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The Museum of Babel

Meditations on the Metahistorical Turn in Museography

Mark Thurner author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd

Publishing:6th Dec '24

£135.00

This title is due to be published on 6th December, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

The Museum of Babel cover

The Museum of Babel: Meditations on the Metahistorical Turn in Museography is a thought‑provoking, transatlantic reading of contemporary exhibits of the museum’s own past. Museums everywhere now exhibit ‘evocations’ of their own pasts, often in the form of refashioned, ancestral cabinets of curiosities. Moving beyond discussions of ‘the return to curiosity,’ Thurner calls this retrospective trend the metahistorical turn in museography. Providing engaging and lively meditations on exhibits of the museal past in art, natural history, archaeology, and anthropology museums, including the Prado, the Royal Cabinet of Natural History, the Ashmolean, the British Museum, the Louvre, Coimbra’s Science Museum, Brazil’s scorched Museu Nacional, Mexico’s Museum of Anthropology, Argentina’s Museo de la Plata, and the Venice Art Biennale, Thurner argues that the ongoing metahistorical turn in museography is exposing the museum’s true vocation, which is to be a museum of itself, or metamuseum.

In a word, The Museum of Babel is a provocative meditation on the museum’s true vocation. As such, it will be essential reading for museologists, curators, museum professionals, historians and philosophers of art and science, anthropologists, and students in an array of related fields, including museum studies, cultural studies, global studies, history, archaeology, anthropology, design, and art history.

ISBN: 9781138565326

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

202 pages