Inventing the multicultural museum: A critical study of "Harlem On My Mind"
Item
-
Title
-
Inventing the multicultural museum: A critical study of "Harlem On My Mind"
-
Identifier
-
AAI3083647
-
identifier
-
3083647
-
Creator
-
Cahan, Susan Elizabeth.
-
Contributor
-
Adviser: Romy Golan
-
Date
-
2003
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Art History | American Studies | History, Black
-
Abstract
-
The Harlem On My Mind exhibition, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1969, was the first major museum show to respond to the call for racial equality in American society. The exhibition presented a multimedia history of Harlem and put before a large audience images of black America that had never before been granted cultural legitimacy by the museum establishment. The exhibition recast the role of the museum from connoisseur to participant in contemporary cultural politics. In addressing issues of race and culture, and attempting to reconstruct power relations within the museum, Harlem On My Mind was a watershed in the development of multicultural exhibition practice. Yet, in its effort to expand the Metropolitan Museum's constituencies and mission, the show became one of the most controversial ever mounted by an American museum. This dissertation explores how the reception of Harlem On My Mind affected the subsequent development of multicultural museum practice in the United States.;Chapter one explores the ways in which the Civil Rights Movement impacted arts institutions in the mid- to late-1960s. Chapter two investigates the process of developing Harlem On My Mind, charting the key moments of the unfolding drama, from the museum's first exuberant announcement of the show in late 1967 to early criticisms by artists, Harlem residents, and community leaders, to the ultimate crisis that erupted shortly before the exhibition opened in January 1969. Chapter three reconstructs the exhibition's contents and design, and analyzes the influence of specific curatorial decisions on the reception of the show. Chapter four looks at the immediate aftermath of Harlem On My Mind in the early 1970s and the ways in which mainstream museums responded to the demand for increased representation of diverse constituencies. And finally, chapter five addresses ways in which Harlem On My Mind, as a lightning rod for controversy and a catalyst for vociferous public debate, affected ways in which multiculturalism would be articulated and enacted in American museums.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
