ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that modernity has two opposed and sometimes contradictory discourses regarding the sensory Imaginary in the museological tradition. It makes use of Latour's notion of the imbroglio, particularly the issue of commensurability and translation, to describe the creation of an exhibition about Pacific peoples at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. This analysis will also extend Latour's concepts to suggest that it also provides a way to understand particular outcomes of projects that involve incommensurate forms of knowledge as well as the roles of particular agents and their relationships with each other. The chapter identifies the dilemma in which the curator and designer found themselves as they created the Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples at the American Museum of Natural History as an imbroglio in Bruno Latour's sense. Then the chapter also tells the story of the creation of that exhibition.
