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.
Comparison of APACHE II scoring in liver and kidney transplant recipients versus trauma and general surgical patients in a single intensive-care unit.
Over a 26-month period we assessed the ability of APACHE II, scored on admission to the surgical intensive care unit (SICU), to predict the in-hospital mortality of liver and kidney transplant recipients either post-operatively or after subsequent complications, and compared these results to non-transplant SICU admissions. There were 866 SICU admissions, of which 128 were liver transplant recipients, 112 were renal transplant recipients, 211 were trauma admissions and 415 were non-transplant/non-trauma admissions. In hospital mortalities among all liver transplant admissions were 0%, 10%, 38%, and 82% for APACHE II ranges of 0-10, 11-20, 21-30 and > 30, respectively, with differences between the second and third, and third and fourth ranges significant (p < or = 0.05 by chi-square analysis). These differences were also seen when examining scores following the primary transplantation alone. Mortalities in corresponding APACHE II ranges for trauma and nontransplant/nontrauma admissions were similar. APACHE II scoring was not useful for renal transplant recipient, as it consistently overpredicted mortality. We conclude that APACHE II scoring may be useful in predicting outcome in post-operative liver transplant recipients, but is not useful in stratifying risk in renal transplant recipients due to the inherently low mortality involved.