ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the formation of the exhibitionary complex. It focuses on the Gramscian perspective of the ethical and educative function of the modern state to account for the relations of this complex to the development of the bourgeois democratic polity. The South Kensington Museum thus marked a significant turning point in the development of British museum policy in clearly enunciating the principles of the modern museum conceived as an instrument of public education. It provided the axis around which London’s museum complex was to develop throughout the rest of the century and exerted a strong influence on the development of museums in the provincial cities and towns. The space of representation constituted by the exhibitionary complex was shaped by the relations between arrays of new disciplines: history, art history, archaeology, geology, biology, and anthropology. The space of representation constituted in the relations between the disciplinary knowledges deployed within the exhibitionary complex.
