Monday, June 14, 2021, 12 – 1:30 PM EDT

Corinne Kratz, Professor Emerita of Anthropology and African Studies

“The Porcupine of Time: Managing Multiple Temporalities in Exhibitions”

Given her years of experience working with top museums around the world and studying museology itself, few if any are better qualified than Corinne Kratz, Emory’s own Professor of Anthropology Emerita, to comment on the decidedly prickly subject of time management in museum exhibitions. No wonder she was invited to contribute a chapter on the subject to the new book, Museum Temporalities: Time, History, and the Future of the Ethnographic Museum. And no wonder she entitled that chapter, as she has our talk today, “The Porcupine of Time.”  As she says, exhibits “bristle” with different modes of time– not only the historical moment addressed by an exhibit itself, but also the period(s) when various objects were made and collected, their biographies, as it were, not to mention the multiple interpretations the objects may have received in the years since they were first studied and displayed. And not to mention constantly changing views of what museum displays are all about—as well as changes in the architectural styles of museums and their spaces for display. Of course, exhibit narratives and design foreground only some of these temporalities, making choices that shape viewers’ experiences in particular ways. And that is a “porcupinish” subject, too. Cory Kratz will help us understand the issues in this area by discussing several recent exhibitions in which they have been much in play.