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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. doi:10.1017/S0025727300006062 ISSN 0025-7273.

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

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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

Official Date:

January 2011

Dates:

Date	Event
January 2011	Published

Volume:

Vol.55

Number:

No.1

Page Range:

pp. 85-108

DOI:

10.1017/S0025727300006062

Status:

Peer Reviewed

Publication Status:

Published

Access rights to Published version:

Open Access (Creative Commons)

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.

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