On the Meaning of Exhibitions – Exhibition Epistèmes in a Historical Perspective

• Authors: Kerstin Smeds
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This essay aims at contributing to our understanding of the nature of exhibitions, namely how and why we make them, and what they - and the things in them - might symbolize. My focus will be on exhibitions of objects in classical museums of cultural history, archaeology and ethnology/ethnography. I will discuss how scientific epistemologies and discourses, as well as the history of ideas and ideologies, are reflected in the way museums and exhibitions are organized. Theoretically, I will lean on ideas of Michel Foucault presented in his work The Order of Things (Foucault, 1991) and Power/Knowledge (Gordon 1980),but also on Mieke Bal’s Double Exposures (1996), and a few others.

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Designs for Learning
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 5
• Issue: 1-2
• Pages: 50-72

Dates

online

2014-12-20

Contributors

author

Kerstin Smeds

• University of Umeå, Sweden

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/dfl-2014-0004