwards & Marie-Louise Bourbeau (Learning contexts)
• The City Museum and its Values, Tatiana Gorbacheva
• A Museum without Walls, Helena Friman
• The Humanitas in Toronto: a project story, Rita Davies
• City Museum, Society and Conflict: the Belfast experience, Mike Houlihan
• Place- Based Education in an Urban Environment, Maggie Russell-Ciardi
• Barriers and Drivers: Building Audience at the Immigration Museum, Melbourne, Australia, Barbara Horn
• Boston on the Frontier of the New Urban Museum, Anne Emerson
• The Intangible Dimension: from the museum to the city. The case of São Paulo, Ana Rodrigues
• Shemanovsky Yamal-Nenets Museum: Prospects and Challenges, Sergey Grishin
• The Multitude of Cultures in the Museums of Kazan, Gennady Mukhanov and Gulchachak Nazipova

City Museums and the Future of the City Proceedings in Korean and English of the CAMOC conference in Seoul, Seoul History Museum, Seoul 2010

A Better City Proceedings in Chinese and English of the CAMOC conference in Shanghai 2010, Zhang Lan ed., Shanghai History Museum, Shanghai 2010