Museum of Babel

The Museum of Babel: Meditations on the Metahistorical Turn in Museography isa thought provoking, transatlantic reading of contemporary exhibits of the museum'sown past. Museums everywhere now exhibit 'evocations' of their own pasts,often in the form of refashioned, ancestral cabinets of curiosities. Moving beyonddiscussions of 'the return to curiosity,' Thurner calls this retrospective trend themetahistorical turn in museography. Providing engaging and lively meditationson exhibits of the museal past in art, natural history, archaeology, and anthropologymuseums, including the Prado, the Royal Cabinet of Natural History, theAshmolean, the British Museum, the Louvre, Coimbra's Science Museum, Brazil'sscorched Museu Nacional, Mexico's Museum of Anthropology, Argentina's Museode la Plata, and the Venice Art Biennale, Thurner argues that the ongoing metahistoricalturn in museography is exposing the museum's true vocation, which is to bea museum of itself, or metamuseum.In a word, The Museum of Babel is a provocative meditation on the museum'strue vocation. As such, it will be essential reading for museologists, curators,museum professionals, historians and philosophers of art and science, anthropologists,and students in an array of related fields, including museum studies, culturalstudies, global studies, history, archaeology, anthropology, design, and art history.