564 MUSEUM THEORY AND PRACTICE (4hrs)
Professor Helaine Silverman Office: 295 Davenport Hall; PH: 333-1315
We will examine the history and social life of museums and how museums have been studied by anthropologists. We will consider early collecting activities and the development of the museum in the 19th and 20th centuries and into the postmodern present. We will examine the relationship between museums and evolutionary ethnology, cultural relativism, physical anthropology, archaeology, natural history, as well as relationships between museums and communities (e.g., issues of repatriation, diversity, multiculturalism). We will seek to understand the cultural and political contexts of building ethnographic collections and displays and education programs. We will examine changes in the roles of museums, notably as the museum has become part of the culture industry. We will examine the emergence of the museum as a focus of anthropological and theoretical inquiry and as a subject of ethnography itself. We also will pay attention to legal and ethical issues surrounding the development and use of collections. Assignments include: (1) a critical analysis of the articles that have appeared in the Museum Anthropology section of American Anthropologist since the beginning of this section in the journal (1999); (2) study visit to Krannert Art Museum, Spurlock Museum and Champaign County Historical Museum with write-up of comparative analysis of the two museums; (3) development of a proposal for an exhibition and accompany it with textual explanations, diagrams of the layout of the exhibit, photocopies of the pieces you will exhibit and where they go in the exhibition, etc.