Real Objects
name: label: Collection Creator
content: Karp, Ivan
setName: label: See more items in
content: Ivan Karp papers
label: See more items in
content: Ivan Karp papers / Series 6: Born Digital Files / 6.1: Writings and Projects / Museums Studies
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1996 October-2010 March
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: National Anthropological Archives
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: These files are different versions, abstract, and draft excerpts of Karp's paper "Real Objects, Simulated Contexts." The paper was likely first prepared for and presented at the 1996 Advanced Seminar "Material Culture: Habitats and Values"
convened at SAR in Santa Fe. Over the years it was also presented at various universities in the US, in Italy, in Bogota, Columbia, and finally at University of Michigan's Museum Studies program in March 2010. The different versions have slightly different introductions before returning more or less to the same text.

The files here show name variations. The first, incomplete version uses the name "Palaces." This is because some of the thinking derived from Karp and Kratz's work in Hawaii visiting house and palace museums where tour leaders spoke about the return of some historic objects displayed as if they had been striving to "get home." This, combined with colleagues who referred to "real objects," drew Karp's attention to some of these ideologies. As the paper developed, however, it focused more on different ways that art and culture and difference are shown and interpreted in exhibits. As reflected in other names here, he also referred to it sometimes as the Primitivism paper, since William Rubin's exhibit at the Met was one of the cases examined.

There are two slide lists in this folder. Kratz created the one for the Michigan presentation as well as the powerpoint Karp used for that. The subfolder "Images" contains the photos that Karp used for this talk, which were first scanned as jpeg files from their slides in November 2008. The numbers on the files refer to the photo logs that Kratz kept for their joint research. Those with a number starting KKp are from a series of single images taken from books or other sources. Files with a number starting KK# are from the series of photos Kratz took as part of their research trips.