World Fairs and Museums

Fictive Museums and the Poetics of Mislabelling

“…The didactic label, which seems so central to the museum archetype today, remained a novelty even at the time of William Flower, who introduced the practice to London's Natural History Museum when he became its director in 1884 (Stearn 1988: 75). Indeed, today's 'traditional' label has been attributed largely to the work of the American ichthyologist and curator George Brown Goode (1851-96) (see Rydell 2010). …”

Native subjects on display: reviving the colonial exposition in Marcos' Philippines

“…It is widely held that colonial expositions utilized the classificatory and narrative techniques of the evolutionary sciences of empire and contributed to the modern public museum's technologies of collection and display (Bennett, 1995(Bennett, , 2004Breckenridge, 1989;Kirschenblatt-Gimblett, 1998;Rydell, 1984Rydell, , 2006. The encyclopedic orientation and teleological narratives of expositions are often juxtaposed with their commercial operations as popular amusements.…”

“…Until this practice fell out of favor in the 1930s (to be replaced by ethnographic films), these displays provided object lessons on the purported moral, racial and scientific superiority of Europeans. The literature on the topic underscores the exploitative dynamics at play in these theatrical performances premised on the spectacularization of racialized bodies (Corbey, 1993;Rydell, 1984Rydell, , 2006. Tony Bennett's groundbreaking work (1995) has dominated scholarship on colonial expositions and human displays.…”

An Exploration of Learning in A Living History Museum: Family Groups, Costumed Interpreters, their Interactions, and the Making of Meaning

“…The modern day model of the museum for public access and education, however, traces its founding to a much more recent time. Several prominent museums were founded and populated with objects and exhibits that were part of a world's fair (Rydell, 2006) Likewise, in the United States (US), George Brown Goode believed museums should be avenues for disseminating knowledge and culture (and therefore power), to the masses. He suggested museums could be more accessible to the common man than the ivory towers of the university, rather like the public library or the world's fairs (Rydell, 2006).…”

“…Several prominent museums were founded and populated with objects and exhibits that were part of a world's fair (Rydell, 2006) Likewise, in the United States (US), George Brown Goode believed museums should be avenues for disseminating knowledge and culture (and therefore power), to the masses. He suggested museums could be more accessible to the common man than the ivory towers of the university, rather like the public library or the world's fairs (Rydell, 2006). Based on this principle, Goode and Spencer Fullerton Baird planned the transformation of the Smithsonian from a "research only" institute to America's National Museum, a vast exhibition space that freely welcomed the public.…”