Re-Presenting Disability: Activism and Agency in the Museum

Description

Re-Presenting Disability addresses issues surrounding disability representation in museums and galleries, a topic which is receiving much academic attention and is becoming an increasingly pressing issue for practitioners working in wide-ranging museums and related cultural organisations. This volume of provocative and timely contributions, brings together twenty researchers, practitioners and academics from different disciplinary, institutional and cultural contexts to explore issues surrounding the cultural representation of disabled people and, more particularly, th. "Re-Presenting Disability addresses issues surrounding disability representation in museums and galleries, a topic which is receiving much academic attention and is becoming an increasingly pressing issue for practitioners working in wide-ranging museums and related cultural organisations. This volume of provocative and timely contributions, brings together twenty researchers, practitioners and academics from different disciplinary, institutional and cultural contexts to explore issues surrounding the cultural representation of disabled people and, more particularly, the inclusion (as well as the marked absence) of disability-related narratives in museum and gallery displays. The diverse perspectives featured in the book offer fresh ways of interrogating and understanding contemporary representational practices as well as illuminating existing, related debates concerning identity politics, social agency and organisational purposes and responsibilities, which have considerable currency within museums and museum studies." -- Publisher's description  Read more... Part 1 New ways of seeing -- Activist practice -- Picturing people with disabilities: classical portraiture as reconstructive narrative -- Agents at Angkor -- 'See no evil' -- Ghosts in the war museum -- Behind the shadow of Merrick -- Disability reframed: challenging visitor perceptions in the museum -- Part 2 Interpretive journeys and experiments -- To label the label? 'Learning disability' and exhibiting 'critical proximity' -- Hurting and healing: reflections on representing experiences of mental illness in museums -- Histories of disability and medicine: reconciling historical narratives and contemporary values -- Revealing moments: representations of disability and sexuality -- The red wheelchair in the white snowdrift -- Face to face: representing facial disfigurement in a museum context -- Part 3 Unsettling practices -- 'Out from Under': a brief history of everything -- Transforming practice: disability perspectives and the museum -- Reciprocity, accountability, empowerment: emancipatory principles and practices in the museum -- Disability, human rights and the public gaze: The Losheng Story Museum -- A museum for all? The Norwegian Museum of Deaf History and Culture -- Collective bodies: what museums do for disability studies.