ANTH 400
MUSEUMS AND COMMUNITIES taught in alternating years by
Drs. Christopher Fennell and Helaine Silverman
Department of Anthropology
Course Concept
The engagement of communities in museum research and exhibition is one of the most important developments in museology since the rise of modern museums. This course examines collaborative research involving museums and members of ethnographic source communities, and the development of a new curatorial praxis that incorporates source community needs and perspectives.
Strong, sustained, and mutually beneficial relationships with communities are critical to museums, cultural, and heritage organizations and not-for profit organizations seeking to play timely, relevant, positive, and socially responsible roles in society. Successful relationships between museums and communities require an ability of the museum staff to assess their ideological/philosophical and organizational readiness and to have sufficient cultural competency so as to initiate community partnerships; identify community characteristics and needs; define potential community roles and relationships; build and sustain reciprocal, mutually beneficial relationships with diverse groups through a range of appropriate and collaborative initiatives; interact with communities in respectful and culturally appropriate ways; include and balance diverse perspectives associated with effective community cultural and social development activities; deal with controversy and resolve conflict; measure the effectiveness of community partnerships at the conclusion of projects.
Course Requirements
undergraduates: reading notes (50% of final grade): write critical notes on one item per class national museum study (25% of final grade): see Sessions 29-37 design a community museum for the community of your choice (25% of final grade)
 concept and justification
 layout with pieces to be displayed
 bibliography graduate students: national museum study (25% of final grade): see Sessions 29-37 design a community museum for the community of your choice (25% of final grade)
 concept and justification
 layout with pieces to be displayed
 bibliography term paper (50% of final grade)

Required Readings books
Museums and Source Communities , edited by Laura Peers and Alison K. Brown
(Routledge, 2003) = PB
Museums and Communities. The Politics of Public Culture , edited by Ivan Karp,
Christine Mullen Kreamer, and Steven D. Lavine (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992) =
KKD
Museums of Influence by Kenneth Hudson (Cambridge University Press, 1987) = H articles these are on e-reserve
Topics
Session 1. Introduction readings
KKD: pp. 1-17
Session 2. What is a community? Source communities. Descendant communities. readings
Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson
KKD: pp. 19-33, 367-381
Sessions 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Kinds of museums: fine art, anthropological, history, natural history. science and technology, etc. readings
KKD: chapters 5, 6, 9, 11
Chapter 6 in Museum Politics by Timothy W. Luke (University of Minnesota Press,
2002) ["Museum pieces: politics and knowledge at the American Museum of Natural
History"]
H: chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Session 8. Pluralism and American Museums. Whose voice? Whose authority? readings
KKD: chapters 2
KKD: pp. 137-157
Sessions 9 and 10. Museums and the African-American community, part 1: slavery. readings
"Bones and Bureaucrats. New York’s African Cemetery. Anatomy of an excavation.
New York's Great Cemetery Imbroglio" by Spencer P. M. Harrington. In
Archaeology March/April 1993: 30-38.
"Engaging the public through mortuary archaeology. Philadephia's First African
Baptist Church Cemeteries" by Thomas A. J. Crist and Daniel G. Roberts. In CRM http://crm.cr.nps.gov/archive/19-10/19-10-2.pdf
"Descendant community partnering in the archaeological and bioanthropological investigation of African-American skeletal populations: Two interrelated case studies from Philadelphia." by D.G. Roberts and J. F.McCarthy. In Bodies of Evidence:

Reconstructing History Through Skeletal Analysis , edited by A. L.Grauer, pp. 19–35.
New York: John Wiley, 1995).
"Maintaining boundaries, or 'mainstreaming' black history in a white museum" by Eric
Gable. In Theorizing Museums , edited by Sharon Macdonald and Gordon Fyfe, pp. 177-
202. (Blackwell, 1998)
Session 11. Museums and the African-American community, part 2: free communities. readings http://www.anthro.uiuc.edu
then click on faculty then click on Christopher Fennell then click on the three New Philadelphia links chapter 2 in Steven C. Dubin's Displays of Power (New York University Press, 1999)
["Crossing 125th Street: 'Harlem on my Mind' revisited"]
Session 12. National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution. readings http://www.nmafa.si.edu/
Session 13. Controversies over the display of African art and the African-American experience readings
KKD: chapters 14, 17
"Always true to the object, in our fashion" by Susan Vogel. In Exhibiting Cultures , edited by Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, pp. 191-204 (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991)
Session 14. Museums and the Hispanic community readings
KKD: chapters 3, 10
"Art museums, national identity and the status of minority cultures: the case of Hispanic art in the United States" by Steven D. Lavine. In Exhibiting Cultures , edited by Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, pp. 79-87 (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991)
"The poetics and politics of Hispanic art" by Jane Livingston and John Beardsley. In
Exhibiting Cultures , edited by Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, pp. 104-120
(Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991)
Session 15. Precursors to the National Museum of the American Indian. readings
KKD: chapter 12
"Four Northwest Coast museums" by James Clifford. In Exhibiting Cultures , edited by
Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, pp. 212-254 (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991)
"The poetic image and Native American art" by Patrick T. Houlihan. In Exhibiting
Cultures , edited by Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, pp. 205-211 (Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1991) chapter 6 in Making Representatios. Museums in the Post-Colonial Era by Moira G.
Simpson (Routledge, 1996) ["Native American museums and cultural centres"]

