ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the ways in which the museum could use its collections, its cultural authority, its auratic space and resources to give voice to the underprivileged. Critical museum studies take into consideration value systems, deconstructing them and denouncing in their analyses the ideological and economic contexts. By analysing museum practices, they show an interplay of various political, ideological and economic forces hidden under an apparently a political surface of aesthetics, contemplation and experiencing of the work of art, exploited in an allegedly objective art-historical narrative offered by museum galleries. The book addresses three issues: the presumed difference between the ethnographic museum and the museum of art; a critical history of the public museum; and the relationship between the museum and the spectator that is, between the museum and society.
