Objects of Power | MUSEUM FATIGUE

Utopian Gestures

November 6, 2018 by Museum Fatigue

For some time I have been sensitive to the variety of utopias that I encounter here in China. Of course, by utopias, I don’t mean the comprehensive, complete, all-encompassing social utopias of the type that national leaders or religious figures imagine and occasionally attempt to realize on a large scale—like the communist one featured in Chinese propaganda imagery from the 1940s through the 1970s. Rather, I have been attracted to much smaller utopias—the attempted everyday utopias that are intentionally modest […]

Categories: Objects of Power, Utopian Gestures, Utopias and Dystopias

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Why I Love the Gideon Bible People

September 22, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Every school year begins with the anxiety of meeting new people, starting new classes and getting into the rhythms of higher education. For nearly as long as I have worked at our school it has also been the time of the return of the Gideons. During the first few weeks of school, before the weather gets too chilly, a few of them usually visit campus for a few hours in late morning to mid afternoon. They stand on the sidewalks […]

Categories: Bodies, Objects of Power, Space • Tags: belief, freedom of speech, Gideon Bible, public space, Religion

Great Food. Offensive Stickers.

August 15, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Just hours from completing this year’s summer road trip we enjoyed a great dinner in a midwestern diner at the Cedar Country Cooperative’s Exit 45 Restaurant. I enjoyed an open-faced hot turkey sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy. I only wish I had space for a slice of their awesome pies! Check out links from their Facebook page for photos. The welcoming homestyle cooking, however, couldn’t have clashed more with the offensive messages of some of the stickers for sale […]

Categories: Consumption, Nationalism, Objects of Power • Tags: bumper stickers, Cedar Country Cooperative, Cenex, English Only, God, language, stickers, Wisconsin, xenophobia

Mummy or Corpse?

August 3, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

For years the Field Museum in Chicago has had the desiccated naked body of a child on display—at child viewing level no less—in their Inside Ancient Egypt exhibit. For over a decade I have used this as an example in lectures in my Museums, Exhibitions and Representations class as an example of the power of museums to reframe objects. Put a dead body on the street and the police will be looking for a murderer, put it behind glass in a […]

Categories: Bodies, Exhibitions and Fairs, Exhibitions and Representation, Museums, Objects of Power, Representation • Tags: Ancient Egypt, Chicago, children, corpse, display, Egypt, Field Museum, Field Museum in Chicago, mummy, museum object

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Patrick Wilken’s Biography of Claude Lévi-Strauss

May 8, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

I just finished a very enjoyable read—Patrick Wilcken’s biography Claude Levi-Strauss: The Father of Modern Anthropology. I picked it up used at a local Minneapolis Bookseller, Magers and Quinn late last week. Billed as “the first biography in English” of its subject, it was not something I could turn down. For years I have enjoyed teaching Tristes Tropiques in my Anthropology of Travel class—Pilgrims, Travelers and Tourists and I read some of his work in graduate school—but never really had an impression […]

Categories: Anthropology, Books, Nostalgia, Objects of Power • Tags: biography, Bororo, Brazil, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Mato Grosso, Musée du quai Branly, Patrick Wilcken, structural anthropology, Tristes Tropiques

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Bringthemback.org’s Cheeky Response to the Parthenon Marbles Controversy

January 26, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

If you want to see the Parthenon, you go to the Athenian Acropolis. If you want to see the sculptures, however, you have to go to the British Museum. For two hundred years this has been one of the most visible legacies of the “Age of Imperial Collection.” (Of course nearly every museum has objects collected from others under unequal power relations—“missing pieces” that match “holes” all over the world from which they were taken.) Last week a colleague of […]

Categories: Collecting, Empire, Museums, Objects of Power • Tags: Athenian Acropolis, Athens, Big Ben, bringthemback.org, Elgin Marbles, Parthenon, Parthenon Marbles, Parthenon Sculptures, the British Museum, vandalism

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Mystery Object #16: Moroccan Christmas Trees

December 31, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

This is a quick snap from my iPhone of some Christmas Trees I found for sale in the square at Meknes, Morocco. If I had had more time I would have taken a few more, but this does capture the range of styles–green ones with fruit and mysterious black ones with trunks. The one in the foreground on the right even has a light dusting of snow. I have no idea who might be buying these or where they were […]

Categories: Objects of Power, Uncategorized • Tags: Christmas Tree, Morocco

“Public Walking iPads” as Portable Distinction

November 2, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

The other day while in the check-in line at the Beijing airport a middle aged man in smart business casual dress, with a modest rollaboard suitcase just also happened to be plugged into his iPad watching a Hollywood blockbuster. The bustle of the airport, the crowded checkin line, the juggling of luggage in one hand and the precarious balancing of an expensive, unprotected 4th generation 3G iPad in the other, made me cringe. A single unexpected bump or slip and […]

Categories: China, Consumption, Gear, iPad, Objects of Power • Tags: capital, conspicuous consumption, distinction, iPad, iPads, Pierre Bourdieu, Social Class

Chinese Tycoon to Rebuild Crystal Palace, Remembers Glorious Historical Period

October 6, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

“Wonderful, amazing, fairylike, are the words that come uppermost in his mind as the full glories of that famous vista break for the first time on his astonished sight. For a few moments he is so lost in astonishment and absorbed in pleased wonder that he can do nothing but gaze upwards on the noble proportions of that vast central hall, in admiration of the cunning workmanship by which such common materials as mere glass and iron could be made […]

Categories: China, Exhibitions and Fairs, Memory, Nostalgia, Objects of Power, Zombie • Tags: 1851, Chinese tycoons, colonialism, Crystal Palace, Ni Zhaoxing, Opium War, The Crystal Palace, The Great Exhibition, Yuanmingyuang, ZhongRong, 倪召兴, 圆明园, 水晶宫, 中融集团

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