Museums, objects and collections : a cultural study
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Bibliographic Information
Museums, objects and collections : a cultural study
Leicester University Press, 1992
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Note
Bibliography: p. [274]-287
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Museums hold the collected objects that have come to us from the past, and which now constitute one of the most important ways in which we can understand that past. Museums are social phenomena characteristic of the modernist Western tradition, and their collections of both human and natural history material are a significant part of how that tradition has shaped itself. This book explores the nature of museums, of their collections and of the objects which form these collections; the psychological and social reasons why people collect; and the nature of relics, fetishes and systematic assemblages. It considers the nature of the curatorial process and the narratives it produces: collections in store, acquisition and disposal, documentary description and exhibition. It discusses how museum objects operate as signs and symbols, as mediators of a functionalist perspective in a world of goods, and as actors in the process of change. It examines the relationship between museums, museum objects and ideology and concludes with an attempt to define the curatorial project.
Table of Contents
- Museums, objects
- museums - the intellectual rationale
- objects outside and inside museums
- collecting - affairs of the heart
- collecting - the private universe
- making museum meanings
- meaning as function
- meaning as structure
- meaning as history
- action and interaction
- problems of power
- projects and prospects. Appendix: models for object study.
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