ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses an observation by Robert Harbison that poignantly articulates not only one of the main aspirations for art, but also one of the main expectations for museums: that it would satisfactorily ground, establish, and transform students' and teachers's individual and collective lives. It provides a critical understanding of the origins and history of museums. The book provides a way of critically seeing museums not in isolation from other social productions and effects, but as components in a larger matrix of institutions and professions. It looks at some of the general ways in which, in museums and collections, memory is given form, and in which objects come to serve roles in the generation of narratives of origins and descent, and of commensur- abilities and hierarchies.
