Developing the Museum Experience: Retailing in American Museums 1945–91
Abstract Museum shops in America were created immediately after World War II (WWII) from what previously were termed museum sales or information desks. Museum retail occurred as a response to increased museum attendance and consumer spending by Americans in the post-war economy. Distinct changes such as mass consumption, the rise of individualism and cultural pluralism, and the modern consumer’s search for novelty, nostalgia, and later high culture, all affected museum responses to visitor needs and museum shop development. As a result, shops were popular and successful throughout the era even in times of general decline in the national economy. Museums, however, did not focus on shops as revenue generators until the 1980s when public support and governmental funding for museums retracted. The manner in which shops contributed to the total museum experience was an important component of museum development.
The Material Inventories of Millennial Jewish Lives: Affective Learning and Jewish Consumer Culture at the National Museum of American Jewish History Gift Shop
Abstract Down the street from the Liberty Bell and a block away from Independence Hall, Philadelphia’s National Museum of American Jewish History (NMAJH) offers tourists a Jewish take on America’s past. For Jewish visitors to NMAJH, the museum sets personal narratives in national contexts, embodied by objects that have animated Jewish life for centuries. Most research on encounters between visitors and religious objects in museums is situated within exhibit galleries. Yet this focus on the gallery can overlook the holistic visitor experience in the museum, and the ways that object lessons can also be conveyed outside of the exhibit space. This article draws upon an ethnographic study of 30 millennial generation Jewish visitors to NMAJH conducted in July 2019, and analyzes visitor responses to Jewish objects for sale in the museum store. It argues that the store stimulates affective learning experiences, prompted when visitors respond to merchandise with emotion, aspiration and nostalgia, contextualize these goods within the narratives of the core exhibit, and reflect upon objects for sale in relation to their own lives and livelihoods.
Same Same But Different - also in Europe! A New Methodological Approach in Cross-Country Analysis of Communication Structuresapplied to five EU member states
The EU still lacks a truly European public sphere. On this level, there is still a clear lack of integration between individual member states. This means that national public spheres and cultures are still of great importance for European communication and media professionals. Comparative research into the similarities and differences between different nations is therefore valuable for cross-border PR communication activities. This paper lays out the methodological foundation for such research, discussing possible approaches and difficulties associated with comparative research. The author then introduces a potential heuristic framework for comparative analysis: the International Corporate Communication Compass. This framework is applied to five case-study EU countries (Denmark, Germany, France, Poland and the UK), showing the differences and similarities in a range of different contexts that affect public communication in all its forms. The conclusion examines how the results of such studies could be used in order to compare communication identities of different countries. This can potentially help in the development of a European public identity on the long run and in a first step can led towards a better, more adapted communication structure about European citizenship. Ultimately, communication structures within the EU might become more Europeanized than they