Search Results

What not to collect? Post-connoisseurial dystopia and the profusion of things

Sharon Macdonald and Jennie Morgan

in Curatopia: Museums and the future of curatorship

A key – some might even say _the _key – curatorial role is to decide what to collect. What, that is, should be preserved for the future? In this essay, we present ethnographic research with curators ... More

A key – some might even say _the _key – curatorial role is to decide what to collect. What, that is, should be preserved for the future? In this essay, we present ethnographic research with curators of contemporary everyday life. As we show, these curators struggle with a profusion of things, stories and information that could potentially be collected. Moreover, they widely report the struggle to be intensifying. Exploring their perceptions and what these mean in practice in their work, we argue that while neo-liberal and especially austerity politics has an important role in intensifying their sense of anxiety, their experience cannot be reduced to this. On the contrary, their intimation of dystopia is as much a function of other – in some ways utopian – aspirations and politics, as well as of a relativisation of value. These all contribute to transforming the nature of curatorship more widely.Less

Reusing and redisplaying antiquities in early modern France

William Stenhouse

in Local antiquities, local identities: Art, literature and antiquarianism in Europe, c. 1400–1700

This essay examines attitudes towards the display, study and protection of Roman antiquities, including inscriptions, bas-reliefs, and statues, in southern France, looking particularly at the towns ... More

This essay examines attitudes towards the display, study and protection of Roman antiquities, including inscriptions, bas-reliefs, and statues, in southern France, looking particularly at the towns of Arles, Nîmes and Vienne. There are plenty of examples of the destruction of ancient remains in this period, especially ancient structures that obstructed modern building projects, but various people and institutions also laid claim to Roman material. Kings and their lieutenants removed objects, but also told towns to maintain what they had. Civic governments began to display pieces that affirmed their cities’ ancient past and tried to preserve ancient buildings, sometimes by collaborating with religious orders. Collectively, the efforts of these different individuals and institutions contributed to a shared sense of local heritage.Less

Local antiquities in Spain: from Tarragona to Córdoba

Fernando Marías

in Local antiquities, local identities: Art, literature and antiquarianism in Europe, c. 1400–1700

The study of Local Roman Antiquities developed in Spain from the end of the 15th Century focusing on the ancient remains of Roman cities as Mérida, Segovia, Murviedro and Tarragona. Foreign and ... More

The study of Local Roman Antiquities developed in Spain from the end of the 15th Century focusing on the ancient remains of Roman cities as Mérida, Segovia, Murviedro and Tarragona. Foreign and Spanish scholars contributed with field research and drawings, and architects tried to dig up the past of their respective towns through excavation and interpretation of the architectural remains, and to put into practice what they thought could have been their own local Roman models as well. Córdoba, the ancient Roman Baetica and Umayyad capital is one of our best examples for studying the way its architecture, orders and ornate could have been analysed and interpreted, and how its architects could use Roman and Umayyad models, by the end of the 16th Century, for their modern local buildings.Less

Seats and Sites of Authority: British Colonial Collecting on the East African Coast

Sarah Longair

in Coastal Cultures of the Long Nineteenth Century

For over a thousand years, the Swahili culture of coastal East Africa had developed by synthesising myriad influences from the African continent, Arabia and across the Indian Ocean. By the ... More

For over a thousand years, the Swahili culture of coastal East Africa had developed by synthesising myriad influences from the African continent, Arabia and across the Indian Ocean. By the mid-Victorian period Zanzibar was a key Indian Ocean commercial centre, and in 1890 was established as a British Protectorate. This chapter examines, through writings, collections of material culture and photographs, the British encounter with Zanzibar and the island’s cosmopolitan culture. British officers described themselves as going to ‘the East’ when departing for the island. The word itself epitomised mysterious otherness and exoticism, while its Arabian-Nights charm contrasted with the stereotypes about the African interior. Yet its skyline was criticised for lacking minarets and domes and being insufficiently Islamic. It was also described as unhealthy and dirty, making British intervention necessary to transform it into ‘an island paradise’. This chapter analyses how the British response to Zanzibar as a liminal space between Africa and the East shifted in this period of economic and political transformation on the coast.Less

The collector as taste advisor and interior decorator: popular advice manuals and the orchestration of the private interior

Anca I. Lasc

in Interior decorating in nineteenth-century France: The visual culture of a new profession

This chapter examines influential collecting and taste manuals from the second half of the nineteenth century dedicated to both a male, respectively a female, audience. After providing a brief ... More

