The Birth of the Museum
Issued Date
Copyright Date
1995
Resource Type
Language
eng
Book
Book
File Type
application/pdf
No. of Pages/File Size
278
ISBN
0-415-05387-0
Author(s)
Abstract
In a series of richly detailed case studies from Britian, Australia and North America, Tony Bennett investigates how nineteenth- and twentieth-century museums, fairs and exhibitions have organized their collections, and their visitors.
Discussing the historical development of museums alongside that of the fair and the international exhibition, Bennett sheds new light upon the relationship between modern forms of official and popular culture.
Using Foucaltian perspectives The Birth of the Museum explores how the public museum should be understood not just as a place of instruction, but as a reformatory of manners in which a wide range of regulated social routines and performances take place.
This invigorating study enriches and challenges the understanding of the museum, and places it at the centre of modern relations between culture and government. For students of museum, cultural and sociology studies, this will be an asset to their reading list.
Table of contents
Part I History and Theory;
Chapter 1 The Formation of the Museum; 17
Chapter 2 The Exhibitionary Complex; 59
Chapter 3 The Political Rationality of the Museum; 89
Part II Policies and Politics;
Chapter 4 Museums and ‘The People’; 109
Chapter 5 Out of Which Past?; 128
Chapter 6 Art And Theory; 163
Part III Technologies of Progress;
Chapter 7 Museums and Progress; 177
Chapter 8 The Shaping of Things to Come Expo ’88; 209
Chapter 9 A Thousand and One Troubles 229