Sex, Death & Ethnography

In relation to the collection management practices we were talking about today, I started to think about the kinds of organisations that disrupt what we think of as 'best practice' and would never qualify for MLA accreditation (nor would they want to). It's particularly interesting to trace problematic objects such as human remains and ethnographic objects of dubious origin when they are presented outside what we might consider a 'legitimate' museum context. I'm thinking particularly of the Ripley's Believe it or Not! franchise, which holds objects like these lovely shrunken heads and trophy skulls, alongside various reproductions of weirdness. Similarly, the objects displayed in the British Museum might be directly equivalent to those displayed at somewhere like the Musee de l'erotisme in Paris, though the meaning is fundamentally different. A perfect excuse to add some cheap titillation to this blog...