This chapter examines influential collecting and taste manuals from the second half of the nineteenth century dedicated to both a male, respectively a female, audience. After providing a brief history of collecting and its development in post-revolutionary France, the chapter explains how the visual and critical discourses about the proper appearance of the modern, private interior and about the arrangement of objects displayed therein informed the development of a new historicist, themed aesthetic. This new aesthetic required a mastermind to supervise the organization of each interior decorating ensemble within the upper as well as the middle-class private home - increasingly more decorated in the aftermath of the Industrial and Consumer Revolutions - paving the way to the work of the later interior decorators at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century.Less

Images: The Tastemaker

in Knowledge is Pleasure: Florence Ayscough in Shanghai

Ayscough first developed as a connoisseur, under the guidance of collectors she met through the Royal Asiatic Society, including John C. Ferguson. She curated exhibitions of Chinese art in Shanghai, ... More

Ayscough first developed as a connoisseur, under the guidance of collectors she met through the Royal Asiatic Society, including John C. Ferguson. She curated exhibitions of Chinese art in Shanghai, as well as in America, including an exhibit at the Panama Pacific International Exposition. Her writings helped introduce western audiences to Chinese painting, and in particular, Chinese Modernism.Less

‘Something was going from me – the capacity, as it were, to be myself’: ‘transformational objects’ and the Gothic fiction of Richard Marsh

Graeme Pedlingham

in Richard Marsh, popular fiction and literary culture, 1890-1915: Rereading the fin de siècle

This chapter explores the treatment of objects, things, in Marsh’s major Gothic works: The Beetle, The Goddess and The Joss. The increasing popularity in the late nineteenth century of collecting and ... More

This chapter explores the treatment of objects, things, in Marsh’s major Gothic works: The Beetle, The Goddess and The Joss. The increasing popularity in the late nineteenth century of collecting and consuming objects offers a context in which boundaries between people and things become uncertain, with objects seemingly exercising a disturbing agency. Marsh’s texts present mutually transforming encounters between objects and characters that question the stability of identity. The chapter suggests that whilst transgressing boundaries between self and not-self is often explored in critical analysis through mesmerism, a more appropriate conceptual framework for Marsh is provided by object relations psychoanalysis, and specifically Christopher Bollas’s notion of ‘transformational objects’. Developing this notion in relation to Bill Brown’s ‘thing theory’, the chapter identifies Marsh’s objects as ‘transformational things’, encounters with which often lead to terrifying breakdowns of selfhood, conveying a pervasive sense of existential horror and exposing the precariousness of late-nineteenth-century identity.Less

Decadent aesthetics and Richard Marsh’s The Mystery of Philip Bennion’s Death

Daniel Orrells

in Richard Marsh, popular fiction and literary culture, 1890-1915: Rereading the fin de siècle

Richard Marsh’s fiction made a significant contribution to the arguments that circulated during the 1890s about aesthetics and the commodification of culture. The plots of sensational popular novels ... More

Richard Marsh’s fiction made a significant contribution to the arguments that circulated during the 1890s about aesthetics and the commodification of culture. The plots of sensational popular novels and the sights and sounds of the music hall were all deemed unworthy, addiction-inducing forces by cultural commentators at the time. This chapter focuses on The Mystery of Philip Bennion’s Death (1892/1897), a murder-mystery novel in which a work of art – a poisoned Renaissance cabinet – apparently kills its owner, a collector of curios: the dangers of art could hardly be more pressing. Marsh’s novel looks back on a century of writers who have associated fine art with crime, from De Quincey’s provocation that murder could be a fine art to Pater’s and Wilde’s interest in the aesthetics of transgression and the entertaining nature of murder. This chapter explores how Marsh's writing was at the heart of 1890s debates about collecting, aestheticism and decadence.Less

The Archive at the End of the Century: Discipline, Excess, and Access

Janna Jones

in The Past Is a Moving Picture: Preserving the Twentieth Century on Film

Where archivists and researchers once felt confounded by a lack of artifactual evidence, today, fueled in part by contemporary culture's compulsion to collect, many archives are overflowing with ... More

Where archivists and researchers once felt confounded by a lack of artifactual evidence, today, fueled in part by contemporary culture's compulsion to collect, many archives are overflowing with moving images and related artifacts. This chapter reveals the ways in which attempts to manage the archive are routinely thwarted by the overwhelming amount of cinematic materials requiring accession, cataloging, and storage, as well as insufficient funding and archival labor. As a result, ideological formations cannot take hold, making it impossible for the archivists to construct an entirely linear, singular path toward history; instead, the archive tends toward an indeterminate state that cultivates a way of looking at cultural memory that is neither fixed nor complete.Less

Illicit Digging, Illicit Collecting, and Archaeology: A Perspective from Florida

Mary Glowacki

in New Directions in the Search for the First Floridians

This chapter addresses issue of the illicit digging, collections, and sales of artifacts from archaeological sites, specifically North and Central Florida. The problems with site protection, and ... More

