Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett Barbara)(Paperback)

Destination Culture takes the reader on an eye-opening journey from ethnological artifacts to kitsch. Posing the question, 'What does it mean to show?' Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett explores the agency of display in a variety of settings: museums, festivals, world's fairs, historical re-creations, memorials, and tourist attractions. She talks about how objects--and people--are made to 'perform' their meaning for us by the very fact of being collected and exhibited, and about how specific techniques of display, not just the things shown, convey powerful messages. Her engaging analysis shows how museums compete with tourism in the production of 'heritage.' To make themselves profitable, museums are marketing themselves as tourist attractions. To make locations into destinations, tourism is staging the world as a museum of itself. Both promise to deliver heritage.