Debating the practices of museums, galleries, and festivals, Exhibiting Cultures probes the often politically charged relationships among aesthetics, contexts, and implicit assumptions that govern how art and artifacts are displayed and understood. The contributorsmuseum directors, curators, and scholars in art history, folklore, history, and anthropologyrepresent a variety of stances on the role of museums and their function as intermediaries between the makers of art or artifacts and the eventual viewers.From the Trade Paperback edition.