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Recruiting and Nominating Participants for the Brooklyn Museum Controversy: The Contributions of New York City Print Journalists

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Outrage: Art, Controversy, and Society

Abstract

In this chapter, I investigate the controversy surrounding the “Sensation” exhibit in Brooklyn, New York, which by most accounts began, along with the exhibit itself, in September 1999.1 By approaching a case in this way, I enter into a dilemma faced by the researcher of any presumably complex social, historical, and discursive conflict: Who counts as a participant? This is a thorny problem. So many parties might legitimately claim participant status that trying to account for them all would be impractical, perhaps impossible. It is a subset of the larger problem of determining and delimiting context, where for any given event some uncountable number of statements, locations, and frames of reference at many scales of abstraction might, in principle, apply.2 This presents a daunting challenge to the investigator who aspires to get it right, to present an accurate and complete account of a controversy.

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Notes

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Authors
  1. Peter A. Cramer
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. King’s College London, UK

    Richard Howells

  2. Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA

    Andreea Deciu Ritivoi  & Judith Schachter  & 

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© 2012 Peter A. Cramer

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Cramer, P.A. (2012). Recruiting and Nominating Participants for the Brooklyn Museum Controversy: The Contributions of New York City Print Journalists. In: Howells, R., Ritivoi, A.D., Schachter, J. (eds) Outrage: Art, Controversy, and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137283542_4

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