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It is surprising that little research has been conducted by Eliasians on museums and that, with some exceptions, academics working on museums do not cite The Civilizing Process. All the more so given that: (i) museum research supports Elias's claim that elements of modernity originated in court societies, (ii) the nineteenth-century museum was a leading edge of the West's belief in itself as a singularly civilized place and (iii) there is a contradiction between the museum's universalism and its latent capacity to stigmatize some visitors as uncivilized outsiders. Indeed, Elias's theory of established-outsider relations offers profound insights into the museum dimension of social stigma and the socio-genesis of the museum. First, an Eliasian perspective illuminates the relationship between museums and the peculiar structures of feeling that flowed from the interdependencies of modernization. Secondly, in studying European upper classes, he stressed the co-existence of different propertied strata within nineteenth-century states. This explains the apparent inchoateness of European national museums as they emerged at the interface of ruling dynastic elites and upwardly mobile bourgeois outsiders. Thirdly, documentary evidence reveals the museum to be a place where middle class people incorporated and transformed a courtly habitus whilst simultaneously stigmatizing both aristocratic and working class ways of living the body. Finally, Elias elaborated dynamic models of established-outsider relations, emphasizing their 'complex polyphony' as the key to explaining the power to stigmatize. The museum performed that polyphony at the interface of established-outsider relations; it could be said that they were the very causes of museums.

It is surprising that little research has been conducted by Eliasians on museums and that, with some exceptions, academics working on museums do not cite The Civilizing Process. All the more so given that: (i) museum research supports Elias's claim that elements of modernity originated in court societies, (ii) the nineteenth-century museum was a leading edge of the West's belief in itself as a singularly civilized place and (iii) there is a contradiction between the museum's universalism and its latent capacity to stigmatize some visitors as uncivilized outsiders. Indeed, Elias's theory of established-outsider relations offers profound insights into the museum dimension of social stigma and the socio-genesis of the museum. First, an Eliasian perspective illuminates the relationship between museums and the peculiar structures of feeling that flowed from the interdependencies of modernization. Secondly, in studying European upper classes, he stressed the co-existence of different propertied strata within nineteenth-century states. This explains the apparent inchoateness of European national museums as they emerged at the interface of ruling dynastic elites and upwardly mobile bourgeois outsiders. Thirdly, documentary evidence reveals the museum to be a place where middle class people incorporated and transformed a courtly habitus whilst simultaneously stigmatizing both aristocratic and working class ways of living the body. Finally, Elias elaborated dynamic models of established-outsider relations, emphasizing their 'complex polyphony' as the key to explaining the power to stigmatize. The museum performed that polyphony at the interface of established-outsider relations; it could be said that they were the very causes of museums.

Hwo did the rise of metropolitan art institutions influence modernism and the modernisation of art in England? This volume explores the artist as creator, notions of class and taste, and the power of institutions to affect creativity and artistic expression. Topics discussed include the radicalism of engravers and how their claim to be artists is an important and negkected aspect of the nineteenth-century art world; and how the aesthetic dispute over the Chantrey Bequest epitomized conflicts of taste, cultural independence, and interdependence between opposed art institutions and the Treasury.

A Companion to Museum Studies captures the multidisciplinary approaches to the study of the development, roles, and significance of museums in contemporary society. It is an indispensable reference for art historians, museum curators, and art and culture lovers.

This chapter contains sections titled: Disciplinary Origins and Institutional Affinities Cultures of Space Materializing and Visualizing Knowledge Institutional Critiques Museums as Social Facts Museums, People, and Cultures of Collecting Museums as Agencies of Social Research Disciplinary Change and Museum Studies

Fyfe reviews Stewards of the Nation's Art: Contested Cultural Authority, 1890-1939 by Andrea Geddes Poole.