Do museums still need objects? / Steven Conn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Conn, Steven.

Series:

Arts and intellectual life in modern America.

Arts and intellectual life in modern America

The Arts and Intellectual Life in Modern America

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Museums--United States--History--20th century.

Museums.

Museum exhibits--United States--History--20th century.

Museum exhibits.

Museums--Collection management--United States--History--20th century.

Cultural property--United States--History--20th century.

Cultural property.

Art objects--United States--History--20th century.

Art objects.

Museums--Political aspects--United States--History--20th century.

Museums--Social aspects--United States--History--20th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (271 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"We live in a museum age," writes Steven Conn in Do Museums Still Need Objects? And indeed, at the turn of the twenty-first century, more people are visiting museums than ever before. There are now over 17,500 accredited museums in the United States, averaging approximately 865 million visits a year, more than two million visits a day. New museums have proliferated across the cultural landscape even as older ones have undergone transformational additions: from the Museum of Modern Art and the Morgan in New York to the High in Atlanta and the Getty in Los Angeles. If the golden age of museum-building came a century ago, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Field Museum of Natural History, and others were created, then it is fair to say that in the last generation we have witnessed a second golden age.By closely observing the cultural, intellectual, and political roles that museums play in contemporary society, while also delving deeply into their institutional histories, historian Steven Conn demonstrates that museums are no longer seen simply as houses for collections of objects. Conn ranges across a wide variety of museum types-from art and anthropology to science and commercial museums-asking questions about the relationship between museums and knowledge, about the connection between culture and politics, about the role of museums in representing non-Western societies, and about public institutions and the changing nature of their constituencies. Elegantly written and deeply researched, Do Museums Still Need Objects? is essential reading for historians, museum professionals, and those who love to visit museums.

Contents:

Introduction: Thinking about museums

Do museums still need objects?

Whose objects? Whose culture? The contexts of repatriation

Where is the East?

Where have all the grown-ups gone?

The birth and the death of a museum

Museums, public space, and civic identity.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9780812221558

0812221559

9781283890007

1283890003

9780812201659

0812201655

OCLC:

794700592