Revisiting the Past in Museums and at Historic Sites by I. Lasc, Anca; McClellan, Andrew; Söll, Änne;

Short description:

Revisiting the Past in Museums and at Historic Sites demonstrates that museums and historic spaces are increasingly becoming "backdrops" for all sorts of appropriations and interventions that throw new light upon the objects they comprise and the pasts they reference.

Long description:

Revisiting the Past in Museums and at Historic Sites demonstrates that museums and historic spaces are increasingly becoming "backdrops" for all sorts of appropriations and interventions that throw new light upon the objects they comprise and the pasts they reference.

Rooted in new scholarship that expands established notions of art installations, museums, period rooms, and historic sites, the book brings together contributions from scholars from intersecting disciplines. Arguing that we are witnessing a paradigm shift concerning the place of historic spaces and museums in the contemporary imaginary, the volume shows that such institutions are merging traditional scholarly activities tied to historical representation and inquiry with novel modes of display and interpretation, drawing them closer to the world of entertainment and interactive consumption. Case studies analyze how a range of interventions impact historic spaces and conceptions of the past they generate. The book concludes that museums and historic sites are reinventing themselves in order to remain meaningful and to play a role in societies aspiring to be more inclusive and open to historical and cultural debate.

Revisiting the Past in Museums and at Historic Sites will be of interest to students and faculty who are engaged in the study of museums, art history, architectural and design history, social and cultural history, interior design, visual culture, and material culture.

Table of Contents:

List of figures; List of contributors; Introduction: Space Unlocked, History Unfrozen: Revisiting the Past in Museums and at Historic Sites; Section I: Historic Sites; Chapter 1: A Way Forward for Plantation Sites: Reimagining Space and Relations in the Wake of Black Lives Matter; Chapter 2: Hollywood and Changing Interpretations of a Historic Plantation; Chapter 3: Reanimating Literary House Museums in France: The Homes and Haunts of George Sand and Honoré de Balzac; Chapter 4: Holiday Decorations, Commercialism and Nostalgia in the UK Historic House Interior; Chapter 5: Housing Remembrance: Simon Fujiwara’s Appropriation of the Anne Frank House; Section II: Museums; Chapter 6: Negotiating Tsarist Heritage: Marxist Everyday-Life Museum Displays in the Soviet Union, 1920-1930s; Chapter 7: Dwelling in the Past Continuous: Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark and the Hermitage’s Genii Loci; Chapter 8: Salvador Dali’s Rainy Taxi at the Museum: The Disruption of Surrealist Installations; Chapter 9: A Refuge and Asylum: Perforating the Boundaries of the Hermetic Exhibition Space in the 1960s and 1970s; Chapter 10: Revolting Hunting Trophies: Art Orienté Objet at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature; Section III: Period Rooms; Chapter 11: The Period Room as a Crystal of Time; Chapter 12: The Gilded Age Revisited: Yinka Shonibare CBE at The Newark Museum of Art; Chapter 13: Bringing Stories Back into Spaces: "Living Rooms" at the Minneapolis Institute of Art; Chapter 14: Moving Reality TV into the Period Room: 1900 House; Index.