Paris Exhibition Research Articles

The Role of the Archaeologist in Present-Day Society

AbstractThe present paper is aimed to reveal the useful role that the archaeologist, evading from the ivory tower of his erudition of the societies of the past, may play for the change of the societies in the future. From two examples chosen in the XIX° century, we are focalizing on the very deep impact the archaeology may have in the society at a regional scale (the museum of Lubny in Ukraine) and at a worldwide scale (the Universal Exhibitions in Paris) for the evolution of the societies. Resulting from crisis due to internal mechanisms specific to our operation, the contemporary societies may collapse like the societies of the past. Such mechanisms have a systemic and non historical nature, which are involving us to discover the main processes, responsible of collapses. Then, the archaeologist, like the climatologist, may operate the knowledge of the past to forecast the happy or unhappy evolutions of the future. The archaeologist, servicing the contemporaneous society, may be useful, not only in discovering the remains of the past but also in making the inventory of the contemporary cultures as in forecasting the evolutions of the societies.

Art: Abstract relativity

A Paris exhibition contrasts 1920s depictions of the fourth dimension, find Stefan Michalowski and Georgia Smith.

Medalii și diplome ale meșterului Peter Schwarz din Jimbolia în colecţia Muzeului Banatului din Timișoara / Medals and Diplomas Awarded to Peter Schwarz from Jimbolia Found in the Collections of the Banat Museum in Timişoara

In 1980 the Banat Museum in Timişoara purchased from Johann Vastag, a resident of Jimbolia and former clerk ofthe local Craftsmen’s Guild, some items belonging to the guilds from Jimbolia, including four medals, one plaqueand five diplomas, awarded to the local craftsman Peter Schwarz. He was born on January 13, 1873 in Jimbolia.Between 1887 and 1892 he was apprentice for Anton Hicke, barber from Jimbolia, then between 1892 and 1899he trained in Budapest. During this period he specialized in several crafts, including bandaging. Returning toJimbolia, he worked as barber and wig maker, but also as bandager, orthopedist and prostheses maker.He owned a workshop for prostheses in Jimbolia. There, under the guidance of a specialized doctor, a widevariety of specific articles were manually produced. This included prostheses and parts of them, support devices (forarticular inflammations), orthopaedic corsets (for backbone’s affections), bandages for fractures, elastic bandages,orthopaedic shoes and others.Peter Schwarz became known throughout the entire Banat. Until 1914 he had “branches” in Bega-SanktGeorgen (today Žitište in Serbia) and Modosch (today Jaša Tomić in Serbia). He collaborated for many years withDr. Karl Diel (1855-1930), a renowned surgeon and director of the Hospital in Jimbolia.Schwarz participated in local and regional exhibitions but also in famous international fairs. Most of thedistinctions received were for orthopaedic works. He was awarded several gold and silver medals, numerousdiplomas and letters of recognitions. Between 1931 and 1949 Peter Schwarz acted as president of the Craftsmen’sGuild and president of the Craftsmen’s and Merchants’ Casino from Jimbolia. He was married to Margarethe Vacziand had four children: Margarethe, Peter, Stefan and Mathias. He died on September 24, 1963 in Jimbolia andwas interred on 26 September in the local cemetery.This paper presents the medals and diplomas issued to Peter Schwarz, from the collections of the BanatMuseum in Timişoara: the merit medal of the Industrial exhibition in Jimbolia (1908); the Grand Prix, thegolden medal and diploma of the International exhibition in Paris (1910); the golden medal and diploma of theIndustrial, agricultural and modern inventions exhibition in Rome (1911/1912); the golden plaque and honorarydiploma of the Industrial, agricultural and domestic industries exhibition in Jimbolia (1925). Beside these arepresented the honorary diploma of the Agricultural and industrial exhibition in Biled (1924); the “Obermeister”diploma of the “Eisenring” Merchants’ and Craftsmen’s Association from Timişoara (1929) and the certificate forthe medal for “Industrial and commercial merit”, 1st class (1935), awarded to Peter Schwarz on the anniversary of50 years of craftsmanship.The medals and diplomas of Peter Schwarz are proof of a special professional career and of his remarkable skills.His entire life and work in Jimbolia is being remembered, alongside the other personalities of the city from the late19th century and early 20th century.

