Re-Presenting Disability: Activism and Agency in the Museum

by Sandell; Richard

• ISBN13: 9780415494731
• ISBN10: 0415494737
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2010-03-02
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

What part might museums play in reframing the ways in which society perceives and understands disability? What ethical, interpretive and pragmatic challenges are generated by museums' attempts to redress the invisibility of disabled people in their narratives and how might these be overcome? How are increasing interactions between museums and disability constituencies (activists, community groups, disability studies scholars) generating both new opportunities to engage visitors and new insights into collections and, at the same time, demanding and creating new forms of museum practice?

Author Biography

Richard Sandell is Head of the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, UK. He is the editor of Museums, Society, Inequality (2002), author of Museums, Prejudice and the Reframing of Difference (2007) and co-editor (with Robert R. Janes) of Museum Management and Marketing (2008), all published by Routledge. Jocelyn Dodd is Director of the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG) in the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, UK. Her research interests focus on the social role and agency of museums, museums and galleries as learning environments and, in particular, the impact museum experiences have on visitors and project participants. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson is Professor of Women's Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Her fields of study are feminist theory, American literature and disability studies. Her publications include Staring: How We Look (2009) and Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Literature and Culture (1997).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. viii
Notes on Contributors	p. x
Acknowledgments	p. xvii
Preface	p. xix
New ways of seeing	p. 1
Activist practice	p. 3
Picturing people with disabilities: classical portraiture as reconstructive narrative	p. 23
Agents at Angkor	p. 41
'See no evil'	p. 53
Ghosts in the war museum	p. 64
Behind the shadow of Merrick	p. 79
Disability reframed: challenging visitor perceptions in the museum	p. 92
Interpretive journeys and experiments	p. 113
To label the label? 'Learning disability' and exhibiting 'critical proximity'	p. 115
Hurting and healing: reflections on representing experiences of mental illness in museums	p. 130
Histories of disability and medicine: reconciling historical narratives and contemporary values	p. 143
Revealing moments: representations of disability and sexuality	p. 155
The red wheelchair in the white snowdrift	p. 168
Face to face: representing facial disfigurement in a museum context	p. 179
Unsettling practices	p. 195
'Out from Under': a brief history of everything	p. 197
Transforming practice: disability perspectives and the museum	p. 213
Reciprocity, accountability, empowerment: emancipatory principles and practices in the museum	p. 228
Disability, human rights and the public gaze: The Losheng Story Museum	p. 244
A museum for all? The Norwegian Museum of Deaf History and Culture	p. 257
Collective bodies: what museums do for disability studies	p. 269
Index	p. 280
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