Museum Roots
The founders of Black American museums in the post-World War II era were all shaped by Carter G. Woodson’s “Negro Canon” of history and art.
The Countercultural History of Living Museums
In the 1960s and ’70s, guides began wearing period costumes and farming with historical techniques, a change that coincided with the back-to-the-land movement.
Human Remains and Museums: A Reading List
Questions over their value for research conflict with the ethics of possessing the dead, especially when presenting human remains in the setting of a museum.
Making Egypt’s Museums
The world’s largest archaeological museum is poised to open on the Giza Plateau, building on two centuries of museum planning and development.
The Nashville Museum of Natural and Artificial Curiosities
Inspired by Peale’s Philadelphia Museum, artist and collector Ralph E. W. Earl founded a similar institution in Tennessee in 1818.
Imperial Science and the Company’s Museum
The East India Company’s London museum stored the stuff of empire, feeding the growth of new collections-based disciplines and scientific societies.
Should Museums Display Shrunken Heads?
Tsantsas, or shrunken human heads, remind us of how museums have often been founded on a violent trade in indigenous culture.
How Museums Tidy Up
Deaccessioning old works can be a complicated and fraught process. But even museums have to spring-clean now and then.
Brazil’s Museu Nacional Was More Than Just a Museum
Brazil's oldest natural history museum has burned down. The institution played a crucial part in creating Brazil's identity as a country.
Ectoplasm and the Last British Woman Tried for Witchcraft
Spiritualist medium Helen Duncan was photographed emitting ectoplasm, supposedly proof of her ability to contact the dead.