Meghitt idegenek – Kassák Lajos párizsi kiállításai (1960 és 1963)

Abstract Győző Vasarhelyi (Victor Vasarely) and Denise Rene staged two exhibitions of Lajos Kassak in the Galerie Denise Rene in Paris, in 1960 and 1963. The organizers included former members of the European School now living in Paris and Kassak's avant-garde artistic connections, including Jean Arp, Sonia Delaunay, Etienne Hajdu, Vera Molnar and her husband Ferenc, Imre Pan, Michel Seuphor, Tristan Tzara. The art historical significance of these exhibitions was that they kept abreast of the contemporary West European and American artistic tendencies: along a linear art historical logic, they created continuity between the abstraction of the first two decades of the 20th century and – with a great leap in time – the geometric abstraction, op art and kinetic trends of the 1950s and 1960s. The basis to do so was, on the one hand, Kassak's oeuvre spanning from 1920 to 1960s, and on the other, the joint presentation of Kassak and Vasarely, as representatives of two periods. Their joint exhibitions and public...

„A mi kultúránk nem lehet más itthon, mint külföldön.” Kassák Lajos 1960-as párizsi kiállítása

Abstract The study presents a case that can be taken as a model of the political conception of the publicity of art in post-1956 Hungary. It is related to Lajos Kassak, the emblematic figure of progressive Hungarian art from the 1910s, who was tolerated by the Kadarian regime as a writer but rejected as an artist. The paper explores the problems of presenting Hungarian art abroad from an angle of art policy. In February 1960 a noted gallery owner in Paris, Denise Rene wished to exhibit Lajos Kassak's works. According to regulations, the permits of the Ministry of Culture and the Hungarian National Bank had to be obtained for the transportation of the pictures abroad. The Bank permit covered both taking the pictures out of the country and selling them. The process of obtaining permission was administered by the Hungarian National Gallery, as no private person was allowed to exhibit abroad without an institutional background. Kassak being a universally respected personage of the Hungarian art scene, it appe...

Commodity aesthetics: The industrial exhibitions of Paris, 1834—1844, reviewed

The industrial exhibitions in Paris during the July Monarchy drew large crowds and broad coverage in the press. Reviews of these exhibitions frequently appeared in newspapers that covered the annual art Salons, and often in the same part of the publication — in the feuilleton space. Thus an aesthetic of the commodity emerges in the reviews of the industrial exhibitions, as readers were taught to view the objects produced by industry with the same eye that assessed the value of new works of art. This essay concerns the contours of this aesthetic and how reviewers produced interest in these objects on display. Coverage of these exhibitions reveals the dominance of progress as an organizing paradigm for the historical consciousness in the early nineteenth century. Yet, at the same time, counterbalancing such a valuation of progress, objects are often represented as connected to or evocative of a lost pre-Revolutionary past.

Csók István: Báthory Erzsébet (1895). Egy „mestermű” fogadtatása és utóélete

Csók István: Báthory Erzsébet (1895). Egy „mestermű” fogadtatása és utóélete

The 1889 World Exhibition in Paris: The French, the Age of Machines, and the Wild West

The 1889 World Exhibition in Paris: The French, the Age of Machines, and the Wild West

Bogomolets Institute of Physiology as a Flagship in Investigations of Brain Cellular and Molecular Physiology in Ukraine

1 Bogomolets Institute of Physiology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine. Correspondence should be addressed to A. N. Shevko (e-mail: shevko@biph.kiev.ua). According to the Decision of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (AUAS) from May 9, 1934 (protocol No. 17), the Institute of Clinical Physiology of the AUAS in Kyiv was founded. Organization of this Institute was initiated by Academician Aleksandr Bogomolets, a famous Ukrainian scientist, statesman, and public figure. Studies carried out in this Institute became widely known among physiologists, pathophysiologists, and physicians and promoted progress in the fields of immunology, allergology, hematology, endocrinology, gerontology, and oncology in the former USSR and Ukrainian SSR. Prominent scientists, such as N. D. Strazhesko, V. P. Filatov, V. P. Vorob’yev, A. I. Smirnova−Zamkova, N. F. Mel’nikov–Razvedenkov, A. V. Leontovich, N. N. Gorev, R. E. Kavetskii, E. A. Tatarinov, N. I. Ishchenko, N. N. Sirotinin, N. B. Medvedeva, A. Yu. Lur’ye, A. D. Timofeyevskii, and others, worked under the guidance of Academician A. Bogomolets (Director of the Institute from 1934 to 1946). Studies by scientists of the Institute in the field of theoretical and clinical medicine were immediately recognized by the international scientific community. At the International Congresses carried out in Rome (1935) and then in Paris (1937), lectures of A. A. Bogomolets, where he presented his concepts on the mechanisms underlying the action of donor blood on the recipient, attracted great attention. At the World Exhibition in Paris (1937), A. A. Bogomolets was awarded the “Gold Medal” diploma for scientific studies of great value for applied medicine. “Medical Journal,” which

The great nineteenth century refractors

The first modern refractor was built in 1824 by Fraunhofer; its diameter was 23 cm. The sizes of the largest refractors grew linearly with time, culminating in the 102-cm Yerkes telescope (1897) and the 125-cm horizontal refractor with siderostat for the 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris. This was the end of the giants; however long-focus photographic or visual refractors with diameters 60-70 cm were still being constructed until 1972. In parallel, many short-focus, wide field astrographs were built after 1893. We recall the scientific uses of the large refractors, and discuss why these cumbersome and expensive instruments were not dethroned by the silvered-glass reflecting telescopes until late, in spite of the advantages of the latter.

“A Blossoming of the Spirit”: William Carlos Williams, Emanuel Romano, and the Authenticity of Artistic Expression

“A Blossoming of the Spirit”: William Carlos Williams, Emanuel Romano, and the Authenticity of Artistic Expression Paul Cappucci Throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, William Carlos Williams was close to the center of the New York School of painters, yet this geographic proximity did not result in a great deal of interaction with this younger generation of artists.1 He did briefly correspond with Robert Motherwell and notably references him in “The American Spirit in Art” (1951). He never met Jackson Pollock. However, he does reference the famed painter in several writings, most memorably in Paterson, Book V. To my knowledge, he never referenced the works of important artists like Franz Kline or David Smith. At this time when American artists were emerging as central figures in the avant-garde, Williams was developing a close personal relationship with the Italian born painter Emanuel Romano, son of famed Jewish sculptor Henryk (Enrico) Glicenstein. The relationship started with Romano painting Williams’s portrait, yet it also resulted in Williams writing “The Portrait” (1951) and “The Broken Vase” (1957). Besides their commentary on Romano’s artistry, these essays and his interaction with the painter reveal Williams’s continuing interest in artistic experimentation and also his uncertainty about its meaning and direction within the contemporary art scene. Some past critical explorations of Williams’s Romano essays have viewed them amid a broader art study. For instance, Henry Sayre briefly references “The Broken Vase” in The Visual Text of William Carlos Williams for what the essay says about Jackson Pollock and abstract expressionism. In William Carlos Williams and the Maternal Muse, Kerry Driscoll convincingly argues that “The Portrait” is not so much a review of Romano’s art as it is an expression of Williams’s thoughts regarding portrait painting and “the complex relation which exists between a painter [End Page 15] and his subject [ . . . ].” (16). She suggests that Williams does this for “two strategic reasons.” The first is that such an approach enables him to offer a more “honest” assessment of Romano’s work “without exaggerating its importance” (16). The other reason, according to Driscoll, concerns his mother’s proclivity for portrait painting and his then recent discovery of three medals that she earned at L ‘Ecole des Arts Industrielle. Such a reading offers a sound foundation for my own exploration of the essays, particularly for examining Williams’s broader thoughts about art. For my purposes, though, a closer look at the biographical, specifically Williams and Romano’s friendship, is essential for clarifying his thoughts about Romano’s work, as well as his thoughts about contemporary artistic trends. To begin a discussion of Romano, it is necessary to discuss briefly his artistic heritage. Romano’s father was a well-respected sculptor of Polish origins who studied, according to historian ?ucja Pawlicka Nowak, at the Munich Academy and eventually won the Prix de Rome twice for his works Arion and After Work It is Good to Rest. At the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris, his Cain and Abel earned a silver medal. According to an extended obituary in the New York Times, Glicenstein was “said to be the only sculptor to have exhibited jointly with Auguste Rodin” (23). He created busts of several famous figures, including Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Pope Pius XI, and Mussolini. Regarding Mussolini, Glicenstein told in an interview how the infamous dictator disliked cold steel and when having his head measured with compasses, stood up and shouted, “Corpo di Bacco!” Ultimately, a conflict with Mussolini triggered Glicenstein’s departure for the United States in 1927 (Zigal 75). When he was in Rome in 1897, Glicenstein’s son, Emanuel Romano Glicenstein, was born. According to Charlotte Snyder Sholod, an Italian clerk suggested “Romano” as a name that would offer the child a symbolic connection to his birthplace (15), and upon his emergence as an artist, Romano used this middle name as a way of earning acclaim on his own merits rather than exploiting his father’s reputation. During his lifetime, Romano did garner artistic recognition and exhibited at several notable museums, including the Whitney Museum. Besides his portrait of Williams, Romano created portraits of Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, and André Gide...

