Museums have become amongst our society's most important institutions as their displays both reflect social agendas and at the same time bring new issues to public awareness and debate.

This course studies the development of museums from their earliest roots to the   contemporary institutions of today. The historical survey will examine museums as institutions that reflect and cultivate their social and cultural surroundings and will raise questions relating to structure/content relationship, politicization of display, representations of gender, social ritual, and the construction of memory, identity and nationalism.