The Museum of Babel: Meditations on the Metahistorical Turn in Museography

The Museum of Babel: Meditations on the Metahistorical Turn in Museography is

a thoughtprovoking, transatlantic reading of contemporary exhibits of the museums

own past. Museums everywhere now exhibit evocations of their own pasts,

often in the form of refashioned, ancestral cabinets of curiosities. Moving beyond

discussions of the return to curiosity, Thurner calls this retrospective trend the

metahistorical turn in museography. Providing engaging and lively meditations

on exhibits of the museal past in art, natural history, archaeology, and anthropology

museums, including the Prado, the Royal Cabinet of Natural History, the

Ashmolean, the British Museum, the Louvre, Coimbras Science Museum, Brazils

scorched Museu Nacional, Mexicos Museum of Anthropology, Argentinas Museo

de la Plata, and the Venice Art Biennale, Thurner argues that the ongoing metahistorical

turn in museography is exposing the museums true vocation, which is to be

a museum of itself, or metamuseum.

In a word, The Museum of Babel is a provocative meditation on the museums

true 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, cultural

studies, global studies, history, archaeology, anthropology, design, and art history.