Kenneth Hudson

The Museum Refuses to Stand Still

Kenneth Hudson is the doyen of the international museum community, a recognized trend spotter and iconoclast. As director of the European Museum Forum, with responsibilities for the European Museum of the Year Award, the Forum Workshops and the European Museum Forum magazine, he may be said to be a one-man museum watch; his book Museums for the 1980s – A Survey of World Trends, published by UNESCO in 1977, broke new ground in describing and explaining the great changes in theory and practice that were sweeping through the museum world. For this anniversary issue, we asked him to take a close look at how museums have evolved over the past fifty years and to speculate on what the future might have in store.

Museums that make their own rules

In No. 172, Museum covered a museum in Central Argentina that was the life work of a lone and very tenacious person, Aroldo D. Rosso. The phenomenon of what we called ‘single-parent’ museums seems, in fact, to he quite widespread. In this section we offer first some thoughts on their general roles and prospects, followed by a report on the Paris museum that artist Gustave Moreau built to house his paintings.

World Industrial Archaeology

Introduction Part I. The Techniques Appropriate to the Study: Part II. The Range of Current Work: 1. The extractive industries 2. Food and drink 3. Construction: purpose, design and materials 4. Metal processing 5. Transport 6. Textiles, clothing, footwear 7. Power 8. Chemicals and related industries Conclusions Bibliography Index.