After visiting hundreds of museums across Alberta, Lianne McTavish chronicles some of the most challenging and unexpected sites where the idea of the museum is being reshaped. The concept of the visit as a “voluntary detour” encapsulates the way visitors travel along backroads to find small-town and rural museums, as well as the agreement to turn away from standard museum scripts when they arrive. Addressing themes of place, land, colonization, rurality, heritage, childhood, and play, McTavish reveals the museum visitor as multifaceted, with locals and tourists often interpreting museums very differently. Case studies include the World Famous Gopher Hole Museum, Fort Chipewyan Bicentennial Museum, Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park, and the Museum of Fear and Wonder. A key chapter analyzing sites devoted to resource extraction explores how these places promote settler colonial understandings of land use. By contrast, Indigenous museums and cultural centres defy colonial messages in displays that adapt and refuse conventional museum formats. Honouring local, rural, and Indigenous knowledge, Voluntary Detours enriches critical accounts of the past, present, and future of museums.
Author(s): Lianne McTavish
Series: McGill-Queen's/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation Studies in Art History, 34
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 316
City: Montreal
Cover
VOLUNTARY DETOURS
Title
Copyright
Dedication
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Worth the Trip: Travel and the Evaluation of Small-Town and Rural Museums
2 Ghosts in the Museum: Haunted Histories at the Museum of Fear and Wonder
3 Middle of Nowhere: Contesting Rural Heritage at the World Famous Gopher Hole Museum
4 Encountering Oil and Water: The Politics of Play at Extraction Museums and Historic Sites
5 Unsettling the Pioneer: Learning from Indigenous Museums and Cultural Centres
Conclusion
Table and Figures
Notes
Index
