The Art Museum In Art, By Carol Duncan

Traditionally, museums are considered secular sites in which curators display art objectively; however, in her work, “The art museum as ritual,” Carol Duncan examines how museums act as powerful entities which influence the visitors’ perception through the display, organization, and architecture of the space. She elaborates that the museum’s authority actually enables them to represent and define entire communities, which consequently shapes the visitors’ perceptions of said communities. Perhaps Duncan’s claim is best summarized as:
“To control a museum means precisely to control the representations of a community and its highest values and truths… What we see and do not see in … museums and on what terms and by whose authority we do or do …show more content…
During these years, London became the city se see around us today’ (fig. 2). The statement implies that the gallery will be fully representative of all of London over the past three hundred years and also how the history shaped London today— a daunting undertaking. The last gallery of the Galleries of Modern London is the World City Gallery, whose name also implies an element of inclusiveness and cultural breadth. As the visitor approaches the gallery, they are met with a plethora of white British material culture— ranging from a Vespa scooter to retro clothes to punk posters (fig. 3, 4, 5). In his article, “Making City Histories,” David Fleming analyzes how cities are represented in museums. He particularly criticizes the use of elitist and unrepresentative object-based material culture to represent entire communities, which the gallery is evidently guilty of from the onset (cite). As the visitor continues through the gallery, the evidence of the elitist and unrepresentative authority being imposed by the Museum only