As an anthropology professor who regularly teaches classes dealing with material culture and issues of representation, every semester we discuss the ways that humans ascribe meanings to objects—reading them in the terms of the preexisting cultural categories they bring with them. In the context of museums Eilean Hooper-Greenhill (2000) describes these groups as “interpretive communities.” I like this phrase because it foregrounds the fact that interpretation is never entirely individual—but is informed by sociocultural context. It also emphasizes that there is never […]

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