UCLA

This thesis is an interdisciplinary literature review that illustrates the institutional processes by which museums are structured, using work from diverse disciplines including anthropology, sociology, economics, and art history. I provide a review of museums' funding structures, legitimating mechanisms, and bureaucratic modes of operation as a compliment to standard discourses on identity and representation within foundational anthropological work on museums. In addition, I offer a brief outline on the current state of museums within late capitalism, and explain how institutional and organizational theory is beneficial for understanding and expanding the contemporary discourse on museums. I incorporate academic work on institutions from the interdisciplinary social sciences to comment on how the museum's organizational form works to constrain and define the possible worlds of museum practice.