Description
Book Synopsis The museum boom, with its accompanying objectification and politicization of culture, finds its counterpart in the growing interest by social scientists in material culture, much of which is to be found in museums. Not surprisingly, anthropologists in particular are turning their attention again to museums, after decades of neglect, during which fieldwork became the hallmark of modern anthropology - so much so that the "social" and the "material" parted company so radically as to produce a kind of knowledge gap between historical collections and the intellectuals who might have benefitted from working on these material representations of culture. Moreover it was forgotten that museums do not only present the "pastness" of things. A great deal of what goes on in contemporary museums is literally about planning the shape of the future: making culture materialize involves mixing things from the past, taking into account current visions, and knowing that the scenes constructed will shape the perspectives of future generations. However, the (re-)invention of museum anthropology presents a series of challenges for academic teaching and research, as well as for the work of cultural production in contemporary museums - issues that are explored in this volume.
Trade Review "The book's central argument is well made." · Museum National
"...focuses on anthropologists, but the consideration given to the relations between academic and museum worlds will be useful to any scholar with current affiliations or aspirations to engage with museum culture. In terms of the volume's original intent, as a work responding to the needs of those teaching and studying anthro-museology, it is an impressive accomplishment." · Anthropologica
Table of Contents Acknowledgements
List of illustrations
Introduction: Academic anthropology and the Museum. Back to the Future
Mary Bouquet
PART I: ANTHROPOLOGICAL ENCOUNTERS WITH THE POST-COLONIAL MUSEUM
Chapter 1. The photological apparatus and the desiring machine: Unexpected congruences between the Koninklijk Museum, Tervuren and the Umista Centre, Alert Bay
Barbara Saunders
Chapter 2. Picturing the museum: photography and the work of mediation in the Third Portuguese Empire
Nuno Porto
Chapter 3. On the pre-museum history of Baldwin Spencer's collection of Tiwi artifacts
Eric Venbrux
PART II: ETHNOGRAPHIC MUSEUMS AND ETHNOGRAPHIC MUSEOLOGY 'AT HOME'
Chapter 4. Anthropology at home and in the museum: the case of the Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires in Paris
Martine Segalen
Chapter 5. 'Does anthropology need museums?' Teaching ethnographic museology in Portugal, Thirty Years Later
Nélia Dias
PART III: SCIENCE MUSEUMS AS AN ETHNOGRAPHIC CHALLENGE
Chapter 6. Towards an ethnography of museums: science, technology and us
Roberto J. Gonzalez, Laura Nader and C. Jay Ou
Chapter 7. Behind the Scenes at the Science Museum, London: Knowing, making and using
Sharon Macdonald
PART IV: ANTHROPOLOGISTS AS CULTURAL PRODUCERS
Chapter 8. Unsettling the meaning: critical museology, art and anthropological discourse
Anthony Shelton
Chapter 9. Inside out: cultural production in the museum and the academy
Jeanne Cannizzo
Chapter 10. The art of exhibition making as a problem of translation
Mary Bouquet
PART V: LOOKING AHEAD
Chapter 11. Why post-millennial museums will need fuzzy guerrillas
Michael M. Ames
Notes on contributors
Bibliography
Index
