The museum’s lexis: Driving objects into ideas

This article discusses how exhibition making can be seen as a creative method for building anthropological knowledge. Situations of conflict between social classes, curatorial practices and disciplines remind us of the existence of a very subtle and enduring museum lexis which governs how political ideas are put on display. Research was conducted in tandem with an exhibition the author curated in the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant 21 years after the collapse of the communist regime in South-Eastern Europe. Reflecting upon this process, the author shows how museums use a specific lexis that is based not only on existing practices but also on contingency. These facets each engage two different notions of temporality: while practice involves repetitiveness, predictability and continuity over different historical periods, contingency creates unexpected groupings of things, settings and meanings. It is the balance of the interplay between practice and contingency that dictates how the audience engages with museum discourse