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Debating the practices of museums, galleries, and festivals, Exhibiting Cultures probes the often politically charged relationships among aesthetics, contexts, and implicit assumptions that govern how art and artifacts are displayed and understood. The contributors—museum directors, curators, and scholars in art history, folklore, history, and anthropology—represent a variety of stances on the role of museums and their function as intermediaries between the makers of art or artifacts and the eventual viewers.
This third volume in a bestselling series on culture, society, and museums examines the effects of globalization on contemporary museum, heritage, and exhibition practices.
Contributors to this volume examine and illustrate struggles and collaborations among museums, festivals, tourism, and historic preservation projects and the communities they represent and serve. Essays include the role of museums in civil society, the history of African-American collections, and experiments with museum-community dialogue about the design of a multicultural society.
This book assesses the direction and impact of African philosophy as well as its future role. What is the intellectual, social, cultural, and political territory of African philosophy? What directions will African philosophy take in the future? What problems will it face? In 10 probing essays by distinguished African, European, and American scholars, African Philosophy as Cultural Inquiry examines the role of African philosophy at the opening of the new millennium. Here philosophy cuts across disciplinary boundaries to embrace ideas taken from history, literary studies, anthropology, and art. Addressing topics such as the progress of philosophical discourse, knowledge and modes of thought, t...
Fields of Change is a study of the means by which the Iteso adapted to the imposition of colonial rule and the loss of political independence. It explores their pacification and incorporation into a colonial state and the effects that these processes have had on Iteso territorial and political systems. At the same time it examines the way in which the political system both affected and was affected by other aspects of the Iteso social system, most notably in the fields of religion, descent and domestic kinship. First published in 1978.
'Effortless and compelling, Brooks is a wonderful storyteller. I doubt I will read a better book this year.' Sunday Telegraph Each of Vermeer's paintings tells a story. In one, a military officer leans toward a laughing girl; in another, a woman stands by a window and weighs silver; in a third, fruit spills from a porcelain bowl onto a lavish Turkish carpet. Hiding in plain sight, these details hint at the intricate threads that bound Vermeer's world together - the officer's hat is made from North American beaver, bought with silver extracted from the mines of Peru, while beaver pelts were traded in their thousands for the Chinese porcelain so beloved by the Dutch in the Golden Age. From a view of Delft, Vermeer gives us the world. As a new Vermeer exhibition opens at the Rijksmuseum, the largest of its kind in history, Vermeer's Hat offers a fascinating perspective on how the burgeoning forces of trade and commerce shaped Vermeer's masterpieces.
Over 40 historians, folklorists, and ordinary Brooklyn Jews present a vivid, living record of this astonishing cultural heritage. 150 illustrations. Map.
Global imperial designs, which have been in place since conquest by western powers, did not suddenly evaporate after decolonization. Global coloniality as a leitmotif of the empire became the order of the day, with its invisible technologies of subjugation continuing to reproduce Africa’s subaltern position, a position characterized by perceived deficits ranging from a lack of civilization, a lack of writing and a lack of history to a lack of development, a lack of human rights and a lack of democracy. The author’s sharply critical perspective reveals how this epistemology of alterity has kept Africa ensnared within colonial matrices of power, serving to justify external interventions in African affairs, including the interference with liberation struggles and disregard for African positions. Evaluating the quality of African responses and available options, the author opens up a new horizon that includes cognitive justice and new humanism.
Since the publication of the first edition of this book in 1977, Africa has established itself as the most popular introductory text for African studies courses in North America. This third edition has been completely revised and brought up to date since the 1986 edition, reflecting changes in African society and politics, and in the scholarship available on this vast and complex continent. Contents I. Introduction 1. Africa: Problems and Perspectives. Phyllis M. Martin and Patrick O'Meara 2. The Contemporary Map of Africa. Michael L. McNulty II. The African Past 3. Prehistoric Africa. Kathy D. Schick 4. Aspects of Early African History. John Lamphear and Toyin Falola 5. Islam and African So...
The controversy surrounding the significant "Into the Heart of Africa" exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada is explored in this compelling and analytical text. The exhibit has become an international, controversial touchstone for issues surrounding the politics of visual representation, such as the challenges to curatorial and ethnographic authority in multicultural and postcolonial contexts. Asking why the museum's exhibit failed so many people, the author examines such issues as institutional politics, the broad political and intellectual climate surrounding museums, the legacies of colonialism and traditions of representation of Africa, and the politics of irony. By drawing upon anthropological and cultural criticism, the book offers a unique account of the ways in which an ambiguous exhibit about colonialism became the site of an expansiveInto the Heart of Africa."