Publication details
UNIVERSALIZING THE LOCAL? MUSEUMS, CENTRES AND PERIPHERIES
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Revista da História da Arte |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | https://institutodehistoriadaarte.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/rha_w_9.pdf |
| Keywords | MUSEUMS; APPLIED ART; ETHNOGRAPHY; CULTURAL HIERARCHIES; COLLECTING |
| Description | In the last two hundred years, museums have provided the primary framework through which we engage with art objects, be it for the purposes of visual pleasure or art historical research. This framework is not neutral or transparent: it is an artefact in itself, shaped by the ideologies of its time. As they categorise their objects into groups, museums order the world in certain ways: identifying and labelling objects means identifying and labelling people. This article discusses how collections of applied art and ethnography in nineteenth-century Hungary reflected and shaped social and cultural hierarchies. These museums set out to centre the applied arts in an art historical canon that usually positioned them on the periphery, but in doing so they formed a category of “high art” that was implicitly based on a class distinction and relegated the products of the rural peasantry to the scope of ethnography. |