The heritage industry within the last few years has been undergoing a number of alterations. A number of factors have forced professionals to reassess and adapt the ways they work. As such museums have been assessing their practices in order to survive on increasingly reduced budgets, staff numbers and in some cases time. With all these changes what has been happening? Outreach programmes have been the focus of change within museums over the last few years. This practice has been singled out as an area that can be altered or lost due to its lack of direct return. However, is this lack of return due to the practice or its shortage of appropriate evaluation? This research focuses on the county of Hampshire; its museums and their outreach programmes. It explores the impact of funding, funding organisations and evaluation on outreach within this area. At its heart it looks to introduce a move away from monetary based evaluations towards well-being or social impact. The four case studies illustrate how facets of impact are not evaluated and subsequently lost through the current techniques. Ultimately, the major impacts of this practice are not the ones evaluated presently but those skirted over. Therefore, more appropriate evaluation should be created that captures all the impacts of outreach practices, in order to effectively determine if these programmes are viable within museums.

The use of the ‘commission-accession’ principle as a mechanism for sustainable collecting in public museums and galleries has been significantly under-researched, only recently soliciting attention from national funding bodies in the United Kingdom (UK). This research has assessed an unfolding situation and provided a body of current evaluative evidence for commission-based acquisitions and a model for curators to use in future contemporary art purchases. ‘Commission-accession’ is a practice increasingly used by European and American museums yet has seen little uptake in the UK. Very recent examples demonstrate that new works produced via commissioning which then enter permanent collections, have significant financial and audience benefits that UK museums could harness, by drawing on the expertise of local and national commissioning organisations. Very little evaluative information is available on inter-institutional precedents in the United States (US) or ‘achat par commande’ in France. Neither is there yet literature that investigates the ambition for and viability of such models in the UK. This thesis addresses both of these areas, and provides evaluative case studies that will be of particular value to curators who seek sustainable ways to build their contemporary art collections. It draws on a survey of 82 museums and galleries across the UK conducted for this research, which provide a picture of where and how ‘commission-accession’ has been applied, and demonstrates its impacts as a strategy. In addition interviews with artists and curators in the UK, US and France on the social, economic and cultural implications of ‘commission-accession’ processes were undertaken. These have shed new light on issues inherent to the commissioning of contemporary art such as communication, trust, and risk as well as drawing attention to the benefits and challenges involved in commissioning as of yet unmade works of art.

Of central importance to this thesis is the way security measures contradict the process through which museums have been seeking to divest themselves of theoretical hierarchies and value judgments in recent years. A context for investigation is established that considers how a perceptible increase in art theft, complicated by the escalating value of individual objects and the proliferation of museums as represented by a rise in attendance figures has produced a climate of vulnerability for arts collections around the world. In response, museums are installing unprecedented levels of security that are having a significant impact on established viewing conditions and redefining museum space. Further hindering this situation is the disparity between the fields of museology and museum security. These two fields have grown simultaneously, yet independently of one another producing a significant paradox between museum rhetoric and practice. To address the disconnection, this thesis seeks to make museum security relevant to academic discourse by aligning features related to the safeguarding of collections with contemporary museological considerations. Taking the void left behind by a stolen object as a point of departure, this thesis examines the ways in which theft alters the relationship between viewer, object and space in the museum setting. Three major case studies each form a chapter exploring the impact of the theft on established viewing conditions. As the first art theft of the modern era, the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, Paris (1911) creates an historic precedence for this investigation allowing for the examination of how conventions based upon exclusivity were dismantled by the theft, only to be reproduced by a legacy of increasingly prohibitive security measures. The theft of thirteen objects from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (1990) is used to address the implications of theft on a fixed and introspective collection, and in particular upon institutional identity and public memory. The theft of the Scream and Madonna from the Munch Museum, Oslo (2004) and its subsequent security upgrade reveal a negation of institutional transparency and the birth of a new security aesthetic. An analysis of each space is balanced against material gathered from a variety of visual, textual and ephemeral sources to produce a developed understanding of affected space.

