Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara : New York University
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is Professor of Performance Studies and of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York
University.
Review
"Destination Culture is a book of discovery. Reading it is to accompany Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
through fairs and museums, as a tourist and as an always sharp observer of people. The power of this book is to
show how first-rate ethnographic work is also the stuff of cultural studies. This volume, including her widely
cited "Exhibiting Jews," shows why there are few commentators on the cultural scene who are as
insightful, critical--and often funny--as Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett."
- Sander L. Gilman, author of Smart Jews
"A book of wide appeal that has few rivals . . . . It develops an original perspective on museums and other
forums for displaying culture and art and does so in a witty and accessible style."
- Ivan Karp, coeditor of Museums and Communities
University Of California Press Web Site
March, 2000
Summary
Destination Culture takes the reader on an eye-opening journey from ethnological artifacts to kitsch.
Posing the question, "What does it mean to show?" Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett explores the agency of
display in a variety of settings: museums, festivals, world's fairs, historical re-creations, memorials, and tourist
attractions. She talks about how objects--and people--are made to "perform" their meaning for us by the
very fact of being collected and exhibited, and about how specific techniques of display, not just the things shown,
convey powerful messages.
Her engaging analysis shows how museums compete with tourism in the production of "heritage." To make
themselves profitable, museums are marketing themselves as tourist attractions. To make locations into destinations,
tourism is staging the world as a museum of itself. Both promise to deliver heritage. Although heritage is marketed
as something old, she argues that heritage is actually a new mode of cultural production that gives a second life
to dying ways of life, economies, and places. The book concludes with a lively commentary on the "good taste/bad
taste" debate in the ephemeral "museum of the life world," where everyone is a curator of sorts
and the process of converting life into heritage begins.