politics of display : museums, science, culture

Met lit. opg. - Met reg. Exhibitions are never, and never have been, above politics. Rather, technologies of display and ideas about science and objectivity are mobilized to tell stories of progress, citizenship, racial and national difference. Description of the changing relationship between displays and their audience. It analyses the consequent shift in styles of representation towards interactive, multimedia and reflexive modes of display. Examples are taken from exhibitions of science, technology and industry, anthropology, geology, natural history and medicine, and locations include the United States of America, Australia, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands and Spain.