The Special Case of Four Auschwitz Photographs

The Special Case of Four Auschwitz Photographs Susan A. Crane (bio) Review of: Georges Didi-Huberman, Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz. Translated by Shane B. Lillis. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2008. Paris, 2001: an exhibition that commemorates the Nazi concentration and extermination camps of the Holocaust stirs up a vehement public debate. Georges Didi-Huberman, a critic and unconventional art historian of Jewish descent who has written on European painting and the depiction of hysteria in photography, contributes an essay to the exhibition catalog highlighting four particular photographs from the exhibit, which prompts further outrage.1 More outrage, one might wearily note, than information about the camps had caused at the time the photographs were made; but less, perhaps, than was caused when the first atrocity images of the liberated concentration camps appeared in Western newspapers and news reels in 1945. What is it about these photographs, after all these years of exposure and all our familiar outrage regarding their subject, that still prompts intense polemics? Didi-Huberman's contributions to this debate have now been translated into English. The translation includes the original exhibition catalog essay (Part 1: "Images in Spite of All") and Didi-Huberman's response to critics (Part 2: "In Spite of the All Image"; originally Images malgré tout, 2003). The oddly old-fashioned, elaborately detailed table of contents will make no sense to anyone who hasn't already read the book; this questionable editorial choice appears to indulge the author, as does the decision not to present the other side of the debate, which appeared in the pages of Les temps moderns (March-May 2001), in columns by Gérard Wajcman and Elisabeth Pagnoux. The book would have benefitted from a translation of these articles, since Didi-Huberman engages in frequent exegesis with them. Clearly, without these provocations, the second half of this volume would not exist. But the choice to translate Didi-Huberman is timely. While the debate has distinctively French concerns, the larger problematic of the (limits of) representation of the Holocaust remains a fraught subject for Western scholars, and Didi-Huberman's polemic takes the discussion in a new and productive direction. The controversy over the Parisian exhibition focused on four famous photographs from Auschwitz, taken at the height of the Final Solution in 1944. The photographs were taken by members of the so-called "Sonderkommandos," Jewish victims who were forced to participate in the genocide of their own people by removing the Nazis' victims from the gas chambers and destroying the corpses through fire or mass burial (sometimes, in response to wartime stringencies, both). The identity of the photographer/s is uncertain; surviving records left by members of the Sonderkommandos indicate the names of those involved in making the images. These records also show that they were able to smuggle the camera into the camp and the film out again, in a toothpaste tube, with the assistance of the Polish Underground (10-11). These are the only surviving images that show any aspect of the gas chamber operations, and because they represent an act of resistance by victims of genocide, they have retained an exceptional status among Holocaust sources. However, their exhibition in Paris was considered by some to be a provocation-either to Holocaust deniers, who would challenge the veracity of these admittedly poor images, or to more sophisticated viewers who expressed affinities with Claude Lanzmann, the filmmaker, whose remarkable documentary "Shoah" (1985) proscribed the use of archival images in favor of eyewitness testimony and film shot at the scenes of the crimes in the 1970s-80s. Holocaust deniers, of course, have never depended on actual evidence to promulgate their delusions. On ethical and aesthetic grounds, the second set of criticisms is more substantial and reflects a peculiarly French concern with a kind of Bilderverbot (prohibition of religious images). Wajcman accused Didi-Huberman of fetishizing these images in a perversely Christian fashion ("the passion of the image" 52). The exceptional status of the Sonderkommando photographs thus opens up debate about the memory and visual representation of the Holocaust in a nation which has not yet come to terms with its "Vichy syndrome," to apply Henry...

