The Museum of Other People: From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions
Ethnographic museums were built to display other people, and are now unsure what they are for.
Adam Kuper traces the museums of anthropology from their colonial foundations through the theories of human difference they were built to illustrate, to the repatriation debates that now surround them. He is an anthropologist writing about his own discipline’s institutions, and is candid about what they got wrong and what they preserved.
Recommended by 1 Person
Tyler Cowen
Adam Kuper, The Museum of Other People: From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions. An excellent history of ethnographic museums, including their original visions, how they evolved, and their continuing import. Good coverage of Leipzig, Pitt-Rivers, Paris, the Smithsonian, Mexico, and more.
Source · February 2023
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