The Politics of Display

The Politics of Displaybrings together studies of contemporary and historical museum shows and challenges the notion that these exhibitions are politically exempt. For example, what does it mean when the Enola Gay, the aircraft which dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima, is displayed? The contributors to this volume chart the changing relationship between displays and their audience and analyzes the consequent shift in styles of representation towards interactive and multimedia displays. Examples are taken from exhibitions of science, technology and industry, anthropology, geology, natural history and medicine. Contributors include Steven W. Allison-Bunnell, Ken Arnold, Tony Bennett, Thomas F. Gieryn, Penelope Harvey, Sharon Macdonald and Tracy Lang Teslow.

List of figures

vii

(2)

Notes on contributors

ix

(2)

Preface

xi

1 Exhibitions of power and powers of exhibition: an introduction to the politics of display

1

(24)

Sharon Macdonald

2 Speaking to the eyes: museums, legibility and the social order

25

(11)

Tony Bennett

3 The visibility of difference: nineteenth-century French anthropological collections

36

(17)

Nelia Dias

4 Reifying race: science and art in Races of Mankind at the Field Museum of Natural History

53

(24)

Tracy Lang Teslow

5 Making nature `real' again: natural history exhibits and public rhetorics of science at the Smithsonian Institution in the early 1960s

77

(21)

Steven W. Allison-Bunnell

6 On interactivity: consumers, citizens and culture

98

(20)

Andrew Barry

7 Supermarket science? Consumers and `the public understanding of science'

118

(21)

Sharon Macdonald

8 Nations on display: technology and culture in Expo '92

139

(20)

Penelope Harvey

9 Strangers in paradise: an encounter with fossil man at the Dutch Museum of Natural History

159

(14)

Mary Bouquet

10 Can science museums take history seriously?

173

(10)

Jim Bennett

11 Birth and Breeding: politics on display at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine

183

(14)

Ken Arnold

12 Balancing acts: science, Enola Gay and History Wars at the Smithsonian

197

(32)

Thomas F. Gieryn

Afterword: from war to debate?

229

(8)

Sharon Macdonald

Index

237

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The Politics of Display

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Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials