Philosophy and Museums : Volume 79
Essays on the Philosophy of Museums
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements Series, Vol. 79

Museums and their practices - especially those involving collection, curation and exhibition - generate a host of philosophical questions. Such questions are not limited to the domains of ethics and aesthetics, but go further into the domains of metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of religion. Despite the prominence of museums as public institutions, they have until recently received surprisingly little scrutiny from philosophers in the Anglo-American tradition. By bringing together contributions from philosophers with backgrounds in a range of traditional areas of philosophy, this volume demonstrates how their work can enhance our understanding of museums and shed light on the philosophical questions raised by museum practices. Many of the chapters in this volume make the case that the philosophy of museums is of vital concern, not only to those philosophers at work in the emerging field but also to practitioners within the museum world and to anyone who enjoys visiting museums.

List of illustrations; Notes on contributors; Introduction Victoria S. Harrison, Anna Bergqvist and Gary Kemp; 1. Museums and their paradoxes Mark O'Neil; 2. The open museum and its enemies: an essay in the philosophy of museums Charles Taliaferro; 3. The museum of big ideas Ivan Gaskell; 4. Museums and the nostalgic self Michael P. Levine; 5. 'A sudden surprise of the soul': wonder in museums and early modern philosophy Beth Lord; 6. Context and experiencing the sacred David Brown; 7. Are Holocaust museums unique? Paul Morrow; 8. Museums, ethics and truth: why museums' collecting policies must face up to the problem of testimony Philip Tonner; 9. The ethics of trusteeship and the biography of objects Andreas Pantazatos; 10. People and things: questions museums make us ask and answer Alda Rodrigues; 11. What do we see in museums? Graham Oddie; 12. An honest display of fakery: replicas and the role of museums Constantine Sandis; 13. Word and object: museums and the matter of meaning Garry L. Hagberg; 14. Framing effects in museum narratives: objectivity in interpretation revisited Anna Bergqvist; 15. The participatory art museum: approached from a philosophical perspective Sarah Hegenbart; Appendix: I. The Hutchesons' grammar school project Leon Robinson; II. Foucault, madness and museums Glen Melville, Scott Adams and Lucy McCracken; III. The identity of museum objects Jessica Palmer and Claire Richmond; Bibliography.