Museums and Communities Curators, Collections and Collaboration

Museums and Communities thoroughly and unflinchingly interrogates the widely touted goal of collaborative museum work, providing a realistic assessment of the risks and pitfalls, but also the incredible rewards that come with a deep curatorial commitment to working collaboratively. William Wood, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA All too often museums invoke the idea of "community" in naive and uncritical ways. Here at last is an attempt to complicate this construction, unpick its politics, and explore its dynamics in the context of museum exhibition, engagement and outreach. This book has much to teach us about how museums imagine their communities and reminds us of the need to develop more sophisticated approaches to collaborative museology. Paul Basu , University College London, UK