Recently, the management of museum shops has become a popular issue in museum sector. Many people think museum shops are an unique place in the museum, also a perfect place to buy gifts for other countries. The operation of museum shops is one of the emphasing areas and sets up many individual operating divisions, such as cultural goods developing divisions in the United States, United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. Today museum is not only for exhibition, but also become a place of collecting various resources to create more service to the public. New businesses such as museum shops has been developed by museums. This study attempts to discover the operation at mode of museum shops and the changellages of museum shops. The study used multiple-case studies as research method. Three cases are shops of public fine arts museums in Taiwan, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts and Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts. The methods of data collection include observation, documental analysis and interviews. The study uses triangulation to increase credibility and reliability. The major research questions are listed as follows. First, what are the operation and strategies of museum shops? Second, how to develop and design merchandises in museum shops? What is their considerations for the future? Five aspects of the research: operational principle, organization structure and human resource management, financial management, marketing, and the product design as well as the atmosphere of museum shops. The results indicated as follows: 1. The mission of museum shops and images of museum can coorspandant very well. 2. The structure of museum shops are established according to the Cooperatives Act. 3. Applying the cooperative Act on museum shops has its own advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are to increase the sense of participation to museum shops; the disadvantages are administrators¡¦ overlapping and overloading of workload. 4. The standard of selectring shop clerk is having good communication capability and love Arts. 5. The earned income is divided into four ways: provident fund, public welfare fund, museum fund and public revenue. The museum shops have limited funds on their own used. 6. The cultural goods that are designed and made by museum shops are limited. 7. The development of cultural goods should be noted intellectual property rights. 8. A good environment in museum shops stimulates consumption. 9. The marketing of the museum shops usually is with the large-scale exhibitions or blockbuster show, yet it seldom uses internet marketing. Suggestions are provided to the public museum shops, the government, and future research in Taiwan. 1. Museum should reconsider the connection between museum shops as well as cultural and creative industries. 2. Museums and museum shops should strengthen their branding, and set up the selction process of their culture products. The products in museums shops should include characteristics of each museum and various products. 3. Using electronical at media to enhance the explanation and education of cultural goods. 4. Applying internet marketing and event marketing. 5. The necessity of establishing transparent financial system. 6. Holding the competition of culture product design for students. 7. Brand alliance. The government could think the possibility of privatization and corporatization of public museum shops. Suggestions to the follow-up study will be that the European countries or neighboring countries such as Japan, South Korea¡¦s museum shops, or private museum shops can be studied.

The aim of this dissertation is to investigate how public spaces in the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm have materialized in relation to cultural policy objectives and ideals of a democratic and inclusive museum. The investigated time period spans from 1943 to 2013. The Swedish History Museum is a state-run archaeological museum, where norms and values are expressed through various governmental policy- and control documents. Hence, entering the museum also means entering a symbolic national space. The fact that the museum has been politically regulated throughout the studied period makes it illustrative of changing democratic public ideals in the 20th century. Unlike other similar studies, the empirical focus is not on exhibitions, but on other public spaces that visitors encounter; the entrance, the shop, children’s spaces and the courtyard. These spaces are less invisible in the museum hierarchy. At the same time, they are often central spaces to visitors. The museum building is not as fixed as it might appear to be. Drawing on ideas from Bruno Latour and Doreen Massey – and their perspectives on space, materiality and power – I explore how the social and spatial changes of the museum affect each other. Efforts have continuously been made to alter these public spaces, and the outlines and uses have repeatedly changed. By combining archival materials, interviews and observations, I investigate how democratic ideals have been negotiated in material forms, and what kind of audiences/visitors these spaces have conceptualized over time. Linking different kinds of sources, that speak from various levels and positions, has been an analytically important method. The analysis describes the museum as a meaning producing network that materially embody different, and sometimes conflicting ideologies. The public spaces have been shaped by tensions; between education versus pleasure, collecting versus showing, and by the dichotomy between culture and commerce. What is communicated thorough various materialities and inscriptions in the shop, the entrance, and the spaces for children sometimes contradict perspectives produced in exhibitions and educational programmes. Hierarchies between professional positions and knowledges propagate as social extensions towards the visitors, and sometimes, reproduce structural hierarchies. Museum functions literally “takes place”, depending on how they are valued and assigned meaning. The museum has increasingly included children, while also becoming a space for commerce. Various, and sometimes incompatible ideals on equality and inclusion have been implemented, simultaneously. At the same time, the public spaces carry unique spatial qualities, which can benefit inclusion. Concluding, the dissertation stresses that the entrance, the shop, the children spaces and other public spaces perceived as “peripheral” need to be viewed as central, not as superficial services or add-ons to the “real” museum experience, i.e. the exhibition.