Collecting, reception and revival

What we cover

• Methods and politics of display
• Imperialism and collecting
• Cross-cultural exchange
• Power relations and collecting
• Exhibition histories and histories of curating
• Travel
• Memory
• Centres and peripheries

Overview

This research strand focuses on how art objects have been collected, viewed and discussed in the past and in the present. While much attention inevitably falls on the history and development of museums and public and private collecting, an equally important aspect of this research group is on the display of art objects and how the vagaries of time control their relevance to the present moment. The role of revival is thus an important part of assessing how art objects move in and out of fashion and academic interest. While much of the academic energy of the group is on European and North American cultures, the role of imperialism and intercultural exchange is an important feature of the strand. This includes East-West dialogues as well as public and private attitudes to the other.

Publications

• Ting Chang, Charlotte Guichard, Christine Howald and Bénédicte Savoy, eds., All the Beauty of the World. The Western Market for non-European Artefacts: ‘Emile Guimet's Network for Research and Collecting Asian Objects, ca.1876-1918’ (2018)
• Fintan Cullen, ‘Migrating objects: John Henry Foley and Empire’ in: Kathrin Wagner, Jessica David and Matej Klemenčič, eds., Artists and Migration 1400-1850: Britain, Europe and beyond (2017), 183-195
• Lucy Bradnock, Courtney J. Martin, and Rebecca Peabody (eds), Lawrence Alloway: Critic and Curator, Los Angeles: Getty, 2015
• Ting Chang, Travel, Collecting, and Museums of Asian Art in Nineteenth-Century Paris (2013)
• Fintan Cullen, Ireland on Show. Art, Union, and Nationhood (2012)
• Lara Pucci, ‘History, myth, and the everyday: Luchino Visconti, Renato Guttuso, and the fishing communities of the Italian south’, Oxford Art Journal (2013), 417-436
• Gabriele Neher, ‘What news on the Rialto? Titian, Dürer and Bellini under the spotlight’, Art History (2008), 274-279
• ‘Spectacle and Display’, two-day conference, University of Nottingham, 2007; special issue of Art History (2007)