On the Mall

ÒOn the Mall engrossing, nuanced, productively and honestly critical in the best sense of the term; well written.Ó ÑRichard BaumanTwo well-know anthropologists examine the practice of exhibiting people, 1990s style, within the broader history of living exhibitionsÑfrom those at nineteenth-century colonial exhibitions and world's fairs to twentieth-century circus side-shows. Engaged by the Smithsonian's Festival of American Folklofe as ÒpresentersÓ for a group of Òtradition-bearers,Ó they recount the ups and downs of their day-to-day experience trying to build bridges between African American Maroons from the Suriname forest and U.S. festival-goers on the Washington Mall. Finding the role of cultural mediators by turns exhilarating, exhausting, annoying, eye-opening, frustrating, fascinating, and alienating, they reflect on a range of issues relating to how folklorists, anthropologists, and museum curators go about the business of representing others, as well as ourselves.