As museum collections continue to come under scrutiny, Mary Harrington says critiques are less a reflection of ‘dismantling’ power than of ‘shifts’ in power relations.
In 1906, the New York Times reported on a new exhibition at the monkey house in the Bronx zoo causing a stir among visitors and the press: a human inhabitant. Ota Benga, a 23-year-old Bushman, could be seen in the orang-utan enclosure, where he drew crowds of hundreds who stared at him as he wove hammocks or shot his bow.
This was an age far more gung-ho than our own about taking artefacts, creatures and even living human beings from their contexts, and putting them on display for the entertainment and edification of the masses. Prince Albert’s 1851 Great Exhibition had displayed technological innovations alongside consumer goods and looted colonial treasures, setting off a trend for World Fairs that served both in person and via print media as a kind of populist catalogue of all there is to know about the world. Museums of all kinds flourished over the same era as standard-bearers for culture across Europe and the New World...Keep reading on UnHerd.
In 1906, the New York Times reported on a new exhibition at the monkey house in the Bronx zoo causing a stir among visitors and the press: a human inhabitant. Ota Benga, a 23-year-old Bushman, could be seen in the orang-utan enclosure, where he drew crowds of hundreds who stared at him as he wove hammocks or shot his bow.
This was an age far more gung-ho than our own about taking artefacts, creatures and even living human beings from their contexts, and putting them on display for the entertainment and edification of the masses. Prince Albert’s 1851 Great Exhibition had displayed technological innovations alongside consumer goods and looted colonial treasures, setting off a trend for World Fairs that served both in person and via print media as a kind of populist catalogue of all there is to know about the world. Museums of all kinds flourished over the same era as standard-bearers for culture across Europe and the New World...Keep reading on UnHerd.