An International Conference organized by the German Historical Institute
Washington, D.C., and the Centre Allemand d'Histoire de l'Art/Deutsches Forum
fuer Kunstgeschichte
Paris, November 2-4, 2000
Conveners: Cordula A. Grewe (GHI) and Thomas Gaehtgens (CAHA/DFfK)
The last two decades have witnessed a boom in museum studies. Histories of the museum have broadly acknowledged the emergence of the "modern museum" in the nineteenth century as a dominant institution within Western culture. Generally speaking, scholars have devoted most of their attention to the legitimizing function of museums, long-proclaimed by such figures as Michel Foucault and Theodor Adorno. In this context, they have closely analyzed the connection between politics, aesthetics, and museum policies within national projects and within the institutionalization of historical consciousness.
Less recognized is the differentiation of the modern museum into specialized, often competing subcategories - such as museums for anthropology, natural history, folklore, or archaeology - and their respective relationships to mass culture and the production of knowledge. Occurring at different paces in different nations, the emergence of new types of museums - devoted to the "human" as broadly conceived - responded to fundamental shifts within the overall make-up of Western societies: to the rise and fall of imperialism and colonialism, to the appearance of mass society and consumerism, and to economic changes brought about by, for example, the second industrial revolution. Of equal importance is the intersection of museum diversification with the proliferation of new disciplinary knowledge, including the professionalization of experts.
Focusing on England, France, Germany, and the United States in the period between the mid-nineteenth century and World War II, this conference will inquire into the changing function of the museums of mankind in their twofold capacity as progenitors and manifestations of their own differentiation. Furthermore, what were the social, economic, political, and cultural forces that determined the transformations of these functions? Why did certain shifts occur at certain historical moments, and what does a comparative approach contribute to our understanding of these processes within different national contexts? Through an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, the conference aims to contribute to a national as well as transnational genealogy of the museum, identifying the generic as well as the specific factors of development in each nation.
In addition, the conference will test the assumptions of the museum's legitimizing function against a richer exploration of the difficulties of fully controlling the audience's means of appropriation and against the potential for subverting authority in the process of reception. Contributors are encouraged to address the continuous process of negotiating hierarchies both among museum types and among the objects that they displayed, as well as the multiplication of ideological sites and thus of sites of potential contestation. Papers might explore the relationship between the new museum forms mentioned, new academic disciplines such as anthropology, and (novel) practices of popular mass culture, such as new forms of voluntary scientific societies, popular ethnographic spectacles and freak shows, world and colonial fairs, arcades, and department stores. How did this relationship shape the museums' institutional history concerning questions of founding, patronage, private collecting, or the entanglement with the art market? Participants also are encouraged to consider how changes in display culture influenced existing cultural values, the academy, and hierarchies of knowledge. Papers should focus on strategies of representation - such as forms of display, museum architecture, or the structuring of interior space. In which ways did these strategies respond to the challenges posed by exhibiting non-Western objects, how did they appropriate or negate existing techniques of display as practiced, for example, in the art museum? Finally, papers might address how the shifts in the museum landscape reinforced canonicity, or existing notions of racial, social, and cultural hierarchy, or, conversely, how such shifts contributed to a destabilization of these categories.
The conference will bring together a group of about two-dozen scholars from both sides of the Atlantic. The conference will be held at the Centre Allemand d'Histoire de l'Art/Deutsches Forum fuer Kunstgeschichte, Paris, November 2-4, 2000. In order to receive consideration, proposals (1-2 pages, double-spaced) must be received by mail, fax, or E-mail no later than April 30, 2000. For further information, please contact Cordula A. Grewe, E-mail: cgrewe@idt.net
Proposals should be sent to the attention of:
Baerbel Thomas
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