Contributes to scholarship on agenda-building and public controversies, and on print media coverage of controversial art by examining media coverage of Robert Mapplethorpe's photography exhibit and the controversy that emerged surrounding National Endowment for the Arts funding. Finds two ironic outcomes of the controversy: increased museum…

Explores the design choices for Network Earth, a museum exhibit that introduced the general public to computer networks and related issues (and was designed by a team with no formal training). Notes that although the design process and general goals were similar to those at other sites studied and in the literature, certain practices differed…

Discusses the National Technical Museum in Prague. Museum holdings include 60,000 items, a vast amount of archived materials, and some 250,000 books that are used by research historians, modern industry, and polytechnic schools as well as the general public. (SAH)

Discussion of science education focuses on Internet resources for teachers, including lesson plans, as well as for students. Highlights include museum Web sites; NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) sites; curriculum resources for science education; sites about gender equity; and links to other resources. (LRW)

The Museums and Galleries Lifelong Learning Initiative demonstrated ways to engage youth, families, and older adults in interactive learning in museums. Examples include creation of photo displays in an art gallery, family participation in exhibit curation, and older adults' reminiscence sessions using museum artefacts. (SK)

A number of threats to the integrity of digital image information can be identified when standard practices in museums and archives are examined. Systematic consideration of risk factors can inform the creation of procedures and application of security that works to guarantee the reliability and accuracy of digital image assets. (Author/AEF)

Investigates children's knowledge about animals by examining the mental models they reveal through their talk when they see animal representations. Presents a study in which representations were provided by robotic models in a museum, preserved animals in a museum, and preserved animals borrowed from a museum and presented in a school setting.…

Describes a study that examined an experimental multi-site image distribution scheme among museums and universities in California, The Museum Educational Site Licensing Project, whose content was primarily digital images and metadata. Discusses barriers to using digital images; digital image distribution; comparing digital images to analog slide…

Reports on a research project to build a new indexing technique, integrating experiences in database searching and indexing into a matrix model based on Internet use. Emphasizes the need for improving Web usability in specific domains and gives two examples from Italian Web sites, one for museums and one for health information. (Author/LRW)

This essay considers the current impetus toward "democratizing" contemporary art exhibition practice with regards to Deweyan/Shusterman pragmatist aesthetics. The author proposes that Dewey might regard fondly new initiatives at museums and art centers such at the Tate Modern and the Baltic, both which, through various curatorial and programming…

Over twenty-five thousand American Indians from over five hundred Indigenous nations journeyed from their homes to the National Mall in Washington DC to witness the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) on September 25, 2005. They journeyed to participate in the largest gathering of Native peoples in modern history, to…

This paper contains the full text of an article first published in 2002, about a year and a half before the completion of the National Museum of the American Indian building on the mall in Washington DC and well before the celebrations that accompanied the opening of its doors to the public on September 21, 2004. That essay concentrated upon the…

In this article I examine Dewey's ambivalent attitude toward art museums criticizing their existence as repositories for the rich, while exploring their educational potential by analyzing Dewey's comments on museums in various texts, by relating his ideas to museum education theories and practice of the time, and by exploring his involvement with…

This case study looked specifically at how museum educators were able to connect with members of the surrounding community through the "Parents Involved, Pigeons Everywhere" program and how they met (or did not meet) the following goals: (1) Identify successful ways of attracting local, Latino families to the museum as visitors and program…

In this paper, I address some of the unique challenges of studies of learning in museums through a microanalytic case study of meaning-making among a group of youth and a curator. Through an examination of youths' forms of participation in one exhibit, I illustrate local meaning making achieved through multiple modalities--by doing, talking, and…