Museums, prejudice and the reframing of difference

by Richard Sandell

How, if it all, do museums shape the ways in which society understands difference? In recent decades there has been growing international interest amongst practitioners, academics and policy makers in the role that museums might play in confronting prejudice and promoting human rights and cross-cultural understanding. Museums in many parts of the world are increasingly concerned to construct exhibitions which represent, in more equitable ways, the culturally pluralist societies within which they operate, accommodating and
engaging with differences on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, class, religion, disability, sexuality and so on.
Despite the ubiquity of these trends, there is nevertheless limited understanding of the social effects, and attendant
political consequences, of these purposive representational strategies. Richard Sandell combines interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives with in-depth empirical investigation to address a number of timely questions. How do audiences engage with and respond to exhibitions designed to contest, subvert and reconfigure prejudiced conceptions of social groups? To what extent can museums be understood to shape, not simply reflect, normative understandings of difference, acceptability and tolerance? What are the challenges for museums which attempt to engage audiences in debating morally charged and contested contemporary social issues and how might these be addressed? Sandell argues that museums frame, inform and enable the conversations which audiences and society more broadly have about difference and highlights the moral and political challenges, opportunities and responsibilities which accompany these constitutive qualities.

Genres: Nonfiction, Museology

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 9, 2006

About the author

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson is Professor of Women's Studies at Emory University. Her fields of study are feminist theory, American literature, and disability studies. She is author of Staring: How We Look and Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Literature and Culture; co-editor of Re-Presenting Disability: Museums and the Politics of Display and Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities; and editor of Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. "

Reviews

[Inge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Massive amounts of interesting. Sandell goes a bit against the grain of current museological thinking which is very post-modernist/constructivist: each visitor is entitled to his/her own opinion, museums should be spaces for debate where every voice is heard. Rather he argues that YES museums are spaces for debate, but they are also equipped to be one of the voices in the debate, and they can also set the moral/ethical boundaries for the debate (non-negotiable equality for all/respect for difference) which might exclude some voices. In fact, museums should aim to be one of these voices and stimulate thinking about/shape the debate about contemporary pressing social issues.

I think this is such an eloquently argued book. Sandell's position is controversial but he is so well-equipped to respond to criticism in a very elegant way. Definitely a classic for me, will read this again many times.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sandall realizes that prejudice in a society will always be around and discusses ways to deal with informing the public without upsetting the minority. He also mentions how that no matter how well one plans an exhibit, there will always be someone who either just doesn't understand your point or takes the opposite of what was intended away. The last portion of the book on disability was fantastic, as the disabled are definitely prejudiced against, but in an entirely different form from racism or sexism for example. His work on how to portray an exhibit that is meant to be stared at when that's the furthest from what the disabled want done to them is a delicate balance.