<p> In 2008, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's collection of pre-Columbian artifacts was re-installed in a gallery designed by contemporary artist, Jorge Pardo. The history of these ancient objects dates back over three thousand years, but new meanings emerged and critical issues unfolded when these culturally displaced objects were staged within Pardo's flamboyant design. This collision of indigenous and contemporary cultural narratives is examined on three levels: the problems inherent in the constructed knowledge of ancient objects; the changes that have taken place in systems of ethnographic display; and the critical reception of Pardo's design and its implications in terms of a politics of display. This thesis argues for the need to respect cultural patrimony, but the value of critical awareness raised by Pardo's design intervention is also acknowledged.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of New York, 2005. / (UMI)AAI3287109. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-10, Section: A, page: 4108. Adviser: George A. Corbin.

<p> During the 1950s <b>Katharine Prentis Murphy</b> (1882-1967) used authentic colonial era furnishings to create a series of complex, multi-layered museum and historic house installations that highlighted the aesthetic qualities of American antiques and placed her at the forefront of the post World War II Colonial Revival movement. Murphy placed objects from the 1750s into highly patterned and brightly colored room settings, which was an unorthodox design strategy for the time but one that incorporated popular trends and tastes of the 1950s. Her post war room settings appealed to consumers who were not ready to give up traditional furniture, or the conventional values and virtues associated with it, but who also wanted modern comfort and up-to-date styling. Murphy's displays revealed her own point of view as a designer and demonstrated how the resilient Colonial Revival movement evolved and expanded in the context of 1950s modernism.</p>