Tainted Objects, Modern Spaces: Displaying Material Culture in the Progressivist Encyclopedic Museum
In: https://digitalcollections.saic.edu/islandora/object/islandora%3A106915
As an Encyclopedic, comprehensive, universal museum, the Art Institute of Chicago equally houses 'high art' and cultural property. Exhibits like "Indian Art of the Americas", which concerns Amerindian material culture, are constantly at odds with the Eurocentric exhibiting institution. Through analysis of the display space from the lens of critical museology, this thesis attempts to set the progressivist motivations of the Art Institute against its actualized treatment of cultural objects in "Indian Art of the Americas", and unpack the museum's response to the inherent tensions present in such exhibits.