Session 16. National Museum of the American Indian and the pan-American indigenous community. readings a packet of readings on e-reserve
Session 17. NAGPRA. readings chapters 7, 8, 9 in Making Representations. Museums in the Post-Colonial Era by Moira
G. Simpson (Routledge, 1996)
Session 18. Virtual repatriation. readings
Session 19. Other enclaved minorities in the U.S. and their museums. readings
KKD: chapter 15
Session 20. Colonialism and museums, part 1: concepts. readings
KKD: chapter 8
Session 21. Colonialism and museums, part 2: Africa. readings
"Refocusing or reorientation? The exhibit or the populace: Zimbabwe on the threshold" by Dawson Munjeri. In Exhibiting Cultures , edited by Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, pp. 444-456 (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991)
"Where is 'Africa'? Re-Viewing art and artifacts in the age of globalization" by Ruth
Phillips. In Grasping the World. The Idea of the Museum , edited by Donald Preziosi and
Claire Farago, pp. 758-774. (Ashgate, 2004)
Session 22. Colonialism and museums, part 3: India. readings
KKD: chapter 1
"Cultural conservation through representation: Festival of India folklife exhibitions at the
Smithsonian Institution" by Richard Kurin. In Exhibiting Cultures , edited by Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, pp. 315-343 (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991)
Sessions 23 and 24. Jewish museums. Holocaust museums. Landscape of memory as museum. readings
KKD: chapter 13
"Objects of ethnography" by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. In Exhibiting Cultures , edited by Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, pp. 386-443 (Smithsonian Institution Press,
1991)
Chapter 3 in Museum Politics by Timothy W. Luke (University of Minnesota Press,
2002) ["Memorializing mass murder: the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum"]

"At the Holocaust Museum" by Alice Friman. In Museum Studies , edited by Bettina
Messias Carbonell, pp. 123-124 (Blackwell, 2004)
Sessions 25 and 26. Cemeteries as museums. readings
"Narratives of identity and history in modern cemeteries of Lima, Peru" by Helaine
Silverman. In The Space and Place of Death , edited by Helaine Silverman and David B.
Small, pp. 167-190. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association,
Number 11, 2002.
Ethnicity and the American Cemetery , edited by Richard E. Meyer (Bowling Green State
University Popular Press, 1993) [on reserve in Education & Social Science Library]
Sessions 27 and 28. Fairs as museums. readings
KKD: chapter 4
"Festivals" by Ivan Karp. In Exhibiting Cultures , edited by Ivan Karp and Steven D.
Lavine, pp. 279-287 (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991)
"The politics of participation in folklife festivals" In Exhibiting Cultures , edited by Ivan
Karp and Steven D. Lavine, pp. 288-314 (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991)
"The world as marketplace: commodification of the exotic at the World's Columbian
Exposition, Chicago, 1893" by Curtis M. Hinsley. In Exhibiting Cultures , edited by Ivan
Karp and Steven D. Lavine, pp. 344-365 (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991)
"Selling nations: international exhibitions and cultural diplomacy" by Brian Wallis. In
Museum Culture edited by Daniel J. Sherman and Irit Rogoff, pp. 265-281. (University of
Minnesota Press, 1994)
Sessions 29-37. Museums and Nations. Students present their research on a particular national museum in the context of that country's history.
United States
National Museum of American History-Smithsonian Institution
Europe
National Museum of Scotland
National Museum of Ireland
National Museum of Iceland
National Historical Museum (Portugal)
National Museum of History and Art (Luxemburg)
National Museum of History of Ukraine
National Museum of History of Moldava
National Museum of Slovenia
National Museum of History and Culture of Belarus
National Museum of History (Sofia, Bulgaria)
Romanian National History Museum
Asia and the Pacific
National Museum of History (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
National Museum of History (Taipei)
National Museum of Japanese History

National Museum of History (Auckland, North Island, New Zealand)
Latin America
Museo Nacional de Antropologia, Arqueología e Historia (Lima, Peru)
Museo Nacional de Antropologia and National Museum of History (Mexico)
National Museum of History (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Africa
Session 38-41: in-class presentation of community museums
42, 43, 44. graduate students present their term papers in class.
45. Course summary.