History of Collections

The Tattoo Collectors: Inscribing Criminality in Nineteenth Century France

by Gemma Angel

Published in 'Bildwelten des Wissens', (Spring 2012) Vol. 9.1 (http://www.kulturtechnik.hu-berlin.de/bildwelten/Band9-1)

Le antichità del principe di Biscari: scelte e criteri espositivi di un collezionista tra antiquaria e nuova scienza archeologica, in Oggetti, uomini, idee, a cura di G. Giarrizzo e S. Pafumi, Pisa Roma 2009, pp. 87-116.

by Stefania Pafumi

Un progetto per la storia del museo e delle collezioni dei Padri Benedettini di Catania: problemi, prospettive, primi risultati, in Oggetti, uomini, idee, a cura di G. Giarrizzo e S. Pafumi, Pisa- Roma 2009, pp. 139-178.

by Stefania Pafumi

L’exposició retrospectiva de Barcelona de 1867 i els inicis del col·leccionisme de pintura gòtica a Catalunya

by Alberto Velasco Gonzàlez

in Lambard. Estudis d'art medieval, XXII, 2012, p. 9-65.

In 1867 it was organized in Barcelona the first of major retrospective exhibitions conducted in the city during the... more In 1867 it was organized in Barcelona the first of major retrospective exhibitions conducted in the city during the nineteenth century. The exhibition was an initiative of the Academy of Fine Arts, and supposed the involvement, both at organizational level and in the loan of works, of a set of very important personalities of cultural life in Barcelona. From the standpoint of the history of collecting, it was the first time that takes visibility a group of people who had remained anonymous until then, including some artists and intellectuals linked with the Romantic Movement and, therefore, interested in the artistic works of the medieval period.

The article will delve into this last aspect, and particularly in those lenders who lend paintings of the gothic period, a kind of artistic production that was not yet fully introduced in the local circles of collecting due to an accumulation of factors that will be analyzed appropriately. The presence of gothic paintings in the exhibition was not too relevant in the totality of works on display, but viewed together; show that certain people had been interested in them, a prelude of later episodes featured by collectors as Maties Muntadas. Finally, the text calls for this exhibition as the first time that the gothic painting was exhibited publicly in Catalonia,
at the same time when intellectuals became interested in it as an object of
study.

Exempla römischen Wohnluxus’: zu einigen löwenköpfigen Tischfüßen in der Antikengalerie Gustavs III. in Stockholm

by Joern Lang

published in: Opuscula Romana 31–32, 2006–2007, 167–188.

Rezension zu John Boardman: The Marlborough gems formerly at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire. With Diana Scarisbrick, Claudia Wagner, Erika Zwierlein-Diehl. Oxford: Oxford UP 2009

by Joern Lang

published in: Gnomon 84, 2012, 64–68.

Egypt Exploration Society Invades ... London Underground?

by Amara Thornton

Thornton, A. 2012. Egypt Exploration Society Invades ... London Underground? The EES Newsletter, 4, pp.4-5.

Coleccionar para a RES PUBLICA (in Portuguese only)

by Inês Fialho Brandão

Published in Exhibition catalogue, Dr. Anastacio Goncalves House Museum

Biographical overview of the collector Antonio Anastacio Goncalves, based on hitherto unknown archival material.... more Biographical overview of the collector Antonio Anastacio Goncalves, based on hitherto unknown archival material. Recently unearthed personal writings and family and friends testimonials have revealed the collector was a man deeply connected to the Portuguese First Republic, espousing its ideals of "the New Man", universal access to education and healthcare.

This resulted in his bequeathing his home, and his collection of Chinese porcelain, Portuguese and European furniture, and Naturalist Portuguese paintings, to the Portuguese State.

Collezionare antichità al tempo di Gregorio XIII: il caso di Paolo Giordano I Orsini

by Barbara Furlotti

in Unità e frammenti di modernità. Arte e scienza nella Roma di Gregorio XIII Boncompagni, atti del convegno (Roma 2004), a cura di C. Cieri Via, I.D. Rowland, M. Ruffini (Pisa-Roma 2012), pp. 197-216.

Semedo2010_Estudos e gestao de colecções praticas de formação e investigação

by Alice Semedo

"Collezionisti di reperti archeologici a Mortara", in "Viglevanum", anno XXII, 2012, pp. 30-35..

by Serena Scansetti

Escrito en la rebotica. Coleccionismo naturalista y prácticas de escritura en el gabinete de curiosidades de la familia Salvador. Barcelona, 1626-1857

by Jose Pardo-Tomas

Switched Landscapes - Postcards, memories and gazes on the flatlands of the Tagus River

by Carlos Robalo

ROBALO, Carlos – Paisagens Trocadas: Postais, memórias e olhares sobre a lezíria do Tejo [Em linha]. Lisboa: ISCTE, 2009. Disponível em www:<http://hdl.handle.net/10071/1473&gt;.

With the fall of the rural world, landscapes regain a remarkable expression in the framing of the memory and in the... more With the fall of the rural world, landscapes regain a remarkable expression in the framing of the memory and in the construction of the imaginary of a society that redesigns its image and projects itself in time, past and future, and is forced to question its present.

In the demand of the Tagus Valley landscape representations, picture postcards were elected as primordial research source. To find them required a long and persisting course, identifying local collectors and getting their assent to study their collections, what has revealed new perspectives of inquiry, multiplying the odds of looking the site and its sought objects.

Defying us to examine the perspectives on the place, both in past and present, postcards are the axis of a research where we outlook the modulations of the gaze: the people’s gaze on their space and about themselves, on how they intend to be looked at by the others, how they see the others and how they are seen by them.

This way, it was intended to contribute to the identification of processes that determine the construction of a place, the delimitation of a territory, the recognition of a landscape, and hence, the production of a sense of belonging, where a situated identity is discoursed and represented.

Giovanni Gasbarri - Gli avori bizantini del Museo Civico Medievale di Bologna: arte, collezionismo e imitazioni in stile

by Giovanni Gasbarri

in Vie per Bisanzio, Atti del VII Congresso Nazionale dell'Associazione Italiana di Studi Bizantini (Venezia, 25-28 novembre 2009), in corso di stampa

Dactyliothecae Cataloniae: La herencia de P.F.H. d’Hancarville en una cornalina de la colección Domingo Bassols.

by Raimon Graells i Fabregat

R. Graells (2012): "Dactyliothecae Cataloniae: La herencia de P.F.H. d’Hancarville en una cornalina de la colección Domingo Bassols", Symbolae Antiquariae, IV, 105-115.

Reassembling Ethnographic Museum Collections

by Rodney Harrison

This is the final submitted version of a review chapter that will appear as the Introduction to Rodney Harrison, Sarah Byrne and Anne Clarke (eds) Reassembling the Collection: Ethnographic Museums and Indigenous Agency, to be published by SAR Press

This volume addresses itself to fundamental questions about the nature, value and efficacy of museum collections in a... more This volume addresses itself to fundamental questions about the nature, value and efficacy of museum collections in a postcolonial world, and the agency of indigenous people in their production. Its primary focus lies with those objects which, by way of their specific histories, have been defined as ‘ethnographic’, however, the question of the contexts in which things are defined as ‘art’ as opposed to ‘artifact’ (e.g. Clifford 1988, 1997; Danto 1988; Putnam 1991; Marcus and Myers 1995; Gell 1998; Thomas 1999; Myers 2001) also constitutes a key concern. The book is most appropriately situated within the context of various postcolonial critiques of the role of museums and museum collections in the politics of indigenous representation (e.g. Clifford 1988; 1995; O’Hanlon 1993; Greenfield 1996; Lidchi 1997; Barringer and Flynn 1998; Russell 2001; Karp and Levine 2001; Fforde, Hubert and Turnbull 2002; Kramer 2006; Cuno 2008; Lonetree and Cobb 2008; Sleeper-Smith 2009), and a reaction to the perception that indigenous people had little or no ‘agency’ in the processes which were responsible for the genesis of ethnographic museum collections (themselves largely a phenomenon of the exercising of asymmetrical colonial power relations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). Nonetheless, in seeing this book as a product of that literature and its accompanying themes, what sets it apart from much of the current literature is that it makes a significant attempt to move beyond the concerns of the politics of representation which have tended to dominate critical museum studies (Macdonald 2011), to consider the affective qualities of things alongside their representational role within the museum. Similarly, in considering the complex material and social interactions of things, people and institutions which constitute ethnographic collections, we attempt to move beyond the observation that indigenous people and ethnographic objects ‘had (and continue to have) agency’, to consider how concepts of agency and indigeneity need to be reconfigured in the light of their study within the context of the museum. In doing so, the volume develops a series of new concepts and considers their application to historical and contemporary engagements between ethnographic museums and the various individuals and communities who were (and are) involved in their production. The themes of the volume have profound implications not only for understanding the ongoing processes which have formed museum collections in the past and present, but also for developing new and innovative curatorial practices in the future. Key concepts include the idea of museums as meshworks and material/social assemblages; the ways in which the application of an ‘archaeological sensibility’ might inform approaches to understanding the past and present relationships between people, ‘things’ and institutions in relation to museums; and the ‘curatorial responsibility’ which arises from a reconsideration of the nature of museum ‘objects’.

Assembling and Governing Cultures ‘At Risk’: Centers of Collection and Calculation, from the Museum to World Heritage

by Rodney Harrison

This is the final submitted version of a chapter which will be published shortly in Rodney Harrison, Sarah Byrne and Anne Clarke (eds) Reassembling the Collection: Ethnographic Museums and Indigenous Agency (SAR Press)

In this chapter, I argue that the spectre of risk, vulnerability and loss haunts and helps account for the development... more In this chapter, I argue that the spectre of risk, vulnerability and loss haunts and helps account for the development of the salvage paradigm which drove the development of both late nineteenth/early twentieth century ethnographic museum collections, and the various cultural heritage lists and registers which were developed throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first. In doing so, I suggest that both might be understood to represent centers of (and for) collection and calculation as defined by Bruno Latour (1987; see also Bennett this volume). Latour uses this term in his model of the construction of scientific knowledge to describe the production and accumulation of ‘immutable and combinable mobiles’—objects, specimens, charts, maps, tables, field notebooks and other recorded observations—which are collected from the peripheries (or ‘field’) and returned to a centre where they are able to be combined and interpreted in different ways. This allows centers of calculation to ‘act at a distance’ (1987:229) through the same networks of collection and distribution by which the mobiles are returned, as well as new networks that are created as a result of the assembling and reassembling of these mobiles at the centre. In suggesting that both museums and heritage registers can profitably be viewed as centers of collection, I seek to draw the processes and forms of agency involved in the formation of ethnographic museum collections into closer conversation with those which have contributed to the development of the UNESCO World Heritage Lists (including the UNESCO Lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage). I argue that they not only share their raison d’être as assemblages which are brought together in response to perceived risk, but that they are also a product of a single genealogy, sharing intellectual and institutional histories. Similarly, they both reflect anthropological debates about ‘culture’ and ways of dealing with the relationship of the universal to the particular. This has broad implications for the way we understand not only the rise of intangible heritage in the late twentieth century in relation to forms of minority and indigenous agency, but also the ways in which we might locate indigenous agency in the formation of ethnographic museum collections in the past and present. In particular, I follow Tony Bennett’s (1995) argument regarding the universal mission of museums to explore the ways in which indigenous people and other ethnic minorities have made counter-claims to representation in World Heritage since its introduction in the 1970s alongside the growth of international indigenous rights movements which mirror earlier developments relating to their representation within ethnographic museums. I also explore the ways in which lists such as the World Heritage List ‘materialize’ and stand in for objects, places, and practices and in doing so, continue older museological forms of governance in relation to the categorization of the boundaries between humans and ‘things’.

«Umile angolo di terra latina». Giandomenico Bertoli a Mereto di Tomba

by Gabriele Caiazza

published in: "Gian Domenico Bertoli e la cultura antiquaria del ’700", atti del convegno (Aquileia, 8-9 dicembre 2001), “Bollettino del Gruppo Archeologico Aquileiese”, XI, 11, dicembre 2001, pp. 14-27

Before the facsimile edition (2002-2003) of the previously unpublished manuscripts of the second and third volumes of... more Before the facsimile edition (2002-2003) of the previously unpublished manuscripts of the second and third volumes of "The Antiquities of Aquileia", on 8 and 9 December 2001 the Aquileia Archaeological Group organizes the conference "Gian Domenico Bertoli and the antiquarian culture of the eighteenth century" and subsequently publishes the conference proceedings in its bulletin. Among other scientific studies, the essay "«Humble corner of Latin land»: Giandomenico Bertoli in Mereto di Tomba" offers a summary of the relationship between G.D. Bertoli (1676-1763) and his native country (located in the province of Udine) during the long life of that cultured canon who was also collector, inventor, epigrapher and amateur archaeologist but, above all, the first true "pathfinder" of the ancient Aquileia

Prima di pubblicare in facsimile (2002-2003) i manoscritti inediti del II e III tomo delle "Antichità d’Aquileja", l’8 e il 9 dicembre 2001 il Gruppo Archeologico Aquileiese organizza il convegno "Gian Domenico Bertoli e la cultura antiquaria del ’700", di cui pubblica gli atti nel proprio bollettino: fra gli altri interventi, il saggio "«Umile angolo di terra latina»: Giandomenico Bertoli a Mereto di Tomba" propone una sintesi dei rapporti fra G.D. Bertoli (1676-1763) e il suo paese natio (ubicato in provincia di Udine) nel corso della lunga vita del dotto canonico che fu anche collezionista, inventore, epigrafista, archeologo dilettante e soprattutto primo vero "esploratore" dell'Aquileia antica

Il Regio Museo Industriale Italiano

by Luca Giacomelli

in Torino. Prima capitale d’Italia, direzione scientifica di E. Castelnuovo, E. Pagella, Istituto della Encliclopedia italiana Treccani, Roma 2010, pp. 117-124.

Inventari del Regio Museo Industriale Italiano dell’Archivio Storico di Torino.

by Luca Giacomelli

in V. Marchis (a cura di), Disegnare, progettare, costruire. 150 di arte e scienza nelle collezioni del Politecnico di Torino, Editris, Torino 2009.