The Birth of the Museum: History, theory, politics / Tony Bennett

Part-1: History and theory;
Chapter-1: The formation of the Museum;
Chapter-2: The exhibitionary complex;
Chapter-3: The political rationality of the Museum;
Part-2: Policies and politics;
Chapter-4: Museums and 'the people';
Chapter-5: Out of which past?
Chapter-6: Art and theory: the politics of the invisible;
Part-3: Technologies of progress;
Chapter-7: Museum and progress: Narrative, ideology, performance;
Chapter-8: The shaping of things to come: Expo '88;
Chapter-9: A thousand and one troubles: Blackpool pleasure beach;

Tony Bennett's invigorating study enriches and challenges our understanding of the Museum, placing it at the centre of modern relations of culture and government.
Bennett argues that the public museum should be understood not just as a place of instruction but as a reformatory of manners in which a wide range of regulated social routines and performance takes place. discussing the historical development of museums alongside that of the fair and the international exhibition, he sheds new light upon the relationship between modern forms of official and popular culture;
In a series of richly detailed case studies from Britain, Australia and North America, Bennett investigates how nineteenth-and twentieth-century museums, fairs and exhibitions have organised their collections, and their visitors. His use of foucaultian perspectives and his consideration of museums in relation to other cultural institutions of display provides a distinctive perspective on contemporary museum policies and politics.
Tony Bennett is professor of cultural studies and foundation director of the institute for cultural policy studies in the faculty of humanities at Griffith university, Australia. He is the author of formalism and marxism, outside literature and (with Janet Woolacott) Bond and Beyond: The political career of a popular hero.