Museum Studies for a Post-Pandemic World: Mentoring, Collaborations, and Interactive Knowledge Transfer in Times of Transformation

Museum Studies for a Post-Pandemic World demonstrates that digital literacy, creativity, and resilience, as the COVID-19 pandemic has so vividly illustrated, are now vital components of the classroom and of the curator’s toolbox.

Museum studies students are increasingly asked to engage with new team dynamics and collaborative models, often relocated to the virtual world. Authored by academics, cultural heritage partners, students, and alumni, the chapters in this volume move beyond a consideration of the impact of digitisation to envision new strategies and pedagogies for fuller, more sustainable approaches to cultural literacy, exhibition, and visitor engagement. International case studies present models of collaborative practices between teams of diverse sizes and professional backgrounds. The volume demonstrates that the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the use of a variety of pedagogically and culturally significant hybrid and virtual models that provide innovative learning modalities to meet the needs of future generations of digital native patrons. This book offers meaningful strategies that will help academic and cultural heritage institutions engaged in museum studies to survive -- and even thrive -- in the face of future disasters by expanding programme accessibility beyond the physical confines of their buildings.

Museum Studies for a Post-Pandemic World will be of interest to students and researchers engaged in the study of museums, the arts, cultural management, and education. It should also be of interest to museum practitioners around the world.

Leda Cempellin (Research Doctor, Università degli studi di Parma) is a Professor of Art History, Coordinator of Museum Studies minor and current Associate Director of the School of Design at South Dakota State University. She published The Ideas, Identify and Art of Daniel Spoerri with Vernon Press (2017).

Pat Crawford is a Professor of Landscape Architecture and the Director of the School of Design at South Dakota State University. She earned her Master’s in Landscape Architecture at the Kansas State University and her PhD in Environmental Design and Planning at Arizona State University. She coauthored several APLU reports on employability skills for the series From Academia to the Workforce.