Minnesota State Fair | MUSEUM FATIGUE

Oriental Torture Cabinet

September 3, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

For folks in the Twin Cities the last weeks of August leading up to Labor Day is the time for the “Great Minnesota Get Together”—The Minnesota State Fair. Perhaps on of the only rituals truly shared by a large diverse cross section of Minnesotans, the fair hosts hundreds of thousands of people from a wide variety of backgrounds. It brings together rural and urban, old and young, people of different ethnic and cultural groups, new immigrants and old. It is […]

Categories: Bodies, Consumption, Exhibitions and Fairs, Gender, Mythologies • Tags: Minnesota State Fair, Orientalism

Mystery Object #4: Carnival Red Star Target

August 17, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

Sometimes everyday things can suddenly be reinterpreted in entirely new ways. Take, for example, a simple paper target that I have had taped on my office door for the last two years… Never any good at games of chance and skill, carnival games have always made me feel like Charlie Brown when Lucy volunteers to hold the football: I entertain a moment of hope, only to have the ball ripped away at the last minute. Things were different one afternoon […]

Categories: Mystery Objects • Tags: Communism, Minnesota State Fair

Does the Market Have a Flavor?

May 3, 2010 by Museum Fatigue

Every year in my fall semester class, Development to Globalization, we begin by reading Sidney Mintz’s classic book, Sweetness and Power. The book serves as a very accessible introduction to some aspects of colonial history and the way that markets and culture interact. For the average American student who is accustomed to thinking about markets as operating according to rational economic rules and the exercise of power as an overt threat to violence, Mintz describes a different perspective. He looks […]

Categories: Random Reflections • Tags: Minnesota State Fair, Sidney Mintz, sugar