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Quatremére de Quincy, the most famous art critic at the end of the Enlightenment, published two sets of letters about the role of museums. He first implored them to return works of art to their original settings but later argued in favor of the museum as a place where artworks can be safely stored and made available for artists to study. Immensely contraversial and influential since they were written two centuries ago, Quatremére's texts sum up the most bewildering moment of the debate on museums: did the new institution inauguate the death of art, or bring it to its perfection? This volume offers the first English translation of the letters, as well as an extensive introduction that reveals their content, the reason for their intellectual success, and how they enlarge contemporary disputes about cultural property, national claims and universal beauty.
The controversial removal of the Parthenon sculptures from Greece to England in the first decade of the nineteenth century by Thomas Bruce, seventh Earl of Elgin, sparked an international competition for classical antiquities. This volume tells a lesser-known chapter of that story, concerning sculptures from the Temple of Aphaia on the Greek island of Aegina. Discovered in 1811 as the Parthenon project was nearing its completion, these ancient sculptures were acquired at auction by Johann Martin Wagner (1777–1858) on behalf of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria. The sculptures turned out to be significant in a number of ways, offering important evidence for a transitional period of Greek art between the archaic and classical eras, for the existence of an independent Aeginetan school that was the equal of Athenian art at the time, and for Greek sculptures having been elaborately painted and adorned. Originally published in 1817 and presented here for the first time in English, this book reproduces the report commissioned by the crown prince that was written by Wagner and edited by F. W. J. Schelling and contained richly detailed descriptions of the sculptures. In addition, Louis A. Ruprecht Jr. provides a comprehensive historical introduction featuring a constellation of intellectual figures, an afterword, notes, appendices, and more than forty images to tell the fascinating story of the sculptures and their legacy from excavation to the present day.
Europe’s national museums have since their creation been at the centre of on-going nation making processes. National museums negotiate conflicts and contradictions and entrain the community sufficiently to obtain the support of scientists and art connoisseurs, citizens and taxpayers, policy makers, domestic and foreign visitors alike. National Museums and Nation-building in Europe 1750-2010 assess the national museum as a manifestation of cultural and political desires, rather than that a straightforward representation of the historical facts of a nation. National Museums and Nation-building in Europe 1750-2010 examines the degree to which national museums have created models and representations of nations, their past, present and future, and proceeds to assess the consequences of such attempts. Revealing how different types of nations and states – former empires, monarchies, republics, pre-modern, modern or post-imperial entities – deploy and prioritise different types of museums (based on art, archaeology, culture and ethnography) in their making, this book constitutes the first comprehensive and comparative perspective on national museums in Europe and their intricate relationship to the making of nations and states.
During the nineteenth century, cultural heritage became a dominant feature of the political ideology of the European states and of their colonies. It became a new form of legitimization for the rising nation-state, cementing its inextricable link with that nation's politics and practices. The set of concepts and practices defining cultural heritage were exported to, and imposed over, the colonized populations in North Africa and the Near East. The legacy of the colonial period has proven very significant in the domain of cultural heritage which has become a crucial cultural arena in many Arab states. As in the majorities of post-colonial states, in the Arab world, the inherited paradigm of cultural heritage has been subject to various forms of adaption and re-elaboration that have made it a lively and complex space of negotiations between various actors. Thus, in The Politics of Cultural Heritage in the Middle East, Irene Maffi and Rami Daher draw together expert scholars to unravel these complex processes that are involved in the definition, production and consumption of heritage and its material culture in the Middle East, and the dynamics of the key actors involved. The variety of the cases analysed that cover the region from Morocco to Lebanon, as well as the multiplicity of the actors concerned such as the state (post-colonial or colonial), international organizations, municipal councils, local communities, families and even exceptional personalities, highlights and explores the complex processes where very local and specific dynamics intertwine with transnational economic, political and cultural fluxes. In its examination of the workings of cultural heritage in the Middle East, this book is an important resource for students and scholars of Middle East Studies, Cultural History, History of Art and Architecture, and for stakeholders involved in the field of cultural heritage.
