ABSTRACT
The collection of "exotic" cultures has its roots in one of history's greatest exercises of power: the expansion of the Western world and the rise of imperialism. The opportunity for stereotype to be substituted for truth has been enabled by the appropriation of art and artifact into both the museums and the history of a dominant Western culture. In a museum's collection of another culture, one group constructs a history of the other that situates that other in the theoretical and institutional framework of the collector's world. The museum professional relies on the audience member's acceptance of the premise that the exhibition stands in for the "reality" of the represented culture. The assimilating exhibit strategy, employed in art, history or anthropology museums, insists on the ultimate irrelevance of differences and thus of struggles against differential positioning within political, social and aesthetic power structures.
