museums, material culture and anthropology

Without doubt, museums are containers of material culture. Can the museum itself be considered material culture? Yes, when we see the museum itself as physical evidence of culture.

What is the relationship between material culture and museums then? My observation is that the current study of material culture is dominated by anthropologists and when they approach museum studies, they tend to focus on objects contained in museums, rather than museums as a space containing objects.

In addition, anthropologists approach museum studies differently from art historians as anthropologists by discipline often deal with objects and living communities bearing connections with the objects.  However, when art historians study objects in museums, there are often no living people for them to take notice of; i.e. they deal with mostly history, the past.