Full Description
Museums, modern concepts of culture, and ideas about difference arose together and are inextricably entwined. Relationships of difference—notably, of gender, ethnicity, nationality, and race—have become equally important concerns of scholarship in humanities and contemporary museum practice. Museums and Difference offers the perspectives of scholars and museum professionals in tandem, using the concept of difference to reexamine how museums construct themselves, their collections, and their publics. Essays explore a wide range of examples from around the world and from the 19th century to the present, including case studies of special exhibitions as well as broad surveys of institutions in Europe, the United States, and Japan.
Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments
IntroductionDaniel J. Sherman
Part 1. Representing Difference
1. Art Museums and Commonality: A History of High IdealsAndrew McClellan
2. "The Last Wild Indian in North America": Changing Museum Representations of IshiIra Jacknis
3. National Museums and Other Cultures in Modern JapanAngus Lockyer
4. Cultural Difference and Cultural Diversity: The Case of the Musée du Quai BranlyNélia Dias
5. Gunther von Hagens's Body Worlds: Exhibitionary Practice, German History, and DifferencePeter M. McIsaac
Part 2. Representing Differently
6. Meta Warrick's 1907 "Negro Tableaux" and (Re)Presenting African American Historical MemoryW. Fitzhugh Brundage
7. Skulls on Display: The Science of Race in Paris's Musée de l'Homme, 1928-1950Alice L. Conklin
8. Dossier: "Inventing Race" in Los AngelesIlona Katzew and Daniel J. Sherman
9. Living and Dying: Ethnography, Class, and Aesthetics in the British MuseumLissant Bolton
10. Museums and Historical AmnesiaWilliam H. Truettner
Contributors
Index