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The aim of this study is to explore the process that shaped the identity of peripheral art museums in Israel during decade the 1990s. This process is examined though the eyes of the curators who artistically guided and directed two of these museums, the Janco Dada Museum in Ein Hod and the Ein Harod Museum of Art at Kibbutz Ein Harod. Both museums are non-profit organizations and this study is the first to seek to understand the identity of these two small but significant art museums located in villages in the north of Israel. The research examines the meaning of the identity of the museums by drawing upon theories of museology, centre and periphery, personal and group identity and organization identity. This research is based on knowledge that is personal, unique and subjective. It is conducted using an inductive approach towards gathering, analysing and interpreting data. The research utilizes a case study approach in order to provide an explanation for the cultural organization of the museum and for the attitude of the curators. This is documentary research that is based on only one source, the museum's archives which are examined according to multi- method procedures for gathering data. The evidence showed that in both cases the process of constructing the identity of the art museums links the personal views as well as the professional aims of the curators and their activities. These activities link the identity of the art museum to the natural setting. In addition, these activities, in both cases, link the identity of the museum to the relationship of the centre and periphery. In addition, both curators wished to differentiate their museum from the centre. In the research process new links were created between diverse scientific disciplines such as museology and social science and theories derived from different fields such as art history, sociology, and centre and periphery studies. These links, contribute new insights into our understanding of museology.

The work carried out in this research concerns the use of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy in relation to learning, experience, and intervention. The research was carried out in two stages. First, by working with two groups of young people from Valleys Kids, a charity organization located in the heart of the Rhondda South Wales, the first phase consists of a psychogeographical dérive of Cardiff Museum, Wales. Based on the Situationist International approach to studying the emotional effects of place and environment, psychogeography allows young people to become attentive to their sense and emotions in relation to art and culture. This enables researchers, art educationists and those working in the area of youth arts to produce pedagogical documentation which records the processes of lived experience. The second stage of the study consists of a series of poetry workshops: informing the areas of education, micro-politics, and therapeutic intervention. By developing a complex theoretical scaffold using Deleuze, Spinoza, Peirce and Bergson, this research considers art as a relational encounter (Bourriaud, 2002) and approaches it as an unrestricted pattern and structure of experience which flows from perception to recognition (Dewey, 2005). From Deleuze and Spinoza the research sets the empirical inquiry within a bodily logic. As a constructivist approach towards subjectivity and experience, this allows us to look at young people’s encounters with cultural artefacts as produced through a multiplicity of processes and practices. Peircean semiotics permits us to explore how these processes of lived experience communicate through a variety of both signifying and a-signifying registers. In addition, Bergson’s phenomenology of minds allows researchers to detail the relation of lived experience to time and the material body. The result is a form of empirical inquiry that allows researchers to understand the meaning of empiricism in relation to what experience is. In aligning itself with the pedagogical strategies and outreach initiatives currently being deliver by the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA) Independent Studies Program (PEI) this research addresses the gap which exists between museum institution and university. Accordingly, by re-drawing its boundaries and modifying its cognitive architecture, practice-led research in the area of youth arts can transform the museum into a workshop for experimentation (Bourriaud, 1998) and challenge the curatorial hegemony of the exhibition apparatus. Indeed, by engaging in experimental practices with young people, and working at the intersection between theory and practice, we can re-evaluate our perceptions of what art is for, and how art might be treated in a devolved museum and gallery space.

