Museums and Difference

Daniel J. Sherman (Edited by)

9780253219350

Paperback / softback, published 26 December 2007

400 pages, 58 b&w photos
23.5 x 15.6 x 2.6 cm, 0.59 kg

". . . fascinating and probing treatments of issues that press on both museum workers and folklorists.October 15, 2008"—Lee Haring, Brooklyn College (Emeritus)
"Museum and Difference is about the role that museums play in shaping the stories that we tell about who we are and how we are different from other people. It is an interesting subject.Jan. 23, 2009"—Matt Shinn, Museum Practice Magazine
"[D]emonstrates both the centrality and rapidly changing significance of difference in museum practice and poses a number of critical questions for future scholarship, such as, for example, whether or not aesthetic distinctions can ever be employed in museums in a manner that does not privilege the identity of one or another social group. —David O'Brien, University of Illinois at Urban"—Champaign

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
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