Economics

Product Description

Art/Museums takes the study of international relations to the art museum. It seeks to persuade those who study international relations to take art/museums seriously and museum studies to take up the insights of international relations. And it does so at a time when both international relations and art are said to be at an end-that is, out of control and beyond sight of their usual constituencies. The book focuses on the British Museum, the National Gallery of London, the Museum of Iraq, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Getty museums, the Guggenheim museums, and "museum" spaces instantly created by the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. The art includes works over which museums might struggle, acquire through questionable means, hoard and possibly lose, such as the Parthenon sculptures, Raphael's Madonna of the Pinks, the ancient art of Babylon, modern art, and the art/museum itself in an era of rapid museum expansion. Bringing art, museums, and international relations together draws on the art technique of collage, which combines disparate objects, themes, and time periods in one work to juxtapose unexpected elements, leaving the viewer to relate objects that are not where they are expected to be.

About The Author

Christine Sylvester is Professor of International Relations and Development at Lancaster University in England. She is the author of numerous books including Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Postmodern Era and Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey, both in the Cambridge Studies in International Relations series and both incorporating material related to art and museums. She enjoys a career of diverse academic specializations and countries of residence. Trained in international relations in the USA, she has held regular positions in departments of political science (USA), development administration (Australia), women, gender, and development (The Netherlands), women's studies (UK) and now politics/international relations at Lancaster University. She has also done research, teaching, or development work in Zimbabwe, Kenya, Lesotho, Finland, Korea, Japan, Thailand, and Indonesia. Every place she goes reinforces her enduring interest in art/museums and the international.

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