Ideas of museums in the 1990s

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Drawing on examples from Canada, the United States and Great Britain, and with particular reference to museums which hold anthropological collections, this article reviews the framework of much of the thinking that has gone on in museums in recent decades. Most closely it examines the argument put forward by several writers that a much greater critical and socially substantive role can be an exciting direction for museums in the final years of the 20th century.