This chapter addresses issue of the illicit digging, collections, and sales of artifacts from archaeological sites, specifically North and Central Florida. The problems with site protection, and sites specifically stewarded by the State, are addressed. The authors discuss both how these problems evolved in and the future trajectory of site preservation of Florida. For many participants of the 2015 First Floridians Conference, site preservation directly influenced their livelihood (if there are no sites or site data, there can be no research). For others, it dictates their cultural legacy (if society does not preserve heritage, it will not exist for posterity). As for the State of Florida, state-owned and managed lands are a legislative imperative (Floridians create laws that govern the protection of sites in state stewardship). State actions such as the Isolated Finds program was discontinued at the recommendation of the Florida Historical Commission (FHC) because of its contribution to illicit collecting and sales.Less

Gothic Fiction and Queer Theory

George E. Haggerty

in The Gothic and Theory: An Edinburgh Companion

The queerness of Gothic fiction is so deeply engrained that it offers a queer theory of its own. Indeed, the Gothic-ness of Queer Theory is so automatic that the latter often itself becomes a mode of ... More

The queerness of Gothic fiction is so deeply engrained that it offers a queer theory of its own. Indeed, the Gothic-ness of Queer Theory is so automatic that the latter often itself becomes a mode of Gothic fiction. This chapter explores that interplay by first showing how Gothic fiction gives rise to queer theory and then responding with the ways in which queer theory depends on the Gothic. Examples come from Gothic works ranging from The Castle of Otranto to Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Haunting of Hill House. Also considered closely are theoretical statements by Sedgwick, Freccero, Edelman, and Muñoz. In the main, this chapter poses and begins answers to two key questions: What is it about the primary Gothic tropes that make them always already queer, and what is it about queer theory that makes it Gothic in its most intense moments? If Gothic fiction anticipates the work of queer theory, too, how does queer theory answer that obsession?Less

Script’s Afterlives

Michelle Levy

in Literary Manuscript Culture in Romantic Britain

Chapter 6 draws the consideration of Romantic literary manuscripts forward to the present moment, examining their shifting cultural status from the late eighteenth century onward, including their ... More

Chapter 6 draws the consideration of Romantic literary manuscripts forward to the present moment, examining their shifting cultural status from the late eighteenth century onward, including their preservation and dissemination in print and now in digital form. Significant changes to the treatment and valuation of literary manuscripts began in the late eighteenth century, as they began to be preserved and collected as never before. The attention to contemporary manuscripts arose from a growing scholarly and public interest in ancient scripts and manuscripts, and a new devotion to handwriting and to handwritten manuscripts. The second half of this chapter turns to critical treatments of the period’s manuscripts in its textual scholarship, to ask how the privileging of the textual has impacted our engagements with the period’s literary manuscripts. It investigates the major scholarly critical editions of the last five decades to understand how editorial practice has grappled with the period’s literary manuscripts and the literary culture in which they were embedded. It examines how recent digital editions of the period’s manuscripts have improved our access to and revived our interest in literary manuscripts as bearers of cultural meaning beyond the textual.Less

Owning

Emma Smith

in Shakespeare's First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book

Three case studies, which trace copies of the First Folio from the seventeenth into the twenty-first century, set out some of the characters, movements, and motivations that have structured the ... More

Three case studies, which trace copies of the First Folio from the seventeenth into the twenty-first century, set out some of the characters, movements, and motivations that have structured the circulation of this book. How, when, and for what purposes, did it travel across Europe and into Empire, and how are these residual legacies seen in the modern day? Why did individuals want to own it, particularly in the USA, and how has the book passed between institutions, private owners, and across countries? Considering the rising price of First Folios, this chapter also identifies the role of the book in tourism, in Shakespeare’s critical reception, in economics and conspicuous consumption, in education, and in the establishment of academic libraries. Finally, it discusses the ways in which the Folio has been constructed as a secular relic.Less

Collecting and display

Jemma Field

in Anna of Denmark: The material and visual culture of the Stuart courts, 1589-1619

Nuances the male-dominated history of collecting and display at the Stuart court, and the use of the “Italianate” as the benchmark of cultural erudition. Confirms that Anna’s palaces were largely ... More

Nuances the male-dominated history of collecting and display at the Stuart court, and the use of the “Italianate” as the benchmark of cultural erudition. Confirms that Anna’s palaces were largely filled with Flemish and Dutch artworks and argues that, far from being a sign of her disinterest or naïveté, these goods were a tool for building affinity with her Danish ancestors and siblings while highlighting the continued currency of artistic centres outside of Italy. It further shows the queen facilitating cultural transfer between the Stuart and Oldenburg courts as numerous parallels link Anna’ tastes, interests, and patronage, with those of her brother, King Christian IV of Denmark (1577-1648), which are particularly noticeable in the realms of painting and music.Less