Museums, Media and Cultural Theory

Abstract

This monograph built on research funded by the British Academy (2000), and conference papers given in Sheffield (Millennial Animals 2000) and at the American Comparative Literature Association in Boulder, Colorado, in 2001. The final research and writing of the book was supported by AHRC Research Leave funding (2003-4). As well as providing an introduction to existing work in the field, the book sets out an argument about the nature of museums and exhibitions as media. Its contribution to cultural - rather than museum - studies lies in its emphasis on the museum artefact as 'thing' (as opposed to 'document'); its use of media theory to analyse how museums and exhibitions stage their objects; and its rewriting of the standard history of museums in terms of a 'return to curiosity' in which museums anticipate, produce and reinvent the technological means and media of their day.

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