Ten books set in museums

Preety Sidhu, an intern at Electric Literature, tagged ten books about real and fictional museum collections, including:

Still Lives by Maria Hummel

Maggie Richter, the protagonist of this smart literary mystery/thriller, is an in-house editor at the fictional Rocque Museum in Los Angeles, whose boyfriend recently left her for provocative artist Kim Lord. Lord’s upcoming exhibit “Still Lives” features gruesome self-portraits of the artist recreating media images of famous murdered women. Though meant as a commentary on our culture’s fetishization of violence against women (especially beautiful women), some including Maggie see the work as glorifying that same violence and allowing the artist to capitalize off the victimization of others. When Lord goes missing on opening night, Maggie feels compelled to investigate and disprove the police’s theory that her ex is to blame.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue