Introduction: Curating empire

Longair, Sarah; McAleer, John

doi:10.7765/9781526118288.00007

Cited by 2 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…“Museums do not exist in a social, cultural or political vacuum,” Longair and McAleer explain: “They cannot stand outside time or removed from historical processes” (2012, p. 4). Trends and politics influence what a museum acquires and what it displays from its collections.…”

Section: Museum Discoursesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Reading the museum

Chappell

2023

Literature Compass

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The museum is not a neutral container, a passive collection of art and artifacts. Rather the museum is itself a historical argument, using objects and their relations to write our collective stories. This essay shows how the museum, as it developed within nineteenth‐century European imperialism, directs meaning both within and beyond literature. The museum integrates readers into its collections and its narratives, directing them figuratively and literally through exhibits. Nineteenth‐century literature, I argue, capitalizes on this dynamic interplay among the collection, the viewing subject, and the museum's ideologies. In both poetry and prose the museum appears as a place, a concept, and a form. For example, William Thackeray's “May Day Ode” shows how the Crystal Palace and the 1851 Great Exhibition facilitate an imperialist agenda. The galleries in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, meanwhile, are not just places the characters go; they also exert control over how characters (and readers) experience and evaluate collections. Across these texts, the museum is setting and theme. But, I argue, the museum also works as form, curating the collections, the characters who visit them, and the readers who access the narrative through museum logics. In conjunction with literary examples and an overview of scholarly conversations around nineteenth‐century museum studies, I consider how the museum continues to direct bodies, interpretations, and ideas today by drawing on my experiences using museums in the college classroom.

show abstract

Section: Museum Discoursesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In section 1. “Museum Discourses,” I introduce some existing scholarly conversations about nineteenth‐century museums, with particular attention to the museum as “part of an imperial nexus” (Longair and McAleer, 2012, p. 1). Section 2.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reading the museum

Chappell

2023

Literature Compass

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…According to Wendy Shaw, a later iteration of the Collection of Ancient Weapons (i.e. the Military Museum) was also decidedly invested in interactivity: "Men dressed as live mannequins, decked out in historical armor and costumes… posed for photographs in front of the second gate of the Topkapı Palace, the Middle Gate or Orta Kapı… A small band of musicians led the way, attracting attention to the group"(Shaw, 2003, p. 194).14 For a thorough discussion of these antiquities legislations, seeEldem (2011a).15 For more recent accounts of the connection between the empire and the museum, see MacKenzie (2017) andLongair and McAleer (2017).16 For a discussion of the role archeological finds played in the construction of the Hejaz Railway, for instance, seeSaunders and Saunders (2020).17 This struggle between the state bureaucracy and the sultan is such a common theme in the historiography of nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire that Orhan Pamuk uses it as a plot device in his historical novel, Nights of Plague (2022).18 In fact, with the Empire on the brink of total collapse, one gets the sense that there was nothing Ottomans could do (either to build a museum and house the antiquities or distribute them to European institutions) to convince Europeans of the legitimacy of their power.19 For a more extended discussion of the conventions of this genre, seeÜnlüönen (2022).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…15 15 For more recent accounts of the connection between the empire and the museum, see MacKenzie (2017) and Longair and McAleer (2017). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking the nineteenth‐century museum via the Ottoman imperial museum

Ünlüönen

2023

Literature Compass

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Most accounts of the Ottoman Imperial Museum view the museum primarily as a Westernization project for the Ottoman Empire. In such readings, the museum follows a teleological trajectory toward the European norm. This article reads several of the early practices of the Ottoman Imperial Museum (such as interactive museum displays and the sultan's casual gifting of museum holdings to other European monarchs), not as hiccups on the way to Westernization, but rather as a distinctly Ottoman vision of museology and imperial power. Seen in this light, the early history of the Ottoman Imperial Museum challenges the standard account of the nineteenth‐century imperial museum as a site where imperial subjects are molded and where the empire displays its might. Instead, in the case of the Ottoman Imperial Museum, the scientific and orderly organization of the museum artifacts become a testament not to imperial power, but to imperial powerlessness.

show abstract

Introduction: Curating empire

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Reading the museum

Reading the museum

Rethinking the nineteenth‐century museum via the Ottoman imperial museum

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About