Peggy Levitt is chair of the Sociology department and the Luella LaMer Slaner Professor in Latin American Studies at Wellesley College and co-Director of Harvard University’s Transnational Studies Initiative. Her books include Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display (2015), Religion on the Edge (2012), God Needs No Passport (2007), The Transnational Studies Reader (2007), The Changing Face of Home (2002), and The Transnational Villagers (2001). She has edited special volumes of Oxford Development Studies, Comparative Migration Studies, Racial and Ethnic Studies, International Migration Review, Global Networks, Mobilities, and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. A film based on her work, Art Across Borders, came out in 2009.
Abstract:
Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display
According to the World Bank, one out of every seven people in the world today is an international or internal migrant who moves by choice or by force. Our cities are increasingly diverse—people from over 184 countries call London home. So how do we learn to get along? Museums have always played a leading role in creating nations and national citizens. In today’s global world, do they also create global citizens too? This talk looks at how museums around the world are making sense of immigration and globalization. Based on firsthand conversations with museum directors, curators, and policymakers; their descriptions of current and future exhibitions; and the inside stories about the famous paintings and iconic objects that define their collections, I provide a close-up view of how different kinds of institutions balance nationalism and cosmopolitanism and what it is about particular cities and nations that explains the outcome.