Museums and Difference

Museums, modern concepts of culture, and ideas about difference arose together and are inextricably entwined. Relationships of difference—notably, of gender, ethnicity, nationality, and race—have become equally important concerns of scholarship in humanities and contemporary museum practice. Museums and Difference offers the perspectives of scholars and museum professionals in tandem, using the concept of difference to reexamine how museums construct themselves, their collections, and their publics. Essays explore a wide range of examples from around the world and from the 19th century to the present, including case studies of special exhibitions as well as broad surveys of institutions in Europe, the United States, and Japan.

Daniel J. Sherman is Professor of History and Director of the Center for 21st Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He is author of The Construction of Memory in Interwar France and editor (with Terry Nardin) of Terror, Culture, Politics (IUP, 2006).