Performativity and difference in museums

Exhibitionary practices have undergone important changes in recent decades. Contemporary museums increasingly emphasize performance and "experience" in their productions. Attempts to explain the latest exhibitionary trends often characterize participation, performance, and interactivity as "new" and "democratic." It is therefore important to actively inquire about the dynamics of exhibitionary forms that we classify as traditional and those that seem new. Are explicit rationales for recent changes adequate? What aspects of the latest trends may be related to previous moments in the history of museums, and what can we learn by making such connections?;Research reveals how exhibitions of cultural and bodily differences in the nineteenth century relate to some of the interactivities observable in museums today. The thesis consists of five chapters. The introduction theorizes key ideas related to performativity and difference in museums, followed by a chapter on nineteenth-century displays of humans. The historical chapter shows that live performances were systematically repressed from museums around the year 1900, normalizing quiet contemplation as acceptable museum behavior. The process also worked towards stabilizing display semiotics. The second chapter is followed by three contemporary case studies that explore how museum conventions are critically subverted by: curators in the Fowler Museum at UCLA; visitors in human evolution exhibitions; and artists in both art and culture museums.