In this paper, I chronicle the origins of Museum Studies in the United States (US), citing key authors and studies that have been especially influential in the US. I discuss the evolution of museum studies' pragmatic orientation, raising questions about how one of the fundamental tenets of marketplace economics—competition—impacts museum studies' place within the American university. The pragmatic approach to museum studies in the US contrasts to the more theoretical discourse of “new museology” that emerged in fields like literary theory and anthropology in European universities, and then became accessible to American museologists through British publications in the 1970s. New Museology critiqued museums, calling on them to examine their roles within larger systems of oppression, whereas the goal of the US version of museum studies has been to train future professionals for gainful employment within those systems. Museum studies has thus struggled within American universities to strike a balance between institutional critique and the marketplace.
Mu et al. (Wed,) studied this question.