"This lucidly written and handsomely produced volume offers valuable insights in how museums at certain moments crystallize wider debates about the relationship among politics, culture, and gender. . . . Bailkin has opened up many lines of inquiry in the historical context of museological practice and debate and the wider poilitics of culture of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain."
— Holger Hoock, American Historical Review
"An original, truly interdisciplinary book that draws on British history, art history, museum studies, law, and women's studies in an investigation of the 'material culture of Liberalism' in Britain from 1870 to 1914. . . . The book contains much fascinating material and reflects extensive research in museum archives, legal recoreds, newspapers, journals, and parliamentary debates."
— Choice
"Bailkin's book will speak to anyone interested in the fraught cultural consolidation of the Union of Great Britain and Ireland, or in the vagaries between the nation and the state."
— Michael Rubenstein, Law, Culture, and the Humanities
"While we have become accustomed to simple assertions of the essentially political nature of all aesthetic controversies, Jordanna Bailkin offers an incontestable and extremely interesting version of the relationship."
— Jonah Siegel, Victorian Studies
"Bailkin asks some fascinating and provocative questions, and complicates our understanding of culture and its relationship to politics. Indeed, she successfully adds the cultural realm to the story of the 'crisis' of liberalism."
— Stephen Heathorn, Left History
"A sophisticated, innovative study and a welcome addition to the literature."
— C. Whitehead, Urban History
"Taken togerther these four studies offer a multilayered perspective on the role of cultural artifacts within the Liberal imagination of a British nation. . . . [Bailkin] succeeds in adding a new dimension to the common postcolonial analysis of cultural property."
— Susan Scafidi, Law and History Review
"Bailkin offers a model of analysis of the political and institutional inflections that shape visual culture. . . . She refreshingly presents politics through the lens of culture, rather than the more usual other way around, insisting that culture is as powerful a molder and marker of change and conbfilct as politics or economics."
— Julie F. Codell, Visual Culture in Review
"Taken together these four studies offer a multilayered perspective on the role of cultural artifacts within the Liberal imagination of a British nation prior to World War I. . . . [Bailkin] succeeds in adding a new dimension to the common postcolonial analysis of cultural property."Susan Scafidi, Law and History Review
— Susan Scafidi, Law and History Review