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Visual objects and universal meanings : AIDS posters and the politics of globalisation and history

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Stein, Claudia and Cooter, Roger. (2011) Visual objects and universal meanings : AIDS posters and the politics of globalisation and history. Medical History, Vol.55 (No.1). pp. 85-108. ISSN 0025-7273

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0025727300006062

Abstract

Drawing on recent visual and spatial turns in history writing, this paper considers AIDS posters from the perspective of their museum ‘afterlife’ as collected material objects. Museum spaces serve changing political and epistemological projects, and the visual objects they house are not immune from them. A recent globally themed exhibition of AIDS posters at an arts and crafts museum in Hamburg is cited in illustration. The exhibition also serves to draw attention to institutional continuities in collecting agendas. Revealed, contrary to postmodernist expectations, is how today’s application of aesthetic display for the purpose of making ‘global connections’ does not radically break with the virtues and morals attached to the visual at the end of the nineteenth century. The historicisation of such objects needs to take into account this complicated mix of change and continuity in aesthetic concepts and political inscriptions. Otherwise, historians fall prey to seductive aesthetics without being aware of the politics of them. This article submits that aesthetics is politics.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	A General Works > AM Museums (General). Collectors and collecting (General) R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts > History Faculty of Arts > History > Centre for the History of Medicine
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	AIDS (Disease) -- Posters -- Exhibitions, Public health posters, Museum exhibits, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
Journal or Publication Title:	Medical History
Publisher:	Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL
ISSN:	0025-7273
Date:	January 2011
Volume:	Vol.55
Number:	No.1
Page Range:	pp. 85-108
Identification Number:	10.1017/S0025727300006062
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Access rights to Published version:	Open Access
Funder:	Wellcome Trust (London, England)
Version or Related Resource:	Cooter, R. and Stein, C. (2010). Visual things and universal meanings : AIDS posters, the politics of globalisation and history. 15th biannual conference of the European Association of Museums for the History of Medical Sciences : Contemporary medical science and technology as a challenge to museums, 16-18th September.
Related URLs:	Related item in WRAP
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/4344