Wow! eBook
The End of the Museum
Author(s): Kevin Coffee (Author)
- Publisher: Routledge
- Publication Date: August 8, 2025
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 234 pages
- ISBN-10: 1032792779
- ISBN-13: 9781032792774
Book Description
This provocative book challenges frequently voiced assertions regarding museums as necessary and valued modern institutions. It raises fundamental, existential questions about contemporary museums as products of the modern colonial world order.
Drawing on practical examples of collecting and exhibiting, theoretical research, and critique from diverse countries across the globe, including Chile, India, Korea, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Palestine, Portugal, Sri Lanka and the United States, this book moves beyond the conventional Eurocentric museological framework. This book synthesizes contemporary critiques of museums, while arguing that societies need the sociocultural examinations that museums are capable of facilitating and that radical transformations of “the museum” are fraught with difficulty, but also possible and necessary. Ultimately, Coffee argues that museums can only be future orientated if they are transformed into agents of social justice and inclusion, divestors of illicit collections, and proponents of a liberatory ethic, opposing neo-colonialism in all of its forms. During that transformative process, as this book demonstrates, museum practice and museum theory must also be transformed.
The End of the Museum: Culture, Colonialism, and Liberation will appeal to students, researchers, and practitioners interested in a critical examination of museum work and theory.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Kevin Coffee makes a convincing case of what museums traditionally have been and often still are, repositories of and serving the interest of elite culture and opposes it with what museums should be, in a dialectic relationship with the societies they serve, in particular underrepresented and subaltern parts of that societies. A must-read for every museum-practitioner that wants to live up to the promise of the museum having an important social function.”~ Tom van der Molen, curator, Amsterdam Museum
“For those individuals who have devoted their working life to museums, this book may be painful. The discomfort emanates from Coffee’s highly-informed analysis of the museum world’s birthright, grounded as it is in imperialism, extraction, elitism and, more recently, the commercialization of culture. Coffee is a veteran scholar/practitioner and rigorously challenges the traditional museum practices and assumptions underlying this legacy, knowing full well that the continuation of museums will require unprecedented courage, vulnerability and foresight. This book is for all those who remain committed to museum work while also experiencing the intensifying uncertainty. Coffee demonstrates that the future of museums is unclear and there is much to do as a result.”~ Robert R. Janes, former museum director, author, editor, and Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester (UK).
“Kevin Coffee’s book The End of the Museum: Culture, Colonialism, and Liberation makes a significant intervention in contemporary museum studies by rethinking the role of the museum. From a historical materialist perspective, Coffee, a public museologist, uncovers the colonial, elitist, and hierarchical logic of the dominant museum tradition, exemplified by European and North Ameri- can encyclopedic museums. Building on this critique, Coffee draws on an array of trans-national case studies to challenge conventional assumptions about museum practice and to outline constructive approaches to what he terms liberatory museology, offering both theoretical depth and practical guidance.” ~ Rong Ni, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, April 2026.
“The End of the Museum critically examines the colonialist and elitist roots of modern museums and offers considered insights into how museums can develop theories and practices to address injustice. Although titled, The End of the Museum, this book is better understood as a call to advance further the revolution and reflection initiated by ‘new museology’ and to engage with the more recent critical debates and practices surrounding it. What distinguishes this book is its historical materialist approach, which calls on museum professionals to confront the material realities of hegemony and social privilege and align themselves with wider liberatory social forces, rather than relying solely on internal restructuring.” ~ Yicheng Jiang, International Journal of Heritage Studies, January 2026.
About the Author
Kevin Coffee is a public museologist who has worked with cultural organizations for more than 40 years, including the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Chicago Academy of Sciences, and the US National Park Service. During that time, he has led and advised scores of organizations and projects in North America, Europe, and Asia. His work engages culture creators and museum users in developing new forms of inclusive and dialogical exhibitions, programs, landscapes, and museums. He resides in the United States.
