Introducing Museum Studies is the first introductory textbook for museum studies. Providing a wide-ranging and original overview of museums from a historical and contemporary perspective, it covers key topics such as the history of the museum, the museum as a public space, visitors, and communities. Museums are becoming increasingly reflexive given the awareness of the social and political role they serve and their ability to reflect the problems of our time. Gordon Fyfe shows how and why this reflexivity creates a need for historical perspective on current practices: on the one hand museums are enmeshed in a changing world and on the other hand they exhibit change. At their best, museums help us to see that everything is on the move and that change is the natural order of things.
