Micromuseums

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Coordinator and lecturer: Professor Fiona Candlin
• Assessment: a 5000-word essay (100%)

It is estimated that 75% of the world’s museums opened after World War II. In the UK, the number of museums more than tripled between 1970 and 2000. These new museums covered a diverse range of subjects from Bakelite to bunkers, lifeboats to local history, and witchcraft to Quaker tapestry. By far the majority were independent, over half were small in that they attracted less than 10,000 visitors a year, and most were founded by community and special interest groups, and to a slightly lesser degree by families or small business. Unlike local authority or national museums they were often located in small towns or in rural areas. In many cases, they actively told the story of those places.

This new wave of ‘micromuseums’ changed the profile of the museum sector. In this module we will examine some of their key characteristics and consider their implications for definitions of museums, museum practice and for the experience of visiting museums.

Indicative module syllabus

• The Museums Boom
• Defining terms
• Why open a museum?
• How to open a museum
• Place
• Life history on display
• Problems with professionalism
• Experimental and online museums

By the end of this module, you will have:

• an enhanced understanding of how and why micromuseums are established, by whom and how they are maintained
• a more expansive conception of museum practice
• critically reviewed the methodologies for studying micromuseums
• engaged constructively in current debates concerning the discipline and its changing nature
• a more detailed knowledge of specific museums.

• Candlin, Fiona. Micromuseology: An Analysis of Small Independent Museums. London: Bloomsbury, 2016.
• Hudson, Kenneth. ‘The Museum Refuses to Stand Still’. In Museum Studies : An Anthology of Contexts, edited by Bettina Messias Carbonell, 85-91. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004.
• Klimaszewski, Cherly and Nyce, James M. ‘Towards a Study of “Unofficial” Museums’. In Annual Review of Cultural Heritage Informatics: 2012-2013, edited by Samantha K. Hastings. Rowman and Littlefield, 2014.
• McTavish, Lianne. Voluntary Detours: Small Town and Rural Museums in Alberta. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020.
• McTavish, Lianne. ‘Middle of Nowhere: Contesting Rural Heritage at the World Famous Gopher Hole Museum’. In International Journal of Heritage Studies 24, no. 7 (2018): 764-80.
• Samuel, Raphael. Theatres of Memory. London: Verso, 1994.
• Soares, Bruno, Brown, Karen and Nazor, Olga (eds). Defining Museums of the 21st Century: Plural Experiences. Paris: ICOM International Committee for Museology, 2018.
• Stone-Gordon, Tammy. Private History in Public: Exhibition and the Settings of Everyday Life. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2010.
• Williams, Raymond. ‘Culture Is Ordinary’. In The Raymond Williams Reader, edited by John Higgins. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.