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The book is dense with Susan Andrews's photographs of the exhibition, the visitors, and the post-exhibition journey of the objects. As befits its open-endedness Daniels does not draw one final conclusion as to whether the exhibition was successful or not in transforming the stereotypes that visitors had of Japanese domesticity. i challenges perceptions of contemporary exhibitions by a reversal of power from the curator to the visitor, thus looking at what exhibitions could be - "technologies of the imagination.". [Extracted from the article]

We are haunted by "ghosts" derived from the cultural history in which we are immersed. Many of these ghosts are deeply unconscious in a psychodynamic sense―repressed, disavowed, or denied. Experiences of triangulation, via prolonged emotional exposure to a different culture, may assist in gaining awareness of the presence of these ghosts. Cultural beliefs such as the nature of reality, causality, and time are fundamental for the developing child. These beliefs develop in a child through the very earliest identifications with primary caretakers. Hence, they form the fabric of reality for the child. Loewald makes a very similar point about the development of reality sense. Evidence for the child's primary identification with the mother as subject is presented in Trigant Burrow's writing nearly a century ago, and in contemporary writing about gender development in women and in men. Further support for the very early role of culture in promoting "learning from experience" is provided by Mark Solms who demonstrates the crucial role of "precision"―that is, the ability to assess the significance of each perception. Studies of the relationship between dream reality and waking reality for an indigenous people in the Amazon rainforest show that the very fabric of reality depends upon culture. In this paper, the author discusses ghosts from his own childhood and from recent American cultural history. As a Jewish child in America, he absorbed resonances of Eastern European pogroms, Holocaust history, and ancient Jewish slavery in Egypt, commemorated in the Passover Seder. As an American boy, he grew up with the legacies of racism, the enslavement of African–Americans, and genocidal attacks on indigenous peoples. These ghosts (and others) were simultaneously displayed, hidden in plain sight, and deeply repressed in cultural artifacts such as Edward Steichen's Family of Man photographic exhibition. Discussion of that exhibition illustrates the multiple ways that culture is constitutive of conscious, preconscious, and deeply unconscious mental life. In a variety of ways, psychoanalysis both helps and hinders exploration of cultural influences. To shed light on what is culturally repressed, and to triangulate the culture one grows up in, it's helpful to live in another culture for a while. Experiences with the Achuar people in the Amazon rainforest provide a lens for examining culture, reality, and dreaming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critiques the visual conventions applied to the photography of ethnographic museum collection objects. To "think photographically" in a museum collection, I draw a productive parallel between my fieldwork with Indigenous women artists in central Australia, and photography of poorly documented museum collection objects. I explore the presence of an intersubjective affective gaze in the central Australian Indigenous art works which is amplified through photography. This resistance inspired an experimental exhibition entailing photography of sculptural museum objects with faces. The exhibit's aim was to resocialize these objects into the present through photographs of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discursive turn in heritage studies has made major contributions to our understanding of heritage as a set of processual practices, demonstrating how they are inherently contingent while acknowledging their role in the legitimation of specific relationships of power. More recently, there has been a related interest in the rhetorical uses of heritage, and the paper builds on these debates to explore the ways in which the National Gallery (London) mobilised a rhetoric about access as part of its scheme of post-WWII reconstruction. The popular 'Exhibition of Cleaned Pictures' (1947) sheds light on the rhetorical devices employed by the Gallery. These were a cogent example of the Gallery's intended programme of emancipatory viewership, premised on visitors' the right to look, but simultaneously reinforced the Gallery's authoritative discourses. The paper shows how photography's reportedly unbiased language became embedded in the Gallery's democratising agenda and helped shape distinctive forms of publicness which fostered a consensual view about the Gallery's practice of cleaning. Rather than seeing both episodes as mutually exclusive, the paper investigates the internal logic of democratisation and professionalisation as a series of co-dependent rhetorical operations that simultaneously enabled freedom and coercion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As one of six internationally recognised ‘Sites of Conscience’ in South Africa, District Six Museum in Cape Town has been at the forefront of the community museum movement since its inception in 1994. Organised by those directly affected by apartheid’s Group Areas Act, the Museum is dedicated to preserving and fighting for the rights and memories of those who were forcibly removed from their District Six homes between 1966 and 1982. A uniquely intimate space, the Museum seeks to balance empathy alongside what it calls ‘critical non-racialism’, as it engages in the ambitious project of re-defining racialised communities in post-apartheid South Africa. This paper explores the tensions between criticality and empathy in relation to District Six Museum’s photographic collection. Focusing particularly on the problem of perspective-taking, this paper analyses the ways in which gradual changes in the Museum’s visitor demographic are compromising its non-racial project. Based on qualitative research that suggests contemporary visitors are less likely to engage in the kind of reconstructive, politicised imaginings that the Museum’s displays require, this paper suggests that empathy, rather than a tool for critical engagement with District Six’s history, is increasingly becoming the means through which alternative memories of District Six are silenced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a 9-month project commissioned by Halton Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Liverpool photography organisation, Open Eye Gallery. Socially engaged photographers worked with local residents from the Windmill Hill estate in Runcorn to describe healthy and unhealthy aspects of the area. Six women were trained to use cameras to document everyday things that mattered to them. Through focus groups they discussed what these photographs revealed about the health and ill-health of the area. The resulting exhibition, As and When, told their story. Despite being a deprived area with more than average incidence of illness, they identified many positive things that enhanced their sense of wellbeing and resilience. The benefits of the project included increased social engagement and participation, an improved sense of vitality and rejuvenation, emotional benefits, a feeling of greater political agency and increased visual literacy. This paper outlines the model of practice developed with the support of CCG and in collaboration with local stakeholders. It makes a case for the value and the ways in which clusters of general practices could develop links and work with health assets in their local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an edited version of the response paper offered at the conclusion of the symposium, Modern Sensibilities. It ties together themes from the symposium papers, as well as ideas prompted by Mieke Bal's exhibition, Emma & Edvard: Love in the Time of Loneliness, and her accompanying book, Emma and Edvard Looking Sideways: Loneliness and the Cinematic. It focuses on the anachronistic entanglements among Flaubert's "Emma," Munch's motifs, Mieke Bal and Michelle Williams Gamaker's Madame B, the Munch Museum's architecture and exhibition scenography, and the exhibition viewer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]