A Troubled Legacy: Making and Unmaking Race in the Museum

Teslow, Tracy

doi:10.1179/msi.2007.2.1.11

Cited by 10 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…It is a social construct and dubious from a variety of perspectives (Teslow, 2007). Ostensibly, the importance of knowing a visitor's race is that people of the same race share some of the same history, experiences, language, and beliefs-which are actually defining elements of a culture.…”

Section: Diversity and Demographicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring and Understanding Diversity Is Not So Simple: How Characteristics of Personal Identity Can Improve Museum Audience Studies

2014

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Section: Diversity and Demographicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring and Understanding Diversity Is Not So Simple: How Characteristics of Personal Identity Can Improve Museum Audience Studies

2014

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“…European museums and exhibitions have long been recognised as ‘tools of Empire’ (Headrick 1981), which presented imperialism as something necessary and race as something logical and obvious: Historically, museums and other exhibitionary spaces have been crucial agents in constructing race […] Most familiar in this history are nineteenth-century presentations in natural history museums. Race was presented as a thing instantiated in the body, represented for the public through display of skulls, bones, brains, casts, photographs, and bronze busts, as well as graphs and charts that offered a quantitative, statistical dimension and authority to the otherwise visual logic of physical anthropology (Teslow 2007, 13).…”

Section: Collecting and Displaying Otherness As A Means Of European P...mentioning

confidence: 99%

European museology and colonial concord: Italy at the 1934 Expo du Sahara in Paris

Falcucci

2022

Mod. Italy

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This article assesses Italy's participation in the Expo du Sahara in Paris in 1934, placing it within the framework of European colonial culture, exhibitions, and international relations during the 1930s. Hitherto, the Expo du Sahara has been largely ignored by historiography, but it offers important insights into Italo-French relations in the years immediately preceding Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, as well as the ways in which Fascist Italy sought national and international legitimacy through the medium of exhibitions. The Paris exhibition, staged by the European powers after years of clashes, was also a physical representation of the so-called ‘colonial concord’ and ‘peaceful’ partition of North Africa, processes in which Italy's role was fundamental.

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“…In response, many museums have engaged in critical institutional inquiry -asking how contemporary policies and practices perpetuate problematic legacies and calling out the cultural norms, popular ideas, and historical patterns that undergird disparities (Bennett 1995;Hooper-Greenhill 1992, 2008Lynch and Alberti 2010: 13-4;Fischer et al 2017;Jennings and Jones-Rizzi 2017: 72-3). In the area of exhibitions, familiar, triumphant, and patriotic stories that offer discursive closure based on approved knowledge have been questioned as elitist and exclusionary, and new strategies have been developed for leaning into difficult subjects that complicate reality, expose dissent and ignite uncomfortable conversations (Bonnell and Simon 2007;Teslow 2007;Lynch and Alberti 2010;Simon 2011;Mayo 2013;Adams 2017).…”

Section: Curating For Social Justicementioning

confidence: 99%

Promoting Social Justice through Storytelling in Museums

Huhn

Anderson

2021

M&S

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In 2018 the Anthropology Museum at California State University San Bernardino (USA) opened an exhibition entitled In|Dignity. The collaborative endeavour combined social science techniques, documentary photography, and theatre performances to present first person narratives of 43 community members. Participants represented marginalized demographics and intersectional identities that extended far beyond standardized approaches to ‘diversity’. Their stories provided an intimate look into experiences of discrimination, microaggressions, harassment, exclusion, and other affronts to self-worth and barriers to community belonging. This article argues that connecting individuals through telling and listening to stories is a valid strategy to promote social justice. In|Dignity provides one case study of a museum using the narrative form and the processes of exhibition development to disrupt power hierarchies, uplift community concerns, and promote human dignity.

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A Troubled Legacy: Making and Unmaking Race in the Museum

Cited by 10 publications

References 22 publications

Measuring and Understanding Diversity Is Not So Simple: How Characteristics of Personal Identity Can Improve Museum Audience Studies

Measuring and Understanding Diversity Is Not So Simple: How Characteristics of Personal Identity Can Improve Museum Audience Studies

European museology and colonial concord: Italy at the 1934 Expo du Sahara in Paris

Promoting Social Justice through Storytelling in Museums

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