cover image Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display

Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display

Peggy Levitt. Univ. of California, $29.95 (268p) ISBN 978-0-520-28606-1

In this diligent international study, Levitt (The Transnational Villagers), a professor of sociology at Wellesley, uses a series of case studies to evaluate how museums are adapting to the new global environment, which is marked by rapid immigration and social change. Levitt sets up some revealing comparisons among institutions. While she finds that Sweden's museums, such as the Etnografiska Museet in Stockholm, create global narratives, even addressing issues like human trafficking, the National Museum of Denmark selectively uses global history to celebrate Danishness and sidelines the experience of immigrants. Levitt shows how Singapore's Asian Civilizations Museum and Qatar's Museum of Islamic Art have helped to thrust these countries onto the world stage as cosmopolitan societies, even though certain political freedoms are still very much wanting. Throughout, Levitt draws on extensive interviews with museum curators and directors, situates each museum into its historical and political context, and weighs its strategies of exhibition and interpretation. While China is conspicuously absent, this remains an illuminating study that will be of interest to academics and museum professionals working in the field today. (Aug.)