Museum studies
Museum studies is the interdisciplinary study of museums, including their histories, collections, practices, institutions, and social roles.
Museology: The theory and study of museums, their purposes, institutions, and practices. Museology supplies a central framework for studying museums as institutions.
Cabinet of curiosities: A collection of unusual natural and human-made objects assembled for study, display, and wonder. These collections prefigured museums while organizing knowledge through private display.
Repatriation: The return of cultural objects or human remains to their communities or countries of origin. Repatriation challenges museum ownership and collection histories.
Preventive conservation: The management of environmental and handling risks to slow deterioration of collections. It shows how research on museum objects informs long-term collection care.
Universal museum: A museum that presents collections from many cultures as part of shared human heritage. The idea is contested where universal claims conflict with restitution and national claims.
Museum collection: Objects and materials held by a museum for preservation, research, or public interpretation. Collections shape what museums can preserve, study, and present.
Ashmolean Museum: A museum in Oxford founded in 1683 from Elias Ashmole's collection and among the earliest public museums. Its early public access offers a landmark in museum institutional history.
Decolonization of museums: Efforts to address colonial power in museum collections, interpretation, governance, and institutional practice. It makes the field confront how colonial histories structure museum authority.
Object biography: An approach that traces an object's changing uses, meanings, and ownership across time. Object biographies connect material evidence with collecting and display histories.
New museology: A movement that reconsiders museums as socially situated institutions rather than neutral repositories. It reframes museum practice around power, communities, and institutional responsibility.