On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art, and Place

Description

The author weaves together sociology, anthropology, art practices, and community activism in order to examine how tourist sites are conceived and represented. She explores the act of being a tourist in one's own home, the role of advertising and commercial photography in defining place, and the cultural commodification of indigenous people. She also examines the political economics of leisure spaces, the tourist's fascination with tragic destinations such as the sites of massacres, nuclear weapons tests, and Holocaust memorials, and how and why national parks and heritage sites define nature and history. Finally, the author explores how artists are responding to the environment, cultural and political issues surrounding tourism.

Lucy R. Lippard is an internationally known writer, activist, and curator. She has authored twenty-three books, has curated more than fifty major exhibitions, and holds nine honorary doctorates of fine arts. Her books include The Lure of the Local, Partial Recall, The Pink Glass Swan, Mixed Blessings, On the Beaten Track, and Overlay, all published by The New Press. Lippard is the recipient of numerous awards, most recently the Carolyn Bancroft History Prize from the Denver Public Library and grants from Creative Capital and the Lannan Foundation. She lives in New Mexico.