Museums 101

Looking for an A—Z, one—stop, comprehensive book on museums? Wish you were able to have one of the world’s leading museum consultants spend a couple of days with you, talking you through how to start a museum, how museums work, how to set up an exhibit, and more? If so, Museums 101 is the answer to your wishes.

In one short volume, Mark Walhimer covers:
• Essential Background, such as what is a museum, a quick history of museums, and 10 steps to starting a museum
• Operational Basics, such as branding, marketing, strategic planning, governance, accessibility, and day—to—day operations
• What goes on behind the scenes in a museum, ranging from finances to fundraising to art handling, exhibit management, and research
• The Visitor Experience, planning a museum, designing exhibits for visitors, programming, and exhibit evaluation.

Features that even the most experienced museum professionals will find useful include a community outreach checklist, a fundraising checklist, a questionnaire for people considering starting a new museum, and an exhaustive, well—organized list of online resources for museum operations. The book’s contents were overseen by a six—member international advisory board.

Valuable appendixes you’ll use every day include a museum toolbox full of useful forms, checklists, and worksheets, and a glossary of essential museum—related terms. In addition to the printed book, Museums 101 also features a companion website exclusively for readers of the book. The website— museums101.com—features:

• links to essential online resources in the museum world,
• downloadable sample documents,
• a glossary,
• a bibliography of sources for further reading, and
• photographs of more than 75 museums of all types.


Museums 101 Advisory Board
• Jim DeMersman, Executive Director, Museum on Main, Pleasanton, California,
United States of America
• David L. Godfrey, C.P.A., Allison & Godfrey, Certified Public Accountants,
Norwalk, Connecticut, United States of America
• Van A. Romans, President, Fort Worth Museum of Science and History,
Fort Worth, Texas, and Board of Trustees, American Alliance of Museums,
United States of America
• Sergey Solovyev, Ph.D., Department of Greek & Roman Antiquities, The
State Hermitage Museum, Russia
• Alison Spence, Exhibitions and Loans Registrar, National Museum of Australia,
Canberra ACT, Australia
• Audrey Vermette, Director of Programs and Public Affairs, Canadian Museums
Association, Ontario, Canada