Overview

Museum Frictions is the third volume in a bestselling series on culture, society, and museums. The first two volumes in the series, Exhibiting Cultures and Museums and Communities, have become defining books for those interested in the politics of museum display and heritage sites. Another classic in the making, Museum Frictions is a lavishly illustrated examination of the significant and varied effects of the increasingly globalized world on contemporary museum, heritage, and exhibition practice. The contributors-scholars, artists, and curators-present case studies drawn from Africa, Australia, North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Together they offer a multifaceted analysis of the complex roles that national and community museums, museums of art and history, monuments, heritage sites, and theme parks play in creating public cultures. Whether contrasting the transformation of Africa’s oldest museum, the South Africa Museum, with one of its newest, the Lwandle Migrant Labor Museum; offering an interpretation of the audio guide at the Guggenheim Bilbao; reflecting on the relative paucity of art museums in Peru and Cambodia; considering representations of slavery in the United States and Ghana; or meditating on the ramifications of an exhibition of Australian aboriginal art at the Asia Society in New York City, the contributors highlight the frictions, contradictions, and collaborations emerging in museums and heritage sites around the world. The volume opens with an extensive introductory essay by Ivan Karp and Corinne A. Kratz, leading scholars in museum and heritage studies. Contributors. Tony Bennett, David Bunn, Gustavo Buntinx, CuauhtÉmoc Camarena, Andrea Fraser, Martin Hall, Ivan Karp, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Corinne A. Kratz, Christine Mullen Kreamer, Joseph Masco, Teresa Morales, Howard Morphy, Ingrid Muan, Fred Myers, Ciraj Rassool, Vicente Razo, Fath Davis Ruffins, Lynn Szwaja, Krista A. Thompson, Leslie Witz, TomÁs Ybarra-Frausto

Full Product Details

9780822338789

Table of Contents

Reviews

Museum Frictions is a landmark publication which decenters the Western-centric bias of the existing literature. It shifts critical museology into a new register by challenging readers to think about the multiple ways that the globalization of a Western institution is transforming not only the dynamics of social interaction around the world but also the institutional nature of the museum itself. -Ruth B. Phillips, coeditor of Sensible Objects: Colonialism, Museums, and Material Culture Museum Frictions challenges traditional thinking and will spark new debates and conversations that will undoubtedly add to a growing literature on the role of museums in a postmodern world. The geographically and culturally diverse case studies provide insights into museum interpretation that will be of interest to historians and museum professionals working in a wide range of public cultural venues. They also provide an important snapshot of museums and historical organizations in the context of the global changes affecting museums worldwide. -- Barbara Franco, Journal of American History Museum Frictions will have a significant impact not only on museum scholarship, but also on researchers exploring public institutions and community politics more generally. In particular, while existing literature has commonly glossed over the challenges faced by community museums, viewing them merely as vehicles for empowerment, this book tackles head-on their struggles in finding stability within the changeable politics of both their local and global arenas. In opening up these provocative areas to debate, this book is sure to strengthen and enhance our understanding of relationships between regional and international players in the museum world and thus, the transnational nature of problems of representation. It also provides a practical guide for museum professionals, potentially developing new ideologies and procedures that may help minimize future museum frictions. -- Gwyneira Isaac, African Arts Museum Frictions is not just a worthy successor to the preceding volumes Exhibiting Cultures and Museums and Communities, but a major leap forward. In the face of dramatic changes in the museum world during the past fifteen years, the last two volumes still remain a major platform for framing debate. I am confident that Museum Frictions will provide a similar service for the next fifteen. -Doran H. Ross, Director Emeritus of the Fowler Museum at UCLA Just as Exhibiting Cultures and Museums and Communities set the agenda for museum debate over the last decade, Museum Frictions sets the agenda for the next. This is a wonderful book that must be read by anybody with an interest in museums, their transformations, dilemmas, challenges, politics, and futures. -Sharon Macdonald, editor of A Companion to Museum Studies This marvelous and broad-ranging compendium by an eminent group of scholars provides a thinking person's guide to contemporary museum work. It tackles the philosophical issues curators, directors, and professionals face in the art of cultural representation. How do you get the world's diverse people to talk to each other in meaningful and significant ways? This book provides the intellectual tools for doing so, dealing cogently and adeptly with the complexity of globalization, conflicting perspectives, and the noise proffered by popular media. For a long book with large themes, it reads amazingly well. -Richard Kurin, Director of the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution

Museum Frictions is not just a worthy successor to the preceding volumes Exhibiting Cultures and Museums and Communities, but a major leap forward. In the face of dramatic changes in the museum world during the past fifteen years, the last two volumes still remain a major platform for framing debate. I am confident that Museum Frictions will provide a similar service for the next fifteen. --Doran H. Ross, Director Emeritus of the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History Just as Exhibiting Cultures and Museums and Communities set the agenda for museum debate over the last decade, Museum Frictions sets the agenda for the next. This is a wonderful book that must be read by anybody with an interest in museums, their transformations, dilemmas, challenges, politics, and futures. --Sharon Macdonald, editor of A Companion to Museum Studies This marvelous and broad-ranging compendium by an eminent group of scholars provides a thinking person's guide to contemporary museum work. It tackles the philosophical issues curators, directors, and professionals face in the art of cultural representation. How do you get the world's diverse people to talk to each other in meaningful and significant ways? This book provides the intellectual tools for doing so, dealing cogently and adeptly with the complexity of globalization, conflicting perspectives, and the noise proffered by popular media. For a long book with large themes, it reads amazingly well. --Richard Kurin, Director of the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution Museum Frictions is a landmark publication which decenters the Western-centric bias of the existing literature. It shifts critical museology into a new register by challenging readers to think about the multiple ways that the globalization of a Western institution is transforming not only the dynamics of social interaction around the world but also the institutional nature of the museum itself. --Ruth B. Phillips, coeditor of Sensible Objects: Colonialism, Museums, and Material Culture

Author Information

Ivan Karp is National Endowment for the Humanities Professor and Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Public Scholarship at Emory University. He has coedited numerous books, including Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture and Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Corinne A. Kratz is Professor of Anthropology and African Studies and Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Public Scholarship at Emory University. She is the author of The Ones That Are Wanted: Communication and the Politics of Representation in a Photographic Exhibition. Lynn Szwaja is Program Director for Theology at the Henry Luce Foundation. TomÁs Ybarra-Frausto was, until retirement in 2005, Associate Director for Creativity and Culture at the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1998, he was awarded the Joseph Henry Medal for “exemplary contributions to the Smithsonian Institution.”

Tab Content 6

Countries Available