Corinne A. Kratz is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and African Studies Emerita at Emory University and Research Associate of the Museum of International Folk Art. She is coeditor of
Redesigning Popular Histories and Facing Race through Exhibition Available to Purchase
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Published:March 2025
Chapter 6 asks how exhibitions and exhibit design might help rewrite popular histories and the values and assumptions with which they are enmeshed. It considers this question in the postapartheid South African context and in the History Galleries of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, opened in 2016. Tensions and contradictions involved in both settings emerge in exhibitions both thematically and in design. The chapter also considers emotional pacing fostered through exhibit design and the potential affective power that design techniques bring to exhibit experience by considering massing techniques in the History Galleries.
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