A recent shift to a more performative and relational understanding of the museum and its practices can be witnessed in the field of museum studies. This shift reimagines the museum as experience, process or performance, and is reflected in what has been termed the 'post-museum'. The post-museum challenges the representational practices of the museum, and introduces a potential 'liqud imaginary' which dissolves the traditional boundaries of what constitutes a museum. While these ideas point to relevant changes in the way museums are perceived and practiced, the field has so far failed to explore the implications of this shift for the practice of museum research. This study examines the potential of the post-museum for developing new approaches to research practices. It contributes to the field of museum studies by exploring creative research methods that qualify as site-responsive, experimental means of critically engaing with the museum. These creative methods of research are developed on-site at the National Maritime Museum Greenwich, London. Under-represented in the museological literature, maritime museums provide potent opportunity as sites for experimentation into creative, more-than-representational approaches to museum research. The study examines creative research methodologies through the embodied mode of inhabitation, which it conceptualises through the notions of dwelling and travelling. Drawing on the concept of the 'mariner's craft' from maritime literary criticism and so-called wet or liquid ontologies from human geography, the research explores the potential of post-museum thinking from a cross-disciplinary perspective. Inhabiting the Museum through creative-experimental doings, the thesis-in-motion maps out an uncertain voyage into the uncharted territories of creative maritime museum research, a voyage of exploration, intervention, and creativity.

This thesis is concerned with the concept of memory, its role in inter‐generational transmission, and identity formation, within the context of pre‐literate, small‐scale societies. It explores different mnemonic practices in relation to different perceptions of time, and the continuities or discontinuities (locational, temporal and symbolic) with the past they create, as part of exploring aspects of cultural cognition in prehistory. Through these three interrelated concepts – memory, time, and cognition – and their intricate relationships with material culture, especially architecture, landscapes, practical action and social life, the aim is to suggest a theoretical and methodological framework within which to explore how memory of the past was not only formed, maintained and transmitted but also transformed, concealed or ‘destroyed’ in the prehistoric present. The geographical and chronological framework of this study is provided by the rich archaeological record of early prehistoric Cyprus. Through the concept of memory, and using selected site data‐sets at different spatial and temporal scales, the objective is to offer a more textured narrative of socio‐cultural developments on the island that take into consideration the questions of how continuity and change are perceived and experienced, how individuals and communities ‘see’ themselves in history, and what some of the practices and material media are that shape autobiographical and social memory. Early Cypriot prehistory is characterised by a, largely, domestic landscape occupied by small‐scale communities, where public or monumental architecture as well as long‐lived tell sites are not explicitly attested. Rather than explaining away these ‘anomalies’, this thesis delves into the study of the ‘ordinary landscape’ of houses and communities in time and space and at different scales in accordance with our research aims. It, thus, diverges from the current archaeological research on memory and the monumental and regards architecture as a biographical object that encapsulates personal and communal histories. The analytical strategies that are employed in this study involve an examination of two closely related elements. First, the temporal depth of activities with regard to the life histories of buildings and people and how these intersect with larger patterns of social memory are explored. Secondly, through a topoanalysis, the spatiality and visual boundaries of remembering and forgetting, through the medium of architecture, are examined. Similar issues have recently attracted a lot of attention from many disciplines. In an attempt to link the various, often ambiguous, conceptualisations of memory – as a cognitive process, as a social construct or as an experiential domain – with archaeological ‘visibility’ and methodology this research utilises insights from a variety of cross‐disciplinary sources. This research is a contribution towards the past in the past approach by: a. building on these works and expanding our current understanding of issues of cultural transmission and memory by striking a better balance between ‘inscription’ and ‘incorporated practices’ social and biographical memory, material and ephemeral contexts (chapters 1, 4‐5). This is attempted by using an explicit multi‐scalar approach to the material and a practice‐based interpretative framework (chapters 2‐3); b. demonstrating contextually the limitations and possibilities of the theoretical endeavour in practical contexts through dealing with the ambiguities and incompleteness of archaeological assemblages, depositional patterns and stratigraphic sequences, as well as with palimpsests of activities in settlement contexts, with the underlying aim to understand the various dimensions of continuity and discontinuity (chapters 6‐8); c. critically examining concepts from a rapidly growing multi‐disciplinary literature and their often problematic applications to prehistoric material and juxtapose the Western model of memory with anthropological insights (chapter 9).

