Exhibiting cultures: the poetics and politics of museum display

Description

Debating the practices of museums, galleries, and festivals, Exhibiting Cultures probes the often politically charged relationships among aesthetics, contexts, and implicit assumptions that govern how art and artifacts are displayed and understood. The contributors—museum directors, curators, and scholars in art history, folklore, history, and anthropology—represent a variety of stances on the role of museums and their function as intermediaries between the makers of art or artifacts and the eventual viewers. Acknowledgements Introduction: Museums and Multiculturalism Steven D. Lavine and Ivan Karp 1 PART 1: Culture and Representation Ivan Karp 11 CHAP.1: The Museum as a Way of Seeing Svetlana Alpers 25 CHAP.2: Exhibiting Intention: Some Preconditions of the Visual Display of Culturally Purposeful Objects Michael Baxandall 33 CHAP.3: Resonance and Wonder Stephen Greenblatt 42 CHAP.4: The Poetics of Exhibition in Japanese Culture Masao Yamaguchi 57 CHAP.5: Another Past, Another Context: Exhibiting Indian Art Abroad B. N. Goswamy 68 PART 2: Art Museums, National Identity, and the Status of Minority Cultures: The Case of Hispanic Art in the United States Steven D. Lavine 79 CHAP.6: Art Museums and the Ritual of Citizenship Carol Duncan 88 CHAP.7: The Poetics and Politics of Hispanic Art: A New Perspective Jane Livingston and John Beardsley 104 CHAP.8: Minorities and Fine-Arts Museums in the United States Peter C. Marzio 121 CHAP.9: The Chicano Movement/The Movement of Chicano Art Tomas Ybarra-Frausto 128 PART 3: Museum Practices Steven D. Lavine 151 CHAP.10: Locating Authenticity: Fragments of a Dialogue Spencer R. Crew and James E. Sims 159 CHAP.11: Noodling Around with Exhibition Opportunities Elaine Heumann Gurian 176 CHAP.12: Always True to the Object, in Our Fashion Susan Vogel 191 CHAP.13: The Poetic Image and Native American Art Patrick T. Houlihan 205 CHAP.14: Four Northwest Coast Museums: Travel Reflections James Clifford 212 CHAP.15: Why Museums Make Me Sad James A. Boon 255 PART 4: Festivals Ivan Karp 279 CHAP.16: The Politics of Participation in Folk-life Festivals Richard Bauman And Patricia Sawin 288 CHAP.17: Cultural Conservation through Represen tation: Festival of India Folk-life Exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution Richard Kurin 315 CHAP.18: The World as Marketplace: Commodification of the Exotic at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893 Curtis M. Hinsley 344 CHAP.19: Festivals and Diplomacy Ted M. G. Tanen 366 PART 5: Other Cultures in Museum Perspective Ivan Karp 373 CHAP.20: Objects of Ethnography Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 386 CHAP.21: Refocusing or Reorientation? The Exhibit or the Populace: Zimbabwe on the Threshold Dawson Munjeri 444 CHAP.22: How Misleading Does an Ethnographical Museum Have to Be? Kenneth Hudson 457 Contributors