Museums and Difference

Daniel J. Sherman is Professor of History and Director of the Center for 21st Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He is author of The Construction of Memory in Interwar France and editor (with Terry Nardin) of Terror, Culture, Politics (IUP, 2006).

". . . fascinating and probing treatments of issues that press on both museum workers and folklorists.October 15, 2008"—Lee Haring, Brooklyn College (Emeritus)"Museum and Difference is about the role that museums play in shaping the stories that we tell about who we are and how we are different from other people. It is an interesting subject.Jan. 23, 2009"—Matt Shinn, Museum Practice Magazine"[D]emonstrates both the centrality and rapidly changing significance of difference in museum practice and poses a number of critical questions for future scholarship, such as, for example, whether or not aesthetic distinctions can ever be employed in museums in a manner that does not privilege the identity of one or another social group. —David O'Brien, University of Illinois at Urban"—Champaign

• ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionDaniel J. ShermanPart 1. Representing Difference1. Art Museums and Commonality: A History of High IdealsAndrew McClellan2. "The Last Wild Indian in North America": Changing Museum Representations of IshiIra Jacknis3. National Museums and Other Cultures in Modern JapanAngus Lockyer4. Cultural Difference and Cultural Diversity: The Case of the Musée du Quai BranlyNélia Dias5. Gunther von Hagens's Body Worlds: Exhibitionary Practice, German History, and DifferencePeter M. McIsaacPart 2. Representing Differently6. Meta Warrick's 1907 "Negro Tableaux" and (Re)Presenting African American Historical MemoryW. Fitzhugh Brundage7. Skulls on Display: The Science of Race in Paris's Musée de l'Homme, 1928–1950Alice L. Conklin8. Dossier: "Inventing Race" in Los AngelesIlona Katzew and Daniel J. Sherman9. Living and Dying: Ethnography, Class, and Aesthetics in the British MuseumLissant Bolton10. Museums and Historical AmnesiaWilliam H. TruettnerContributorsIndex