Socialism, Museums, and Power

Catalog description

Nothing we see in museums is ever neutral. This course examines the museum as a site of knowledge and power production in the world’s first socialist society, the Soviet Union. Additionally, we will visit and study local museums here in Philadelphia, in order to study how museums work in the contemporary USA. When the Tsarist Empire collapsed in 1917, the Marxist revolutionaries who assumed control sought to break with the legacies of the past. Museums that had once showcased the glory of Russian imperial rule were transformed into institutions promoting the anti-imperialist and socialist ideals of the new state. Museums, however, remained sites for the expression of social and political power. They also continued to be hierarchical, fragmented, and often contradictory spaces. In this course, we will examine museums of the Soviet period as case studies. We will also visit local institutions to engage directly with exhibition spaces and with objects categorized as archaeology, anthropology, and art, drawing comparisons with the Soviet experience. We will seek to answer the following questions: How did museums convey socialist visions of history and the present to their visitors, and how did those visitors respond? These seemingly contrasting cases invite new reflections not only on Soviet power but also on political power more broadly: How is it staged, enacted, and shared? The course aims to develop critical thinking and encourages students to reflect on their own position in history both in relation to sites of power and to the material world - the world of objects - that these sites claim and curate.