IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/soasur/v29y2022i2p196-212.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can the Screen Speak?: Museum of Material Memory and the Politics of Display

Author

Listed:
  • Sridhar Krishnan

Abstract

What if a museum is not built out of cement and stone, but codes on a virtual space? In what ways do virtual platforms operationalise the concept of a museum? The paper explores these questions based on the empirical case study of Museum of Material Memory (MMM) and how it operates on Instagram. To this end, the objectives of this paper are twin fold. Firstly, it investigates the characteristics that make MMM a museum as distinct from a social media blog or a website. And secondly, it explores the politics of curation in relation to conventional physical museums in conjunction with issues thrown up by Instagram as a medium of display. The paper argues that MMM’s virtual mode of operation challenges the methods of heritage conservation envisaged by museums by demonstrating how tangible heritage can be museumised through virtual means. In doing so, MMM lays emphasis not only on the object per se, but also on the relationship that the object may have with its setting and the people around it. Such a model of display democratises expertise by obfuscating the difference between producers and consumers of heritage.

Suggested Citation

  • Sridhar Krishnan, 2022. "Can the Screen Speak?: Museum of Material Memory and the Politics of Display," South Asian Survey, , vol. 29(2), pages 196-212, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:soasur:v:29:y:2022:i:2:p:196-212
    DOI: 10.1177/09715231221124717
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09715231221124717
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/09715231221124717?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:soasur:v:29:y:2022:i:2:p:196-212. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.