The rebirth of the museum

Abstract

This chapter outlines the character of the modernist museum and considers further the idea of the post-museum. The modernist museum represents a nineteenth-century European model. The modernist museum emerged gradually to become a fully established and very powerful institutional form by the end of the nineteenth century. The post-museum will hold and care for objects, but will concentrate more on their use rather than on further accumulation. In addition, the post-museum will be equally interested in intangible heritage. The chapter describes a case-study which is based on the life-story of one object, a Lakota Sioux Ghost Dance Shirt. The Ghost Dance Shirt entered the museum already imbued with affiliations which were significant at the time and are so again today, although for the period of one hundred years the significance seems to have been almost lost. Visual culture within the museum is a technology of power.

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