Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes
Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes poses a number of probing questions about the role and responsibility of museums and anthropology in the contemporary world. In it, Michael Ames, an internationally renowned museum director, challenges popular concepts and criticisms of museums and presents an alternate perspective which reflects his experiences from many years of museum work.
Based on the author’s previous book, Museums, the Public and Anthropology, the new edition includes seven new essays which argue, as in the previous volume, that museums and anthropologists must contextualize and critique themselves – they must analyse and critique the social, political and economic systems within which they work. In the new essays, Ames looks at the role of consumerism and the market economy in the production of such phenomena as worlds’ fairs and McDonald’s hamburger chains, referring to them as “museums of everyday life” and indicating the way in which they, like museums, transform ideology into commonsense, thus reinforcing and perpetuating hegemonic control over how people think about and represent themselves. He also discusses the moral/political ramifications of conflicting attitudes towards Aboriginal art (is it art or artifact?); censorship (is it liberating or repressive?); and museum exhibits (are they informative or disinformative?).
The earlier essays outline the development of museums in the Western world, the problems faced by anthropologists in attempting to deal with the often conflicting demands of professional as opposed to public interests, the tendency to both fabricate and stereotype, and the need to establish a reciprocal rather than exploitative relationship between museums/anthropologists and Aboriginal people.
Written during the course of the last decade, these essays offer an accessible, often anecdotal, journey through one professional anthropologist’s concerns about, and hopes for, his discipline and its future.
This rich, complex, and compelling book represents a forceful scrutiny of the often polarized discourse on museums as well as an attempt to discredit one-sided arguments that prevent subtle and nuanced understandings of these institutions ... Ames spends a good deal of time challenging the ways people think about, understand, and represent Native art ... Ames raises interesting and important questions for anthropologists., for art historians, and for museum professionals ... The struggle for genuine openness to a multitude of voices is by no means over; we should be grateful to Michael Ames for providing us with such a rational and thoughtful publication which represents a major contribution to that struggle.
Cannibal Tours has quite a bit to recommend it, and to recommend it to professional and lay readers alike. For the former, it offers some new and eminently practical insights not just about the present and future of museums, but about the relevance of anthropology to late 20th century society. In this sense the book is less true to its current subtitle than to the original ‘Anthropology of Anthropology,’ and so is deserving of being read as a critical commentary on where the discipline has been, and where it may be heading. And for the latter, Ames’s well-written essays explain a good deal of what actually constitutes the work of museums, most importantly the production of those ‘cultural consumables’ meant to inform and entertain the museum-going public.
Museum curators, anthropologists, and students of popular culture will find much in Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes to inform and provoke. It will ... encourage readers to challenge the common sense of their own particular situations and apply its lessons to the operations of their own institutions.
Preface to the Second Edition
Preface to the First Edition: Museums, the Public and Anthropology
1. Introduction: The Critical Theory and Practice of Museums
2. The Development of Museums in the Western World: Tensions between Democratization and Professionalization
3. Dilemmas of the Practical Anthropologist: Public Services versus Professional Interests
4. What Could a Social Anthropologist Do in a Museum of Anthropology?: The Anthropology of Museums and Anthropology
5. How Anthropologists Stereotype Other People
6. How Anthropologists Help to Fabricate the Cultures They Study
7. The Definition of Native Art: The Case of Willie Seaweed
8. The Emerging Native View of History and Culture
9. De-Schooling the Museum: A Proposal to Increase Public Access to Museums and Their Resources
10. Are Museums or Anthropology Really Necessary Any More?
11. World's Fairs and the Constitution of Society: The Ideology of Expo ’86
12. The Big Mac Attack and the Anthropology of Everyday Life
13. Cannibal Tours, Glass Boxes, and the Politics of Interpretation
14. Museums in the Age of Deconstruction
Notes
Bibliography
Index
This Is Our Life
Haida Material Heritage and Changing Museum Practice
By Cara Krmpotich and Laura Peers
