This book considers how and why respite rooms, emotional support
brochures, well-being guides, psychological consultants, and care days
are becoming common features in the museum of art. Kraynak poses and
answers this question, arguing that under its rightful ambition to
decolonize––i.e., to rectify past and present inequalities––
the museum of the Global North is gradually replacing a commitment to
knowledge, teaching, and learning with a focus upon care, healing, and
well-being (the “therapeutic”). While this transformation might
appear, on the surface, benign, culturally familiar, and politically
desirable, the author counters these presumptions, probing the history
and implications of “the therapeutic museum.” Here, curatorial
attention shifts away from the art on view and onto the spectator,
whom the museum imagines as a precarious psychological subject, and
primary source of meaning. External forces–– new forms of
knowledge, encounters with difficulty, even an engagement with
art––are treated as a potential threat. As a result, the
therapeutic museum not only encourages the beholder to turn inward,
but in so doing deflects attention from or scrutiny of its own
practices and systems that perpetuate inequality. Among these are the
ongoing legacies colonialism’s epistemic violence, which elevated
the knowledge and aesthetic traditions of the Global North while
suppressing those of the Global South. In contrast, the book proposes
a “pluriversal” (versus universal) museum that maintains the
political necessity of knowledge and views pedagogy as a path to
emancipation. Emphasizing epistemic justice and the moral right to
learn during a time when such freedoms are increasingly under attack,
the book makes a powerful case for questioning rather than
romanticizing the therapeutic museum, which it ultimately reveals to
reinforce rather than challenge dominant power. This is an important
intervention that is essential reading for researchers and scholars in
Art History, Visual Studies, Museum Studies, and Cultural Studies.
Les mer
Decolonization and the Crisis of Knowledge
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781040410653
Publisert
2025
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Taylor & Francis
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter