Interruptions: Challenges and Innovations in Exhibition-Making

Laura Osorio Sunnucks,Motoi Suzuki,Diana E Marsh,Gwyneira Isaac,Nicola Levell,Anthony Shelton

doi:10.3167/armw.2020.080112

Abstract

Anthropology and its institutions have come under increased pressure to focus critical attention on the way they produce, steward, and manage cultural knowledge. However, in spite of the discipline’s reflexive turn, many museums remain encumbered by Enlightenment-derived legitimating conventions. Although anthropological critiques and critical museology have not sufficiently disrupted the majority paradigm, certain exhibitionary projects have served to break with established theory and practice. The workshop described in this article takes these nonconforming “interruptions” as a point of departure to consider how paradigm shifts and local museologies can galvanize the museum sector to promote intercultural understanding and dialogue in the context of right-wing populism, systemic racism, and neoliberal culture wars.

Highlights

Laura Osorio Sunnucks, Nicola Levell, Anthony Shelton, Motoi Suzuki, Gwyneira Isaac, and Diana E
If anthropological critiques and critical museology have not sufficiently disrupted the majority paradigm, certain exhibitionary projects have served to break with established theory and practice
The workshop described in this article takes these nonconforming “interruptions” as a point of departure to consider how paradigm shifts and local museologies can galvanize the museum sector, especially when it is confronted by the rise of right-wing populism, systemic racism, and neoliberal culture wars, intercultural understanding and dialogue are increasingly important

Summary

Introduction

Laura Osorio Sunnucks, Nicola Levell, Anthony Shelton, Motoi Suzuki, Gwyneira Isaac, and Diana E. The history of museology, museums, and galleries has, at least in the Anglophone world, been largely written and taught as the product of a linear rational succession of ideas and practices, which has been mediated by naturalized common human passions and proclivities Following critiques of their colonial legacies, anthropology and its institutions have, since the 1970s, come under increased pressure to refocus critical attention on the way they and the practices they produce negotiate and manage cultural knowledge. The first World Museologies Workshop was expressly planned for Mexico City to acknowledge the city’s significance as the site of North America’s first university as well as to recognize the early pioneering work of the city’s Museo de Arte Popular and its collaborations with Indigenous Peoples These movements that mark the country’s intellectual and political openness contrast starkly with the heightened restrictions at the United-States–Mexico border and the ramifications of the 2016 United States elections. The “Interruptions” workshop took a comparative approach to understand the factors affecting changes in museums and their critical responses in both hemispheres, while catalyzing the intellectual exchange between Euro-American, Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese thinkers and practitioners

Objectives

Conclusion