Extreme Collecting

Challenging Practices for 21st Century Museums
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-0-85745-363-1
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, 248 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 518 g

By exploring the processes of collecting, which challenge the bounds of normally acceptable practice, this book debates the practice of collecting 'difficult' objects, from a historical and contemporary perspective; and discusses the acquisition of objects related to war and genocide, and those purchased from the internet, as well as considering human remains, mass produced objects and illicitly traded antiquities. The aim is to apply a critical approach to the rigidity of museums in maintaining essentially nineteenth-century ideas of collecting; and to move towards identifying priorities for collection policies in museums, which are inclusive of acquiring 'difficult' objects. Much of the book engages with the question of the limits to the practice of collecting as a means to think through the implementation of new strategies.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Were, Graeme

King, J. C. H.

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Museumskunde, Materielle Kultur, Erinnerungskultur
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Kunstsammlung, Museen, Ausstellungen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Figures

Extreme Collecting: Dealing with Difficult Objects

Graeme Were

Part I: Dificult Objects

Chapter 1. The Material Culture of Persecution: Collecting for the Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum

Suzanne Bardgett

Chapter 2. Lyricism and Offence in Egyptian Archaeology Collections

Stephen Quirke

Chapter 3. Contested Human Remains

Jack Lohman

Chapter 4. Extreme or Commonplace: The Collecting of Unprovenanced Antiquities

Kathryn Walker Tubb

Chapter 5. Unfit for Society? The Case of the Galton Collection at University College London

Natasha McEnroe

Part II: Mass Produced

Chapter 6. Knowing the New

Susan Pearce

Chapter 7. T he Global Scope of Extreme Collecting: Japanese Woodblock Prints on the Internet

Richard Wilk

Chapter 8. A wkward Objects: Collecting, Deploying and Debating Relics

Jan Geisbusch

Chapter 9. Great Expectations and Modest Transactions: Art, Commodity and Collecting

Henrietta Lidchi

Part III: Extreme Matters

Chapter 10. Extremes of Collecting at the Imperial War Museum 1917–2009: Struggles with the Large and the Ephemeral

Paul Cornish

Chapter 11. Plastics – Why Not? A Perspective from the Museum of Design in Plastics

Susan Lambert

Chapter 12. T ime Capsules as Extreme Collecting

Brian Durrans

Chapter 13. Canning Cans – a Brand New Way of Looking at History

Robert Opie in conversation with J.C.H. King

Notes on Contributors

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Were, Graeme
Graeme Were is the director of the Museum Studies postgraduate programme at the University of Queensland. His current research focuses on material culture and ethnographic museums; digital heritage and source community engagement; and, ethnomathematics in the Pacific. His recent publications include Lines that Connect: Rethinking Pattern and Mind in the Pacific (University of Hawai'i Press, 2010), and Pacific Pattern, with S. Küchler (Thames & Hudson, 2005). He is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and an editor of the Journal of Material Culture.

King, J. C. H.
J.C.H. King writes about the art and material culture of Native North America, and is interested in wider issues of museum ethnography, cultural policy and the visual arts, and the collection of contemporary art, photography, and ephemera. He became research Keeper of Anthropology at the British Museum, in 2010. His recent publications include: Three Centuries of Woodlands Art: A Collection of Essays (European Review of Native American Studies, 2007), ed. with C.F. Feest, Provenance: Twelve Collectors of Ethnographic Art in England 1760–1990, with H. Waterfield (Somogy, 2006) and Arctic Clothing, ed. with B. Pauksztat and R. Storrie (British Museum Press, 2005).