The volume examines contemporary museum ethics through the prism of those disciplines and methods that have shaped it most. It argues for a museum ethics discourse defined by social responsibility, radical transparency and shared guardianship of heritage. And it demonstrates the moral agency of museums: the concept that museum ethics is more than the personal and professional ethics of individuals and concerns the capacity of institutions to generate self-reflective and activist practice.
Janet Marstine is Lecturer and Programme Director of Art Museum and Gallery Studies at the University of Leicester. Her research focuses on museum ethics and institutional critique. Marstine is the founder and former director of the Institute of Museum Ethics at Seton Hall University. She is editor of New Museum Theory and Practice: An Introduction (Blackwell, 2005).