ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the ways people interact with the museum have been significantly influenced by artistic practices and theories, not just anthropological ones. Institutional critiques and interventions by artists in the 1980s and 1990s, especially global artists, functioned to expose the status and value of identities ascribed to museum objects. In the chapter’s study of the historically symbolic sites of the Musee du Louvre as the original art academy and Pitt Rivers and Manchester as foundational university museums, world art can be seen as having entered the collections of the European art museum whilst global art has transformed the viewing engagement with the anthropology museum. The distinction of world heritage objects in the modern era was of course defined by the fine arts museum. The revolutionary model of the Louvre was instituted through the powerful symbolism of turning a royal palace for kings into a public museum for the people.