Displaying the Ideals of Antiquity investigates the study and display of ancient sculpture from archaeological, art historical, and museum studies perspectives. Ancient sculptures not only give us knowledge about ancient Greek and Roman pasts, but they also mediate ideals that inform modern perceptions of antiquity. This book analyzes how an art historical tradition establishes and preserves an idealized view of antiquity in classical archaeology and in museum exhibitions. The authors investigate how these ideals are kept alive today—an approach that often is neglected in studies on ancient reception.This book offers an international scope and illustrates how academic conceptual foundations influence museum exhibitions.This timely volume discusses contemporary museum exhibitions of ancient sculpture and clarifies how old discourses continue to affect museum exhibitions and conceptualizations of ancient sculptures. The authors analyze close to 100 museums around the world, and demonstrate the ways in which ancient sculptures are mediated across Europe and the West.
In 2008, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon acquired a painting called The Flight into Egypt which was attributed to the French artist Nicolas Poussin. Thought to have been painted in 1657, the painting had gone missing for more than three centuries. Several versions were rediscovered in the 1980s and one was passed from hand to hand, from a family who had no idea of its value to gallery owners and eventually to the museum. A painting that had been sold as a decorative object in 1986 for around 12,000 euros was acquired two decades later by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon for 17 million euros. What does this remarkable story tell us about the nature of art and the way that it is valued? How is it that what seemed to be just an ordinary canvas could be transformed into a masterpiece, that a decorative object could become a national treasure? This is a story permeated by social magic the social alchemy that transforms lead into gold, the ordinary into the extraordinary, the profane into the sacred. Focusing on this extraordinary case, Bernard Lahire lays bare the beliefs and social processes that underpin the creation of a masterpiece. Like a detective piecing together the clues in an unsolved mystery he carefully reconstructs the steps that led from the same material object being treated as a copy of insignificant value to being endowed with the status of a highly-prized painting commanding a record-breaking price. He thereby shows that a painting is never just a painting, and is always more than a piece of stretched canvass to which brush strokes of paint have been applied: this object, and the value we attach to it, is also the product of a complex array of social processes – with its distinctive institutions and experts – that lies behind it. And through the history of this painting, Lahire uncovers some of the fundamental structures of our social world. For the social magic that can transform a painting from a simple copy into a masterpiece is similar to the social magic that is present throughout our societies, in economics and politics as much as art and religion, a magic that results from the spell cast by power on those who tacitly recognize its authority. By following the trail of a single work of art, Lahire interrogates the foundations on which our perceptions of value and our belief in institutions rest and exposes the forms of domination which lie hidden behind our admiration of works of art.
The treatment of cultural colonial objects is one of the most debated questions of our time. Calls for a new international cultural order go back to decolonization. However, for decades, the issue has been treated as a matter of comity or been reduced to a Shakespearean dilemma: to return or not to return. Confronting Colonial Objects seeks to go beyond these classic dichotomies and argues that contemporary practices are at a tipping point. The book shows that cultural takings were material to the colonial project throughout different periods and went far beyond looting. It presents micro histories and object biographies to trace recurring justifications and contestations of takings and returns while outlining the complicity of anthropology, racial science, and professional networks that enabled colonial collecting. The book demonstrates the dual role of law and cultural heritage regulation in facilitating colonial injustices and mobilizing resistance thereto. Drawing on the interplay between justice, ethics, and human rights, Stahn develops principles of relational cultural justice. He challenges the argument that takings were acceptable according to the standards of the time and outlines how future engagement requires a re-invention of knowledge systems and relations towards objects, including new forms of consent, provenance research, and partnership, and a re-thinking of the role of museums themselves. Following the life story and transformation of cultural objects, this book provides a fresh perspective on international law and colonial history that appeals to audiences across a variety of disciplines. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.
Since the late nineteenth century, museums have been cited as tools of imperialism and colonialism, as strongholds of patriarchalism, masculinism, homophobia and xenophobia, and accused both of elitism and commercialism. But, could the museum absorb and benefit from its critique, turning into a critical museum, into the site of resistance rather than ritual? This book looks at the ways in which the museum could use its collections, its cultural authority, its auratic space and resources to give voice to the underprivileged, and to take an active part in contemporary and at times controversial issues. Drawing together both major museum professionals and academics, it examines the theoretical concept of the critical museum, and uses case studies of engaged art institutions from different parts of the world. It reaches beyond the usual focus on western Europe, America, and ’the World’, including voices from, as well as about, eastern European museums, which have rarely been discussed in museum studies books so far.
As we rely increasingly on digital resources, what is our responsibility to preserve 'old books' for the future? How was the question of preservation approached historically? David McKitterick's lively and wide-ranging study explores how 'old books' have been represented and interpreted from the eighteenth century to the present day.