‘Views of the Past’ — Reflections on the Treatment of Historical Objects and Museums of History (1750

Abstract

It is argued that ‘viewing the past’ has a precise significance when this activity is interpreted within the context of the specific modes of representation which were current in the period from 1750 to 1850. Although theoretical awareness of this possibility came at a later stage, with Nietzsche's analysis of the ‘antiquarian’ attitude and Alois Riegl's concept of ‘age-value’, the antiquarians and collectors of the eighteenth century were already developing practices of installation and exhibition which gave expression to the new ‘vision’ of the past. The particular case of the Faussett Pavilion is examined to show how one of these antiquarians gave a strong affective character to the process of historical and archaeological retrieval. But it is also suggested that the ‘antiquarian’ attitude was vulnerable to ironic revision, as Scott and his fellow Romantic writers popularised the study of the Middle Ages; in Barham's Ingoldsby Legends (1840), the visual representation of a monument is merely the pretext for a far-fetched medieval story. It is further argued that the historical museum, essentially a product of this period, provided the most stable conditions for ‘viewing the past’. Although early examples like Alexandre Lenoir's Musée des Monuments français and Sir John Soane's Museum are discussed, it is Alexandre du Sommerard's Musée de Cluny (opening in the early 1830s) which is shown to have fulfilled these conditions to greatest effect.

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‘Views of the Past’ — Reflections on the Treatment of Historical Objects and Museums of History (1750–1850)

Abstract

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References