BOOK REVIEW: Edited by Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn.COLONIALISM AND THE OBJECT: EMPIRE, MATERIAL CULTURE AND THE MUSEUM. London and New York: Routledge, 1998.

Abstract

These essays, explorations in the interdisciplinary territories currently developing around the site of the museum, can be seen as exercises in the cultural history of objects. With empire as focus, tracing this cultural history amounts to locating objects within the competing discursive frameworks of colonized territory and imperial metropolis, the museum and the collector mediating the changing meanings as objects move between the two. The book has its origin in a 1995 art history conference--fittingly, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, "indicating the web of continuities between the colonial past and postcolonial present" (1)--and the volume reflects its origin in the wide range of work, the tendency toward narrow study, and the mixed quality. Even the weaker pieces, however, illuminate the interesting territories revealed by interdisciplinary cultural excavations of empire. As the editors note: "The intersection between colonialism, museums and objects unites [. . .] three substantial bodies of contemporary theory; post-colonial theory, museum studies and material culture studies/design history" (2), and the Introduction handily summarizes recent directions in each.

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