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At Hospitality's Threshold: From Social Inclusion to Exilic Education
Author(s) -
Doron Edith
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
curator: the museum journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.312
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 2151-6952
pISSN - 0011-3069
DOI - 10.1111/j.2151-6952.2009.tb00342.x
Subject(s) - visitor pattern , hospitality , inclusion (mineral) , politics , multiculturalism , sociology , object (grammar) , work (physics) , ethnography , natural (archaeology) , media studies , aesthetics , visual arts , pedagogy , social science , political science , tourism , art , anthropology , history , law , engineering , archaeology , computer science , mechanical engineering , programming language , artificial intelligence
Describing actual museum‐wide events developed for the culturally charged arena of the Brooklyn Children's Museum, this article explores the philosophical and pedagogical double binds that have brought multiculturalism to a political impasse. Museums have strived to be valued resources in an increasingly diverse society. In aspiring to broaden their audience base, their work has shifted from developing educational policies that are “object‐centered” to those that are “community‐centered” — a change of strategy affecting everything from programs to exhibit design. Children's museums — distinct (if not marginalized) from the serious work of the traditional art or ethnographic or natural history museum — know and indeed say in their very name — “ children's museum” — that they are for the sake of someone and not about something . They have always already been attuned to the visitor at the threshold.