Among the challenges museums face when displaying digital objects are widely held assumptions about the nature of these objects and the material, social, and political foundations of digital art practices.

Museum Object Lessons for the Digital Age urges readers to question their assumptions through four wide-ranging chapters, each focused on a single object—a box, a pen, an effigy, and a cloak. The book begins with an introduction exploring the legacies of older forms of media and earlier museum practices of collection and then offers a critical analysis of contending theories of knowledge production in museums as it relates to digital projects. From there, Haidy Geismar guides readers in lively, accessible prose through a range of objects, from ethnographic and decorative arts collections, bespoke digital experiments, and even the Google Art Project, revealing what these objects can tell us about both the past and the future of digital collection and display.
 

What happens when ritual practitioners from a small Pacific nation make an intellectual property claim to bungee jumping? When a German company successfully sues to defend its trademark of a Māori name? Or when UNESCO deems ephemeral sand drawings to be "intangible cultural heritage"? In Treasured Possessions, Haidy Geismar examines how global forms of cultural and intellectual property are being redefined by everyday people and policymakers in two markedly different Pacific nations. The New Hebrides, a small archipelago in Melanesia managed jointly by Britain and France until 1980, is now the independent nation-state of Vanuatu, with a population that is more than 95 percent indigenous. New Zealand, by contrast, is a settler state and former British colony that engages with its entangled Polynesian and British heritage through an ethos of "biculturalism" that is meant to involve an indigenous population of just 15 percent. Alternative notions of property, resources, and heritage—informed by distinct national histories—are emerging in both countries. These property claims are advanced in national and international settings, but they emanate from specific communities and cultural landscapes, and they are grounded in an awareness of ancestral power and inheritance. They reveal intellectual and cultural property to be not only legal constructs but also powerful ways of asserting indigenous identities and sovereignties.