The course examines the history, structure and social life of anthropology museums,
and the study of museums by anthropologists, focusing on a broad range of examples from
the mid-Nineteenth Century to the present. We will examine the relationships between
anthropology and museums in two different ways. Firstly we will trace the genealogy of
anthropology in museums, looking at how museum principles of classification, practices
of collection and exhibition, media, technology and archiving, have
influenced the ways in which knowledge of human beings has been formed, presented and
represented. Secondly, we look at what taking a specifically anthropological or
ethnographic perspective can do for our understanding of any kind of museum, from art
to zoology.
Topics include: the place of anthropology in science museums; how museums embody and
represent anthropological knowledge; how important objects are to anthropology; how
museums mediate the politics of cultural representation; the contemporary role of
indigenous peoples in museums, and the intersection of anthropology and museum
technologies including photography and digitization projects. Class workshops will be held
at the American Museum of Natural History, The New York Annex of the Museum of the
American Indian, and the Metropolitan Museum, and we will also have a number of guest
speakers working either as anthropologists in museums, or as anthropologists of museums.