Grasping the World. The Idea of the Museum

Abstract

Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago (eds) Ashgate 2004 £35.00 $59.95 (P) 804 pp. 68 mono illus isbn 0-7546-0835-2 (p) This substantial anthology comprises more than 40 texts intended to stimulate debate around the question that the editors Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago pose in the title of their general introduction: 'What are museums for?' As they acknowledge themselves, readers already familiar with the other collections of essays and articles which have appeared over the last few years might indeed be asking 'Why yet another book about museums now?', and their introduction goes on to argue a range of reasons why this particular volume has been compiled. The anthology is organised around six section headings, each section starting with its own introductory essay, which serves to throw up further relevant questions as well as providing a framework for the texts themselves. These sections range, more or less chronologically, over the history of the museum as institution and the body of critical and theoretical approaches that have arisen to frame its study. As the editors point out: Inseparable from a critical understanding of museums are the crises of and challenges to European self-knowledge resulting from a half-millennium-long global expansion of experience through conquest and commerce. Their sections therefore start the examination of this 'half-millennium' with 'Creating historical effects' and 'Instituting evidence'. These range over wide issues such as the narration of fact and fiction, the nature and collection of museum objects, and 'strategies of time' [Michel de Certeau, 'Psychoanalysis and its history'], as well as detailed studies of specific museums and types of collections, for example Giuseppe Olmi's essay 'Science-honour-metaphor: Italian cabinets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries'. The debate is then opened up to issues of particular contemporary concern, with ethical as well as historical ramifications, as is clearly indicated in the titles of the remaining four sections: 'Building shared imaginaries/Effacing otherness', 'Observing subjects/Disciplining practice', 'Secularizing rituals' and finally 'Inclusions and exclusions: Representing adequately'. Texts selected for these include many which may already be familiar to the reader, having appeared in other collections, such as Tony Bennett's 'The exhibitionary complex', Craig Clunas' 'China in Britain: The imperial collections' and the work of Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach. Many of the texts will be much less well known, however, and a number have also been specially written for this volume. These, often more recent, essays include Sandra Esslinger's 'Performing identity: The museal framing of Nazi ideology' and Ruth B Phillips, 'Where is "Africa"? Re-viewing art and artifact in the age of globalization', both dating from 2002, and giving a clear indication of the wide scope of the material anthologised here. If there is an omission to be lamented, it is not any particular text, but the lack of a general index, without which the use of this comprehensive volume may well prove limited. The scope of this project is truly impressive, as indicated above, and results, as Preziosi and Farago indicate in their extensive acknowledgements, from the editors' own teaching as well as participation in many international conferences, debates and symposia. As such, it is aimed at both academics and students, who will be able to follow the editors' guiding essays to navigate this key area of art historical and cultural studies.

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