Monthly Archive for October, 2011

Editing Services Now Available

Published on October 31, 2011 in Journal and Newsletter. 0 Comments

The International Journal of the Inclusive Museum is pleased to offer editing services for authors who would like to have their work professionally edited. The services offered can help authors at the point of initial submission or during the revision stage, before the final submission of their paper. Please contact journals@onmuseums.com for more information.

The editing process

  1. Email journals@onmuseums.com to express your interest in having your paper edited.
  2. The Commissioning Editor of the Journal will review your paper and provide you with a quote.
  3. Once you accept the quote, the Commissioning Editor will assign a copyeditor to your paper.
  4. Within 7-14 business days of your confirmed payment, you will receive a copy of your edited paper via email.

Disclaimer

Please note that this service is not mandatory for publication in a Common Ground journal. Using this service does not guarantee acceptance for publication, nor are you obliged to submit your edited manuscript to a Common Ground journal.

Request More Information

Dresden Museum of Military History by Daniel Libeskind

Published on October 29, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Dezeen magazine

New York architect Daniel Libeskind has driven a pointed steel and glass shard through the heart of the war museum in Dresden, which reopens on October 14 after a 22-year closure.

The five-storey triangular wedge extends the existing galleries of the Museum of Military History, making it the largest museum in Germany.

The sharp tip of the structure points eastwards, to the source of firebombs dropped during the war, while a 30 metre-high rooftop viewing platform provides a view towards the city skyline in the west.

To Read More…

Call for Book Reviewers

Published on October 28, 2011 in Book and Newsletter. 0 Comments Tags: .

Common Ground Publishing is seeking distinguished peer reviewers to evaluate book manuscripts submitted to the On Museums Book Series.

As part of our commitment to intellectual excellence and a rigorous review process, Common Ground sends book manuscripts that have received initial editorial approval to peer reviewers to further evaluate and provide constructive feedback. The comments and guidance that these reviewers supply is invaluable to our authors and an essential part of the publication process.

Common Ground recognizes the important role of referees by acknowledging book reviewers as members of the On Museums Book Series Editorial Review Board for a period of at least one year. The list of members of the Editorial Review Board will be posted on our website. In addition, Common Ground also offers a US$200 voucher for each completed review which meets the standards set out by the Commissioning Editor at the commencement of assignment. Vouchers may be used in the Common Ground Bookstore or for registration at one of our international conferences.

If you would like to referee book manuscripts submitted to On Museums, please email.  Please make sure to include:

  1. a brief description of your professional credentials
  2. a list of your areas of interest and expertise
  3. a copy of your CV with current contact details

If we feel you are qualified and we require refereeing for manuscripts within your purview, we will contact you.

Stay Away From My Afterlife!

Published on October 23, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From bidoun.org

A walk through the Egyptian Museum in Cairo with licensed tour guide Ahmed Mohammed, at the rate of 150 Egyptian pounds per hour.

Ahmed Mohammed
You see this statue? Man or woman?

Bidoun
Man?

A man with breasts?

So it’s a woman?

A woman with beard?

I have no idea — Transgender?

It’s Hatshepsut. Better to say, Hot- Chicken-Soup. So complex. She’s the only queen that ruled the country. She married her half-brother. Her husband took another woman, so she poisoned everybody in the food. She presented herself as pharaoh, dressed as a man. She wanted to say there’s no difference between man and woman. In my opinion, she was a very successful leader, but she lost herself as a woman.

It seems like there are quite a few visitors to the museum today.

No, the museum is really empty because there are no Russians in here. The Russians haven’t started coming back yet, and seventy-five percent of all tourists to Egypt are Russian. Nobody knows why.

Here, I will show you the organs. You know Cheops? Inside there are five vital organs — you saw them?

To Read More…

Museum Admission as an Expression of Mission

Published on October 16, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

By Claire Ruud from Glasstire

As a follow-up to my article, “Mind Games, Museums, and Suggested Donations,” I’ve been looking into the ways that museums set their general admission prices. Discussions regarding museum admission often carry moral undertones. Recently, editorials have expressed the usual mild outrage at first the Met’s and now MoMA’s price hikes from $20 to $25. (See, for example, A Balancing Act for Museums in the NYT and MoMA’s Price Increase is Horrible on The Awl. On a side note, in honor of the price hikes, Forbes published a nice, short piece on customer segmentation in museums.) The sentiment is, “Museums should be free,” or “Museums should always be affordable for all.” But perpetual free (or cheap) admission is not intrinsic to the idea of the museum in the United States. Public museums are few and far between here. Our museums are private institutions founded, often, on the collections of private individuals. Some museums choose to express their mission through free admission, and others do not.

To Read More…

Nazi-Plundered Jewish Museum Shows Lost Collection in Berlin

Published on October 9, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

The entrance to the first Berlin Jewish Museum, which opened in 1933. Photo courtesy of Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin - Centrum Judaicum via Bloomberg

By Catherine Hickley from Bloomberg

Berlin’s first Jewish Museum opened in January 1933, just one week before the Nazis seized power. Karl Schwarz, its founder, realized immediately that the museum was doomed and his life was in danger.

He fled Berlin for Tel Aviv months after opening the museum, which he’d worked for years to turn into a reality.

“The new museum had only just been founded and I had to leave it!” he wrote in his memoir. “But these considerations were hardly worth anything; much more important things were at stake — my life, my work, my children’s future. I knew absolutely: There was nothing to hope for here.”

Almost 80 years and much painstaking research later, the Centrum Judaicum, on the site of the former museum, has reassembled some of the lost art for an exhibition titled “The Berlin Jewish Museum (1933-1938): Traces of a Lost Collection.”

To Read More…

2,000 Years After They Were Written, Dead Sea Scrolls Go Online

Published on October 3, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

By Matt Friedman from msnbc.com via the Associated Press

Two thousand years after they were written and decades after they were found in desert caves, some of the world-famous Dead Sea Scrolls went online for the first time on Monday in a project launched by Israel’s national museum and web giant Google.

The appearance of five of the most important Dead Sea scrolls on the Internet is part of a broader attempt by the custodians of the celebrated manuscripts — who were once criticized for allowing them to be monopolized by small circles of scholars — to make them available to anyone with a computer.

The scrolls include the biblical Book of Isaiah, the manuscript known as the Temple Scroll, and three others. Surfers can search high-resolution images of the scrolls for specific passages, zoom in and out, and translate verses into English.

To Read More…