Academic Anthropology and the Museum: Back to the FutureMary Bouquet 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. |
Contents
1 | |
Anthropological encounters with the postcolonial museum | 17 |
The photological apparatus and the desiring machine Unexpected congruences between the Koninklijk Muesum Tervuren and the U mista Centre Ale... | 18 |
Picturing the museum photography and the work of mediation in the Third Portuguese Empire | 36 |
On the premuseum history of Baldwin Spencers collection of Tiwi artefacts | 55 |
Ethnographic museums and ethnographic museology at home | 75 |
Anthropology at home and in the museum the case of the Musee National des Arts et Traditions Popularies in Paris | 76 |
Does anthropology need museums? Teaching ethnographic museology in Portugal thirty years later | 92 |
Behind the scenes at the Science Museum knowing making and using | 117 |
Anthropologists as cultural producers | 141 |
Unsettling the meaning critical museology art and anthropological discourses | 142 |
Inside out cultural production in the museum and the academy | 162 |
The art of exhibitionmaking as a problem of translation | 177 |
Looking ahead | 199 |
Why postmillenial museums will need fuzzy guerrillas | 200 |
Bibliography | 212 |