Museum Bodies : The Politics and Practices of Visiting and Viewing

Museum Bodies Provides An Account Of How Museums Have Staged, Prescribed And Accommodated A Repertoire Of Bodily Practices, From Their Emergence In The Eighteenth Century To The Present Day. As Long As Museums Have Existed, Their Visitors Have Been Scrutinised, Both Formally And Informally, And Their Behaviour Calibrated As A Register Of Cognitive Receptivity And Cultural Competence. Yet There Has Been Little Sustained Theoretical Or Practical Attention Given To The Visitors' Embodied Encounter With The Museum. In Museum Bodies Helen Rees Leahy Discusses The Politics And Practice Of Visitor Studies, And The Differentiation And Exclusion Of Certain Bodies On The Basis Of, For Example, Age, Gender, Educational Attainment, Ethnicity And Disability. At A Time When Museums Are More Than Ever Concerned With Size, Demographic Mix And The Diversity Of Their Audiences, As Well As With The Ways In Which Visitors Engage With And Respond To Institutional Space And Content, This Wide-ranging Study Of Visitors' Embodied Experience Of The Museum Is Long Overdue.--book Jacket. Making A Social Body -- Not Just Looking -- Walking The Museum -- Performing The Museum -- Bodies Of Protest -- Disquieting Bodies. Helen Rees Leahy. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Helen Rees Leahy (U. of Manchester, UK) is the director of the Center for Museology. Her background and publication history is in the world of fine art collecting. Here, she writes on the politics and practices of museum visiting and viewing. The book is intended to be read as about museums in general, but the author's expertise is about the cultural history of fine art in Britain. She is interested in how political and cultural groups decide which sorts of people should visit a museum, and where she stays with high art venues she makes some compelling points through careful research into the social and political history of English public institutions like the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. Sometimes these are generalizable beyond art museums, for instance the complex history of dress codes for museum visitors in Britain, which she argues were partly about creating a venue where people of different classes could mingle, while preventing the socially forbidden circumstance of masters and servants meeting in situations of equality. However, British museums are not all fine art museums, and the culture of fine art and its display is only one kind of museum. Where Leahy's commentaries on class consciousness and museum snobbery may be cogent and provable in relation to galleries and museums of fine art, the history and culture of natural history, history, cultural, science, and technology museums and displays, and the consciously theatrical popular tradition of Barnum's Museum, are all absent here. The author also assumes an institution like the British Museum is culturally and functionally the same as a hall of oil portraits of English kings or a modern art exhibit at the Tate Gallery. Similarly, she writes as a cultural theorist, so while the book's subject is the bodies of visitors, the author tends to ignore physical bodies in favor of conceptual ones, for instance assuming Victorian concerns about damage from "the dirty masses" are entirely about class prejudice rather than also dealing with intense physical crowding in early coal-fueled public buildings without ventilation systems, running water, climate control, or smoking laws. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Museum Bodies discusses the politics and practice of visitor studies, and the differentiation and exclusion of certain bodies on the basis of, for example, age, gender, educational attainment, ethnicity and disability. Museums are more than ever concerned with size, demographic mix and the diversity of their audiences, and the ways in which visitors engage with and respond to institutional space and content. This wide-ranging study of visitors' embodied experience of the museum is long overdue Cover 1 Contents 6 List of Illustrations 8 Acknowledgements 12 Introduction 14 1 Making a Social Body 32 2 Not Just Looking 58 3 Walking the Museum 86 4 Performing the Museum 110 5 Bodies of Protest 140 6 Disquieting Bodies 166 Epilogue 190 Bibliography 198 Index 210