Museums and Difference

by Sherman, Daniel J.

• ISBN13: 9780253219350
• ISBN10: 0253219353
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-11-30
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Daniel J. Sherman is Professor of History and Director of the Center for 21st Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee. He is author of The Construction of Memory in Interwar France and editor (with Terry Nardin) of Terror, Culture, Politics (IUP, 2006).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Representing Difference
Art Museums and Commonality: A History of High Ideals	p. 25
"The Last Wild Indian in North America": Changing Museum Representations of Ishi	p. 60
National Museums and Other Cultures in Modern Japan	p. 97
Cultural Difference and Cultural Diversity: The Case of the Musee du Quai Branly	p. 124
Gunther von Hagens's Body Worlds: Exhibitionary Practice, German History, and Difference	p. 155
Representing Differently
Meta Warrick's 1907 "Negro Tableaux" and (Re)Presenting African American Historical Memory	p. 205
Skulls on Display: The Science of Race in Paris's Musee de l'Homme, 1928-1950	p. 250
Dossier: "Inventing Race" in Los Angeles	p. 289
Living and Dying: Ethnography, Class, and Aesthetics in the British Museum	p. 330
Museums and Historical Amnesia	p. 354
Contributors	p. 375
Index	p. 379
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