museum | MUSEUM FATIGUE

Remembering Culture at the Terracotta Warrior Museum

January 1, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

In my early twenties, when becoming an anthropology professor was still a far off aspiration, I spent a few years as a tour guide leading groups to China for Pacific Delight Tours. Experience as a guide on the front lines of the culture industry in the early years of China’s Post-Mao development provided me with a wealth of opportunities to see first-hand how tourist itineraries were drawn, sites were narrated and tourists experienced Chinese “Culture.” Here I have to make […]

Categories: Fieldwork, Museums • Tags: memory, museum, Terracotta Warriors, tourism

Bringing Archaeology and Sociocultural Anthropology Together in the Classroom

February 20, 2011 by Museum Fatigue

Every other year I teach a class, Museums, Exhibitions and Representation, which examines museums and display as socio-cultural phenomena. The course reviews a great deal of history and theory, and from the first time I taught it students were assigned a final project which would simulate an exhibit design process–a way to bring theory to bear on practice. On alternate years one of my colleagues, Brian Hoffman, teaches a historical archaeology class that has a large excavation component. The class […]

Categories: Teaching, Video clips • Tags: archaeology, collaboration, Hamline, museum, sociocultural anthropology

Replicating Terracotta Warriors

May 2, 2010 by Museum Fatigue

Last summer while doing a research visit at the Terracotta Warrior Museum in Xi’an and some associated tourist sights, I noted the proliferation of images and reproductions of the warriors. In this collection of images can you spot the “real” from the reproduced? Of course this is a trick question, because even the “real” warriors have been pieced together from fragmented remains! (This post is also a test of the photo-posting function on posterous.)

Categories: Fieldwork, Photo Essays • Tags: China, museum