Daniel J. Sherman

Museum Culture : Histories, Discourses, Spectacles

Drawing from the history of museums in Western Europe, Israel, the United States and the former Soviet Union, this collection of essays focuses on the governing ideologies behind the practices and strategies of display in institutions shown to be equally guided by historical structures and narratives. As the editors note, common themes and insights link the essays within and across their division into three separate sections: Histories, Discourses, and Spectacles. Index, 15 p. Biographical notes on contributors. Circa 500 bibl. ref.

Worthy Monuments: Art Museums and the Politics of Culture in Nineteenth- Century France.

Choosing the art museums of provincial France in the previous century as a paradigm, Sherman (history, U. of Rochester) considers the museums place in modern society through exploration of its past. He employs an array of previously unstudied archival sources as evidence that the museums emergenc