Museum Studies An Anthology of Contexts

About this book

Updated to reflect the latest developments in twenty-first century museum scholarship, the new Second Edition of Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts presents a comprehensive collection of approaches to museums and their relation to history, culture and philosophy.

- Unique in its deep range of historical sources and by its inclusion of primary texts by museum makers
- Places current praxis and theory in its broader and deeper historical context with the collection of primary and secondary sources spanning more than 200 years
- Features the latest developments in museum scholarship concerning issues of inclusion and exclusion, repatriation, indigenous models of collection and display, museums in an age of globalization, visitor studies and interactive technologies
- Includes a new section on relationships, interactions, and responsibilities
- Offers an updated bibliography and list of resources devoted to museum studies that makes Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts an authoritative guide on the subject
- New entries by Victoria E. M. Cain, Neil G.W. Curtis, Catherine Ingraham, Gwyneira Isaac, Robert R. Janes, Sean Kingston, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Sharon J. Macdonald, Saloni Mathur, Gerald McMaster, Sidney Moko Mead, Donald Preziosi, Karen A. Rader, Richard Sandell, Roger I. Simon, Crain Soudien, Paul Tapsell, Stephen E. Weil, Paul Williams, and Andrea Witcomb.

Contents

Alternative Taxonomy
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments

Introduction to the Revised Edition: Museum/Studies and the "Eccentric Space" of an Anthology
Bettina Messias Carbonell

Part I - Museology: A Collection of Contexts
Introduction
1. From The Museum Age: Foreword
2. The Museum: Its Classical Etymology and Renaissance Genealogy
3. The Universal Survey Museum
4. Seeing Through Solidity: A Feminist Perspective on Museums
5. Universal Museums, Museum Objects and Repatriation: The Tangled Stories of Things
6. Narrativity and the Museological Myths of Nationality
7. Museums, Civic Life, and the Educative Force of Remembrance
8. The Memorial Museum Identity Complex: Victimhood, Culpability, and Responsibility
9. At The Holocaust Museum

Part II - States of "Nature" in the Museum: Natural History, Anthropology, Ethnology
Introduction
10. To the Citizens of the United States of America
11. Letter of 1863 to Mr. Thomas G. Cary
12. Museums of Ethnology and Their Classification
13. "Magnificent Intentions": Washington, D.C., and American Anthropology in 1846
14. From Natural History to Science: Display and the Transformation of American Museums of Science and Nature
15. The Development of Ethnological Museums
16. Ethnology: A Science on Display
17. Ambiguous Messages and Ironic Twists: Into the Heart of Africa and The Other Museum
18. Thinking and Doing Otherwise: Anthropological Theory in Exhibitionary Practice
19. The Mirror and the Tomb: Africa, Museums, and Memory
20. From Ethnology to Heritage: The Role of the Museum
21. The Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford

Part III - The Status of Nations and the Museum
Introduction
22. From On the Museum of Art: An Address
23. Presidential Address to the Museums Association, Maidstone Meeting, 1909
24. Addresses on the Occasion of the Opening of the American Wing, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (November 10, 1924)
25. The Architectural Museum from World's Fair to Restoration Village
26. Melodrama, Pantomime or Portrayal? Representing Ourselves and the British Past through Exhibitions in History Museums
27. Artifacts as Expressions of Society and Culture: Subversive Genealogy and the Value of History
28. Museums and the Formation of National and Cultural Identities
29. Museums, National, Postnational and Transcultural Identities
30. Architecture and the Scene of Evidence
31. Some Thoughts about National Museums at the End of the Century

Part IV - Histories and Identities in the Museum
Introduction
32. Memory, Distortion, and History in the Museum
33. Museum Matters
34. Reality as Illusion, the Historic Houses that Become Museums
35. Mining the Museum: Artists Look at Museums, Museums Look at Themselves
36. The Afterlife of Lynching: Exhibitions and the Re-Composition of Human Suffering
37. Exhibiting Mestizaje: The Poetics and Experience of the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum
38. Indigenous Models of Museums in Oceania
39. Museums and the Native Voice
40. Dangerous Heritage: Southern New Ireland, the Museum and the Display of the Past
41. Emerging Discourses Around Identity in New South African Museum Exibitions

Part V - Art, Artifacts, and the Deployment of Objects in the Museum
Introduction
42. Aims and Principles of the Construction and Management of Museums of Fine Art
43. The Museum as an Art Patron
44. Cultural Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth-century Boston, Part II: The Classification and Framing of American Art
45. Picturing Feminism, Selling Liberalism: The Case of the Disappearing Holbein
46. Conclusion to The Love of Art
47. Art and the Future's Past
48. Museums Without Collections: Museum Philosophy in West Africa
49. Women at the Whitney, 1910-30: Feminism/Sociology/Aesthetics
50. From The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect: Introduction
51. Zero Gravity
52. Museums and Globalization
53. Changing Values in the Art Museum: Rethinking Communication and Learning
54. Technology Becomes the Object: The Use of Electronic Media at the National Museum of the American Indian

Part VI - In and Beyond the Museum: Relationships, Interactions, Responsibilities
55. Museums, Corporatism and the Civil Society
56. Museums as Agents of Social Inclusion
57. Partnerships in Museums: A Tribal Maori Response to Repatriation
58. Interactivity in Museums: The Politics of Narrative Style
59. Speaking About Museums: A Meditation on Language

Selected Bibliography
Source Acknowledgments
Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

Bettina Messias Carbonell is Associate Professor of English and Program Coordinator for the interdisciplinary Humanities and Justice major at John Jay College, City University of New York. Her publications and current research focus on ethics, aesthetics, and the representation of history in literary texts and in museums.