The museum's lexis
Driving objects into ideas
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2391098 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Gabriela Nicolescu (0000-0002-5342-9156, Goldsmiths College, London, UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 465-489 |
| Publication date | 2016-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Material Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1359-1835 • E-ISSN: 1460-3586 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1359183516664207 |
| OpenAlex | W2554436322 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 22 |
This article discusses how exhibition making can be seen as a creative method for building anthropological knowledge. Situations of conflict between social classes, curatorial practices and disciplines remind us of the existence of a very subtle and enduring museum lexis which governs how political ideas are put on display. Research was conducted in tandem with an exhibition the author curated in the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant 21 years after the collapse of the communist regime in South-Eastern Europe. Reflecting upon this process, the author shows how museums use a specific lexis that is based not only on existing practices but also on contingency. These facets each engage two different notions of temporality: while practice involves repetitiveness, predictability and continuity over different historical periods, contingency creates unexpected groupings of things, settings and meanings. It is the balance of the interplay between practice and contingency that dictates how the audience engages with museum discourse
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Contingency · Epistemology · Exhibition · Lexis · Linguistics · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Temporality · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · History · Law · Museums and Cultural Heritage
The Politics of Aesthetics
The intellectuals on the road to class power
On Longing
The Wedding of the Dead
National Ideology Under Socialism
Fetishes and Monuments
Archive Fever
The Museum on the Roof of the World
Reading the Contemporary
The birth of the museum
Photography and Fetish
Intricate relations between Western anthropologists and Eastern ethnologists
On the discrepancy between objects and things
The Museum as Method
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,33 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2020 (4) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |