Cultural Custodians - Anthropological Curators

Through works such as James Boon’s, “Why Museums Make Me Sad,” one can see the obvious need for the evolution of museums from “cabinets” to true and fair representations of culture. The transformation of the museum has forced curators to reassess their roles as essential “cultural custodians.” The conflict is one it seems that art museums have tried to accept and adapt to as gracefully as possible. It is a conflict that is difficult to ignore, especially in an anthropological light:

“Despite the increasing diversity incorporated in art museums, curators and exhibition designers still are struggling to invent ways to accommodate alte

“I am describing looking at it as an artifact and in that sense like a work of art. The museum has transformed the crab – hard heightened, by isolating, these aspects, had encouraged me to look at it in this way. The museum had made it an object of visual interest.” (Karp and Lavine 1991:25)

Further elaborating on the relationship between artifacts and their meanings, Spencer Crew and James Sims in “Locating Authenticity: Fragments of Dialogue,” suggest how historical study gives meaning to material culture and how our possession of objects for the human past influences the way in which we understand the past. Their discussion reflects upon issues of reality within a museum context. For the authors, true cultural representation is dependent upon a holistic study of the history of the object.

Some topics in this essay:
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