Description
Book SynopsisThis third volume in a bestselling series on culture, society, and museums examines the effects of globalization on contemporary museum, heritage, and exhibition practices.
Trade Review“
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 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
Table of ContentsForeword / Lynn Szwaja and Tomás Ybarra-Frausto xi
Preface: Museum Frictions: A Project History / Ivan Karp and Corinne A. Kratz xv
Introduction: Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations / Corinne A. Kratz and Ivan Karp 1
Part 1. Exhibitionary Complexes
Exhibitionary Complexes / Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 35
Exhibition, Difference, and the Logic of Culture / Tony Bennett 46
The Reappearance of the Authentic / Martin Hall 70
Document: 5:29:24 AM / Joseph Masco 102
Transforming Museums on Postapartheid Tourist Routes / Leslie Witz 107
Isn't This a Wonderful Place? (A Tour of a Tour of the Guggenheim Bilbao) / Andrea Fraser 135
World Heritage and Cultural Economics / Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 161
Document: The U.S. Department of Retro,
The Onion 203
Part 2. Tactical Museologies
Tactical Museologies / Gustavo Buntinx and Ivan Karp 207
Communities of Sense/Communities of Sentiment: Globalization and the Museum Void in an Extreme Periphery / Gustavo Buntinx 219
Document: Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums 247
Document: Art Museums and the International Exchange of Cultural Artifacts, Association of Art Museum Directors 250
Document: Museo Salinas: A Proactive Space Within the Legal Frame, Some Words from the Director, Vicente Razo 253
Musings on Museums from Phnom Penh / Ingrid Muan 257
Community Museums, Memory Politics, and Social Transformation in South Africa: Histories, Possibilities, and Limits / Ciraj Rassool 286
Community Museums and Global Connections: The Union of Community Museums in Oaxaca / Cuauhtémoc Camarena and Teresa Morales 322
Part 3. Remapping the Museum
Remapping the Museum / Corinne A. Kratz and Ciraj Rassool 347
The Museum Outdoors: Heritage, Cattle, and Permeable Borders in the Southwestern Kruger National Park / David Bunn 357
Document: Baghdad Lions to Be Relocated to South Africa 392
Revisiting the Old Plantation: Reparations, Reconciliation, and Museumizing American Slavery / Fath Davis Ruffins 394
Shared Heritage, Contested Terrain: Cultural Negotiation and Ghana's Cape Coast Castle Museum Exhibition "Crossroads of People, Crossroads of Trade" / Christine Mullen Kreamer 435
Sites of Persuasion:
Yingapungapu at the National Museum of Australia / Howard Morphy 469
Document: Destroying While Preserving Junkanoo: The Junkanoo Museum in the Bahamas / Krista A. Thompson 500
The Complicity of Cultural Production: The Contingencies of Performance in Globalizing Museum Practices / Fred Myers 504
Bibliography 537
Contributors 577
Index 583
