Archive

Scotland’s Transnational Heritage: Legacies of Empire and Slavery. Edited by Emma Bond and Michael Morris. Edinburgh University Press, 2023. REVIEWED BY SAMANTHA SHEPHERD Edited by Emma Bond and Michael Morris, the collection of articles featured in Scotland’s Transnational Heritage provide an eye-opening introduction to Scotland’s history as an empirical benefactor and contributor to the Trans-Atlantic …

Storytelling in Museums. Edited by Adina Langer. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield/AAM, 2022. REVIEWED BY IZZY SILVERMAN Storytelling is a fundamental aspect of modern museum work. However, very few museum professionals have examined how it is done and the scope of the practice. In Storytelling in Museums, Adina Langer, an experienced curator and museum professional, brings …

Remembering Enslavement: Reassembling the Southern Plantation Museum. Amy E. Potter, Stephen P. Hanna, Derek H. Alderman, Perry L. Carter, Candance Forbes Bright, and David L. Butler. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2022. REVIEWED BY MARY GLISSON In the wake of the brutal public murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests that …

Museums and Social Change: Challenging the Unhelpful Museum. Edited by Adele Chynoweth, Bernadette Lynch, Klaus Petersen, and Sarah Smed. London, England. Routledge, 2020. REVIEWED BY KAYLA KELLPSH Museums and Social Change: Challenging the Unhelpful Museum critiques the museum field through the lens of activism and investigates museums’ potential to promote empowerment and social justice. Calling …

Museums, Modernity and Conflict: Museums and Collections in and of War Since the Nineteenth Century. Edited by Kate Hill. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. 2020. REVIEWED BY JASON HOUSLEY Commonly attributed to such varied personages as Winston Churchill, Herman Goring and Missouri Senator George Graham Vest, the aphorism ‘’History is written by the victors’’  pertains to the …

On Withdrawal—Scenes of Refusal, Disappearance, and Resilience in Art and Cultural Practices edited by Sebastian Eduardo Dávila, Rebecca Hanna John, Ulrike Jordan, Thorsten Schneider, Judith Sieber, and Nele Wulff. Diaphanes & University of Chicago Press, 2023. REVIEWED BY GRACIE COLLIER Museums foremost serve the public, and all too often the public is considered only in …

Prophets and Ghosts: The Story of Salvage Anthropology by Samuel J. Redman. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2021. REVIEWED BY SARA POLK Gripping the nation from the very formation of the field of anthropology was the idea that Native peoples were disappearing, requiring white scientists to save their languages and material culture from a doomed nonexistence. …

The Art Museum in Modern Times by Charles Saumarez Smith. New York: Thames & Hudson, Inc., 2021. REVIEWED BY JENNIFER MOTT Charles Saumarez Smith’s The Art Museum in Modern Times serves as a type of reference for how museums have changed in the modern era. Smith, a respected Cultural Historian and former Director of both …

Museum Diplomacy: Transnational Public History and the U.S. Department of State, by Richard J.W. Harker. University of Massachusetts Press: 2020. REVIEWED BY JACOB HIGGINS Richard Harker’s book, Museum Diplomacy: Transnational Public History and the U.S. Department of State is a critical look at the program known as Museums Connect. Museums Connect, which operated between 2008 …

Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest by Laura Raicovich. New York: Verso Books, 2021. REVIEWED BY AVA OSOWICK Laura Raicovich’s book Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest challenges the museum’s perceived duty. At their core, museums and museum adjacent organizations serve the public, and many believe that, …