Taking a problematic user experience with ubiquitous annotation as its point of departure, this thesis defines and explores the design space for Social Object Labels (SOLs), small interactive displays aiming to support users' in-situ engagement with digital annotations of physical objects and places by providing up-to-date information before, during and after interaction. While the concept of ubiquitous annotation has potential applications in a wide range of domains, the research focuses in particular on SOLs in a museum context, where they can support the institution's educational goals by engaging visitors in the interpretation of exhibits and providing a platform for public discourse to complement official interpretations provided on traditional object labels. The thesis defines and structures the design space for SOLs, investigates how they can support social interpretation in museums and develops empirically validated design recommendations. Reflecting the developmental character of the research, it employs Design Research as a methodological framework, which involves the iterative development and evaluation of design artefacts together with users and other stakeholders. The research identifies the particular characteristics of SOLs and structures their design space into ten high-level aspects, synthesised from taxonomies and heuristics for similar display concepts and complemented with aspects emerging from the iterative design and evaluation of prototypes. It presents findings from a survey exploring visitors' mental models, preferences and expectations of commenting in museums and translates them into requirements for SOLs. It reports on scenario-based design activities, expert interviews with museum professionals, formative user studies and co-design sessions, and two empirical evaluations of SOL prototypes in a gallery environment. Pulling together findings from these research activities it then formulates design recommendations for SOLs and supports them with related evidence and implementation examples. The main contributions are (i) to delineate and structure the design space for SOLs, which helps to ground SOLs in the literature and understand them as a distinct display concept with its own characteristics; (ii) to explore, for the first time, a visitor perspective on commenting in museums, which can inform research, development and policies on user-generated content in museums and the wider cultural heritage sector; (iii) to develop empirically validated design recommendations, which can inform future research and development into SOLs and related display concept. The thesis concludes by summarising findings in relation to its stated research questions, restating its contributions from ubiquitous computing, domain and methodology perspectives, and discussing open issues and future work.

The principle objective of this study is to examine the conditions and contexts of critical design practice, specifically as it pertains to methods of identifying, presenting and producing critical design within the space of the museum exhibition. The analysis in this study seeks to reveal a better understanding of the working practices that underpin museums’ creative engagements with critical design practice while recognising the significance of critical design’s behaviours of questioning, possibilising, probabilising and activating that inform such engagements. A case is presented for combining several theoretical perspectives into a multi-layered conceptual framework for examining the ideas, approaches and conditions of both critical design and its circulation through the museum exhibition. In calling upon concepts from the art world as a means of developing a philosophical understanding of design, the concept of a ‘work of design’ is proposed to understand the shift in practice that has occurred over the past fifteen years. Furthermore, the emphasis on a ‘work of design’ is explicated through a conceptualisation of critical practice as both a design of reflexive modernity and a para-model of practice – a notable device for social and cultural research. Design’s circulation in the museum is problematised drawing upon theories of the curatorial to develop a model of the exhibition as a speculative activity that privileges critical thought, discourse, speculation and production. In this sense ‘the curatorial’ offers a space for multiple viewpoints and experiences which together create a collective endeavour that remains forever open to contestation and adjustment. Empirically, the study contributes insights into the diverse and contingent curatorial practices involved in communicating and disseminating critical design practice. The findings suggest that the new relationships that are being formed between critical design and the museum are reframing the exhibition as a tool for research – a transdisciplinary studio space whereby ideas are tested and projects take form through the performativity of multiple agents. Thus the museum is being approached as a context for experimentation; a space that exposes rather than displays, presents rather than represents, a performative space that points to a recoding of practice as production. In this way we can begin to consider the museum and its exhibitions as a model of emergence as they enter a discourse of performativity that actively engages with their subject rather than merely offering it for consumption. The result is a collective space for knowing and experiencing via the performativity of both critical design and the curatorial.