Museum Culture: Histories, Discourses, Spectacles (Media and Society) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816619530 ISBN 13: 9780816619535

Publisher: University of Minnesota Press, 1994

Synopsis

Museums display much more than artifacts; Museum Culture makes us on a tour through the complex of ideas, values and symbols that pervade and shape the practice of exhibiting today. Bringing together a broad range of perspectives from history, art history, critical theory and sociology, the contributors to this new collection argue that museums have become a central institution and metaphor in contemporary society.Discussing exhibition histories and practice in Western Europe, the former Soviet Union, Israel and the United States, the authors explore the ways in which museums assign meaning to art through various kinds of exhibitions and display strategies, examining the political implications of these strategies and the forms of knowledge they invoke and construct. The collection also discusses alternative exhibition forms, the involvement of some museums with the more spectacular practices of mass media culture, and looks at how museums construct their public.

About this title

About the Author:

Daniel J. Sherman is professor of art history and adjunct professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In addition to editing several books in critical museum studies, he is the author of" Worthy Monuments: Art Museums and the Politics of Culture in Nineteenth-Century France" and "The Construction of Memory in Interwar France", the latter published by the University of Chicago Press.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0816619530
• ISBN 13: 9780816619535
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 322
• Editor: Sherman Daniel