museumize

present singular third person museumizes · participle present museumizing · participle past museumized · past museumized

1. transitiveTo turn (a topic) into a museum subject; to create museums devoted to (a topic).

   1 more example

   More animated responses came from the Academy and museum professionals during a two-day conference on the ‘Holocaust and British Museums’, hosted by the Wiener Library in July 1996. Overall, responses were generally positive: Kochan was the only outright opponent, dismissing the initiative as introspective and backward-facing. Others were less hostile, but raised pertinent concerns nonetheless. Mark Mazower, for instance, argued there were ‘other areas of British history’ which were ‘at least as important’ to museumize, and questioned whether a genocide or slavery museum was not more apt.

   2014, Andy Pearce, Holocaust Consciousness in Contemporary Britain, page 118

2. transitiveTo make (an object) museumworthy.
3. transitiveTo turn (an object) into a museum piece.
4. transitiveTo turn (a place or building) into an open-air museum, a house museum, a heritage site or a curated environment of some sort, to be preserved and presented to the public much like a museum piece.

   A commitment to social justice accompanied the search for new classes of people’s homes to museumize.

   2016, Historic House Museums in the United States and the United Kingdom, page 27

   2 more examples

   With the forthcoming ceremony in mind and the subsequent development of cultural tourism, an urban tradition of slavery was developed, by “museumizing” the town and choreographing it by a sequence of sacred sites called “La Route des Esclaves” (the route of the slaves).

   2006, Mediating Identities in Space and Place, page 286

   Museumized urban centres practise outsourcing of all visible problems: they are relegated to the suburbs. Our leisure cities must appear clean, safe and attractive. Paris is a wonderful example of this.

   2006, David Bosshart, Cheap:The Real Cost of the Global Trend fo Bargains, page 111

5. derogatoryoftentransitiveTo turn (a culture or community) into a living exhibit.

   [...] but MacCannell sees the process of playing Indian for the tourists as dangerous. He suggests that the tourists, buyers, dealers, and so forth "museumize" native groups such as Indians by turning their culture into a living exhibit (MacCannell 1984).

   1990, Tradition on Trial, page 122