Hot topics, public culture, museums

Caleb Williams, one of the authors in this collection of essays, laments the loss of what he calls “thick description” in contemporary museum exhibition interpretation: If much of the writing in this 300-page book is an example of what Williams calls “thick description,” then I celebrate its passing. As I slogged through the texts, often having to reread them several times to find the core idea, I realized that this was not primarily for those of us who create the exhibitions and programs in museums, but for social theorists and cultural critics with a penchant for Foucault and fluent in the jargon of the academy. And this is such a shame, because some of the ideas and analysis embedded within all the thick description are new and insight-ful, and could actually provoke deeper conversation and insights among practitioners.