Jamie Larkin
I am currently Assistant Professor of Creative and Cultural Industries at Chapman University, California.
I have most recently worked on the £1m AHRC project 'Mapping Museums: The History and Geography of the UK Museum Sector, 1960-2020'. This interdisciplinary research will generate the most extensive data ever amassed on UK museums and produce a sophisticated digital database that will enable innovative analysis and visualisation of museum trends. More here: http://blogs.bbk.ac.uk/mapping-museums/
I completed my Ph.D. at University College London, and my thesis examined the cultural and economic implications of the commercialisation of museums and heritage sites in the UK.
Outputs for this work included the first history of retailing at museums; a theorisation of the cultural implications of the museum shop; and extensive visitor survey data on the current state of commercial activity in the sector.
My research interests focus on the intersection of culture and commerce, in both historical and contemporary contexts. More broadly, I am interested in how the public engage with the past.
I have most recently worked on the £1m AHRC project 'Mapping Museums: The History and Geography of the UK Museum Sector, 1960-2020'. This interdisciplinary research will generate the most extensive data ever amassed on UK museums and produce a sophisticated digital database that will enable innovative analysis and visualisation of museum trends. More here: http://blogs.bbk.ac.uk/mapping-museums/
I completed my Ph.D. at University College London, and my thesis examined the cultural and economic implications of the commercialisation of museums and heritage sites in the UK.
Outputs for this work included the first history of retailing at museums; a theorisation of the cultural implications of the museum shop; and extensive visitor survey data on the current state of commercial activity in the sector.
My research interests focus on the intersection of culture and commerce, in both historical and contemporary contexts. More broadly, I am interested in how the public engage with the past.
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and galleries in the 1910s, using the British Museum as an extended case study. It seeks to frame this initiative
as an important moment in the history of museums as they shifted from predominately scholastic institutions,
largely unresponsive to the needs of their visitors, to ones with a growing awareness of their role in public education.
By being prominently positioned in museum lobbies, the catalogue stall provided a focal point for visitors to
extend their cultural experience through educational or souvenir materials, and can be seen as part of a broader
series of initiatives to make museums more intellectually accessible. The effect of the introduction of the catalogue
stall ―increased sales of catalogues, guidebooks, photographs, and postcards― demonstrated that visitors
valued this amenity, while the income generated ensured this initial intrusion of commercial principles into
the space would become a permanent feature of museum infrastructure.
This post outlines the development of museum postcards as a way for museums to spread knowledge of their collections, but also the nascent commercialism their sale helped inaugurate. Having changed little terms of form or content in the 100+ years since they were first introduced museum postcards are a particularly interesting subject of enquiry; a museum-goer in 1900 would have no problem recognising and using postcards sold in the British Museum today. While this post can only provide a brief overview, museum postcards provide us with a relatively static cultural form with which we can trace attitudes across time. As such there is great scope to consider various cultural and economic facets of museum development through these objects.
and galleries in the 1910s, using the British Museum as an extended case study. It seeks to frame this initiative
as an important moment in the history of museums as they shifted from predominately scholastic institutions,
largely unresponsive to the needs of their visitors, to ones with a growing awareness of their role in public education.
By being prominently positioned in museum lobbies, the catalogue stall provided a focal point for visitors to
extend their cultural experience through educational or souvenir materials, and can be seen as part of a broader
series of initiatives to make museums more intellectually accessible. The effect of the introduction of the catalogue
stall ―increased sales of catalogues, guidebooks, photographs, and postcards― demonstrated that visitors
valued this amenity, while the income generated ensured this initial intrusion of commercial principles into
the space would become a permanent feature of museum infrastructure.
This post outlines the development of museum postcards as a way for museums to spread knowledge of their collections, but also the nascent commercialism their sale helped inaugurate. Having changed little terms of form or content in the 100+ years since they were first introduced museum postcards are a particularly interesting subject of enquiry; a museum-goer in 1900 would have no problem recognising and using postcards sold in the British Museum today. While this post can only provide a brief overview, museum postcards provide us with a relatively static cultural form with which we can trace attitudes across time. As such there is great scope to consider various cultural and economic facets of museum development through these objects.