Curator of the Contemporary Arts & Cultures Program at the British Museum, Putnam explores six distinct but interrelated themes in this fascinating examination of the museum's unconventional role in contemporary art. The book provides a survey of the way museums and their collections have been portrayed and manipulated by contemporary artists and the import this has for the museum's role as cultural interpreter. Putnam first determines museum iconography, the aura it gives exhibited objects, and its sometimes paradoxical use to elevate the mundane or grotesque.

From Marcel Duchamp's 'Portable Museum' (Boite-en-valise) of the early 1940s to the latest interventions by artists in museums' displays, merchandise and educational activities, the artists of the last seventy years have often turned their attention - both creatively and critically - to a reappraisal of the ideas underpinning the museum. Traditional methods of taxonomy, archiving, storage, and other aspects of curatorship have been variously appropriated, mimicked or reinterpreted. Assemblages of found objects or artists' possessions have served as an extension of the artist's studio, a storage place where both ideas and materials are evaluated; many artists have exhibited their collections as an entity or a 'museum', thus contributing to a flesh understanding of the nature and role of the museum.

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION open the box

CHAPTER Ⅰ the museum effect

CHAPTER Ⅱ art or artifact

CHAPTER Ⅲ public inquity

CHAPTER Ⅳ framing the frame

CHAPTER Ⅴ curator/creator

CHAPTER Ⅵ on the inside

CHAPTER Ⅶ without walls

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

INDEX