This web publication, Understanding Museums: Australian Museums and Museology, is a history of museums in Australia since the 1970s. It focuses on the changes that have taken place in Australian museums of all kinds and takes as a source of inspiration the Pigott Report on museums and national collection, which was published in 1975.

The contributing authors – all of whom are outstanding and most also longstanding museum practitioners – delve into the depth and breadth of Australian museum collections. They both reflect and reflect on an increasingly vital museum community, one that responds to Australia’s rapidly changing society, engages in important debates and contributes to lifelong learning. And in so doing, these authors not only examine the realised legacies of the Pigott Report but also describe developments that the Pigott Committee could not possibly have foreseen.

Combined, these essays promote the very real contribution that museums are making to contemporary Australian culture and society. They articulate the shared goals of the diverse sectors of the museum industry and reveal the essential confidence that museum people have in their collections, programs and audiences.

This book is for museum professionals, students of museology and anyone interested in cultural collections and heritage.

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Contents

Issues in museology

• Introduction by Des Griffin and Leon Paroissien
• Museums in Australia: from a new era to a new century by Des Griffin and Leon Paroissien
• 'The orphans of government': The Committee of Inquiry on Museums and National Collections (The Pigott Report), 1974–75 by Anne-Marie Condé
• Conservation in Australian museums by Ian Cook et al.
• Digitisation to social media by Des Griffin
• Australian museums and the technology revolution by Tim Hart and Martin Hallett

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Indigenous people and museums

• Introduction by Des Griffin and Leon Paroissien
• Ethnographic museums and collections: from the past into the future by John E Stanton
• Transforming culture: Indigenous art and Australian art museums by Bernice Murphy
• Repatriation: the end of the beginning by Michael Pickering and Phil Gordon

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Museums and history

• Museums and history: Introduction by Leon Paroissien and Des Griffin
• War and Australia's museums by Peter Stanley
• History in the new millennium or problems with history? by Tim Sullivan
• Museums, history and the creation of memory, 1970–2008 by Margaret Anderson
• Redeveloping ports, rejuvenating heritage: Australian maritime museums by Kevin Jones
• Museums and multiculturalism: too vague to understand, too important to ignore by Viv Szekeres

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Art museums

• Introduction by Leon Paroissien
• Art museums in Australia: a personal account by Daniel Thomas
• International exhibitions by Caroline Turner
• Collecting works on paper: specialisation at risk? by Anne Kirker

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Museums and science

• Introduction by Des Griffin
• Museums and the environment by Douglass F Hoese
• Interactive science centres in Australia by Michael M Gore and Susan M Stocklmayer

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Regional museums

• Introduction by Leon Paroissien and Des Griffin
• The development of regional galleries by Margaret Rich
• Let a thousand flowers bloom: museums in regional Australia by Kylie Winkworth
• Drawing people together: the local and regional museum movement in Australia by Kimberley Webber et al.

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Museums, education and visitor experience

• Introduction: learning, the visiting experience and the art museum as educator by Des Griffin and Leon Paroissien
• ‘Protecting the past, safeguarding the future’: museum studies, the profession and museum practice in Australia by Jennifer Barrett
• What's driving children's cultural participation? by Barbara Piscitelli
• The museum education mix: students, teachers and museum educators by Janette Griffin
• Family visitors to museums in Australia by Lynda Kelly

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Image credits (left to right): Visitors in front of Kaapa Tjampitjinpa's 1975 work The Storm Water Dreaming in the Papunya Painting exhibition (2008); horological conservator working on a clock made in the 1700s for the Australian Journeys gallery (2009); installation of the giant Griffin puppets in the Landmarks gallery (2011). Photos: National Museum of Australia

Publication history: Understanding Museums was published in two tranches: the first in June 2011 and the second in October 2011.