Book Review: Museums, equality and social justice

First paragraph: Museums, Equality and Social Justice is a vital addition to the established and flourishing scholarship exploring the social role of museums and heritage organisations. It is unique in taking a social justice perspective to explicitly address questions of ethics, rights, diversity and equality as they apply to all aspects of museum functions, from curatorship and public programming to management, leadership and governance. The social justice standpoint is the way that museums, galleries and heritage organisations ‘acknowledge and act upon inequalities from within and outside of the cultural domain’ (p.3). Such concerns are explored over 21 chapters with contributions from scholars, practitioners, artists and activists, mainly from the UK, but also from the USA, Australia, Europe, Taiwan and Yemen. This balance in perspectives is driven by the editorial team of Richard Sandell, a scholar whose work on museums and equality has defined the wider field, and Eithne Nightingale, a practitioner with over 30 years experience in community development and museums predominantly in the UK. Their joint aim is to provide a critical resource for informing research, practice and policy and they are most successful in advancing practice.