A new definition of 'Museum'

At the national AGM of Museums Australia held on 22 Mar ch 2002, our association adopted a new definition of ‘museum’. This article aims to provide members and other readers with an understanding of the background to the change, and the potential offered to our sector by the new definition.

Is there a museum in the house? Historic houses as a species of museum

The historic house museum exemplifies the enormous power of the museum idea to make specimens out of the material world. In fact, houses are an old museum form, very numerous and globally spread. This paper surveys the diverse inspirations of the species, its peculiar expressions, and its formative/deformative relationship to the English country house, via case studies in the UK, the US, and Australia. The paper identifies a characteristic museology that has developed to manage the conditions of house museums and suggests that the contemporary practice of heritage management derives an important strand of its direction from the traditions of house museology. Lastly, it considers the challenge, 'who wants house museums?'

Museum pricing in contemporary museums : a hybrid model

What are the museum pricing strategies in contemporary western museums? A large qualitative study on museum pricing decisions was conducted between 2001 and 2009, based on thirty case studies in Canada, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, France Australia. Results show that the different strategic motivations of price decisions fonn a hybrid model. The hybrid model varies according to unequal organisational learning of the strategic role of pricing in the international museum community. A discussion about these results enables us to understand how this hybrid pricing model in contemporary museums denotes their hybrid transitional identity.