Machineries of modernity : museums, theories, histories

When I became interested in museums, some thirty years ago, the existing literature was quite sparse and, for the most part, had been written by people professionally involved with museums, usually as either directors or curators. This was particularly true of the historical literature. General accounts of the development of museums were hard to come by,2 and specific museum histories were often exclusively in-house products written to commemorate sesquicentennial or centennial anniversaries.3 Serious engagements with museums and their relations to more general intellectual, cultural and social histories from within the academy were few and far between.4 The situation since has changed dramatically with a regular flow of tides reflecting different disciplinary engagements (historical, sociological, anthropological) with, museum histories and practices and new journals augmenting the previous array of professional journals to provide a context for broader academic explorations of museum/society and museum/history relations.5 A number of publishers have developed museum studies lists, while analyses of museum practices have also provided occasions for more general theoretical excursions into critical social and cultural theory.6