The museum of other people -- I. Faraway people -- Inventing the museum of other people : Jomard in Paris - Siebold in Leiden - Thomsen in Copenhagen -- Civilised and uncivilised : the British Museum and the Pitt Rivers museum : prehistory, evolution and ethnography - the challenge of Pitt Rivers -- German museums and the cultural history of humanity : Humboldt's legacy - Klemm in Leipzig - Bastian in Berlin -- The rise and fall of the Musée de l'Homme : World's Fairs - the Trocadéro Museum of Ethnography - the Musée de l'Homme - Surrealism - Second World War -- Interlude : an American in Paris -- II. Native Americans, manifest destiny, and American exceptionalism -- The Smithsonian goes west : or, how the west was spun : origins - the Western frontier - the Bureau of American Ethnology - the US National Museum -- Franz Boas challenges the Smithsonian : the Boas myth in American anthropology - the great debate - evolutionary and regional models -- Boas as a collector -- Harvard's Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology : origins - Darwin and Harvard's scientists - Putnam and prehistory -- The World's Columbian Exposition, 1893 : The Chicago Fair - the Smithsonian vs. Putnam and the Boas - the American Museum of Natural History - the end of the museum age in anthropology -- III. Divesting and reinventing the museum -- Bones of contention : collections of body parts - race studies - repatriation and burial -- Trophies of empire, African court art and the slave trade : wars and looting - the history of restitution - the Benin Bronzes - the politics of restitution -- But is it art? : the invention of primitive art - from Paris to New York - museums of primitive or tribal art in the 21st century -- National museums and identity museums : culture and civilization - European folk museums - identity politics in the late twentieth century - tribal museums and the National Museum of the American Indian - the dialogical museum -- Show and tell : exhibits, permanent and temporary -- The cosmopolitan museum.

"This is a history of the ways in which foreign and prehistoric peoples were represented in museums of anthropology, with their displays of arts and artifacts, their dioramas, their special exhibitions, and their arrays of skulls and skeletons. Originally created as colonial enterprises, what is the purpose of these places today? What should they do with the items in their custodianship? And how can they help us to understand and appreciate other cultures? Informed by a lifetime of research and scholarship, this subtle and original work tackles painful questions about race, colonialism, difference, and cultural appropriation. The result is a must-read for anyone concerned with the coexistence of different modes of life."-- Provided by publisher.