Adam Kuper

Professor Adam Kuper is an anthropologist and public intellectual. He has held positions at a number of universities and is a recipient of the Huxley Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Kuper is the author or editor of 19 books and has published over 100 journal articles focusing on anthropological theory, the history of anthropology in the US and Britain, and southern African societies and cultures. He has made numerous appearances on BBC TV and radio, and reviewed regularly for the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Wall Street Journal.

The Museum of Other People

Published by Penguin Random House, in this deeply researched, immersive history, Adam Kuper tells the story of how foreign and prehistoric peoples and cultures were represented in Western museums of anthropology. Originally created as colonial enterprises, their halls were populated by displays of plundered art, artifacts, dioramas, bones, and relics. Kuper reveals the politics and struggles of trying to build these museums in Germany, France, and England in the mid-19th century, and the dramatic encounters between the very colorful and eccentric collectors, curators, political figures, and high members of the church who founded them. He also details the creation of contemporary museums and exhibitions, including the Smithsonian, the Harvard’s Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, and the famous 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago which was inspired by the Paris World Fair of 1889.

Listen to an excerpt from The Museum of Other People

Elizabeth Howard

The Short Fuse Podcasts, hosted and produced by Elizabeth Howard, are conversations with artists, writers, musicians, and others who have a lens on contemporary thought and stir us to seek change. With their art, their music, their performances, and their vision they lead us through the social and environmental transformations sweeping across the globe.

“Artists are here to disturb the peace.” James Baldwin.

The Short Fuse is distributed through the Arts Fuse, a journal of arts criticism and commentary.