The Economics of Wine – Introduction

To coincide with the 150th anniversary of the famous Bordeaux Wine Classification of 1855, the Centre for Policy Evaluation at the University of Nottingham sponsored a special session at the 2005 RES Annual Conference on the economics of wine. The 1855 classification was completed as part of the Paris Exhibition of the same year as a temporary means to determine which Bordeaux wines would be exhibited. The classification took hold, and is still in use today. In celebration, this Feature explores how economics can add to an understanding of wine production and wine markets.

A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the WorldGregory Clark (2007). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 418 pp., US$29.95, ISBN 978 0 691 12135 2

AbstractEconomics arranges its topics as Big, Medium, and Small. Mr Big is the Industrial Revolution: How did it happen, and when? Whence did it spread, and at what rate? What were the costs and benefits? The literature is vast and the answers are numerous. But it organizes around a fundamental phenomenon: from about 1800, economic growth began an upward climb that in fifty years captured the world's purse and that in another half century had increased the wealth of industrial nations many times. Intoxication with this achievement is expressed in museums of science and industry and on websites featuring the Paris Exhibition of 1889 and the Chicago Exhibition of 1893.

Photography and the Work of Class and Race

Photography and the Work of Class and Race Janet Zandy (bio) Photography on the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois, Race, and Visual Culture. By Shawn Michelle Smith. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004. 225 pages. $74.95 (cloth). $21.95 (paper). Milton Rogovin: The Making of a Social Documentary Photographer. By Melanie Anne Herzog, with a foreword by Douglas R. Nickel and an afterword by Catherine Linder Spencer. Seattle: University of Washington Press and the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, 2006. 176 pages. $30.00 (paper). In his astute juxtaposition of the photography of Alfred Stieglitz and Lewis Hine, Alan Trachtenberg draws distinctions between Stieglitz's Camera Work and Hine's Social Work.1 Rather than cementing a bifurcation, however, Trachtenberg is careful to show the inseparability of photography as art and photography as document. That dialogic relationship informs these two books under review and their treatment of the cultural and political work of photographs, archives, and photographers. Authors Shawn Michelle Smith and Melanie Anne Herzog construct contexts for their studies of the archival work of W. E. B. Du Bois and the photography of Milton Rogovin, respectively, that enlarge our understanding of how photographs can work against the grain of specific historical and cultural assumptions. That is, they underscore how camera work is also political work. Shawn Michelle Smith's important Photography on the Color Line establishes W. E. B. Du Bois as a visual archivist who understood the power of photographic representation to disrupt, perhaps unmoor, the pseudo-scientific racial taxonomies undergirding systemic racial oppression. Du Bois visited the Paris Exhibition of 1900, where his contribution as archivist to the American Negro Exhibit, what he described as "a little display showing the development of Negroes in the United States," won a gold medal. Du Bois re-presented 363 photographs, archived in albums titled Types of American Negroes, Georgia U.S.A. [End Page 183] and Negro Life in Georgia, U.S.A. These photographs were gleaned from an earlier ethnographic project, Georgia Negro Exhibit, which Du Bois developed in collaboration with students at Atlanta University. As Smith cogently notes, this archive exposed a complicated narrative and counternarrative. The presence of Du Bois's words about the photographs signals the emerging power of his theorizing about race. One display was introduced with what would become his signature: "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line." However, the absence of captions to accompany the archived photographs obscures any literal rendering of names, places, and their meanings. The photographs, whether in paired frontal and profiled head shots in oval frames or in studio settings, presented an alternative narrative of Negroes living in the deep South. These are images of well-dressed, mostly young, middle-class men and women and beautiful children. The studio portraits are carefully situated within bourgeois settings of laced curtains, opened books, and potted plants. The men's suits are well tailored and the women's and children's garments are beautiful confections of bows, pleats, and lace. As Smith interprets Du Bois's intent, these portraits challenged the racial typology that relegated blacks to an inferior caste and fueled white supremacist violence. Arguing for the importance of these photographs in advancing Du Bois's "new cultural vision," Smith employs a comparative theoretical framework to locate the images within their own cultural context and to theorize their contemporary meanings. Noting the literal and metaphoric meanings of his visual tropes of "the Veil" and "second-sight" and emphasizing that double consciousness emanates from the burden of being seen through the eyes of others, Smith makes a convincing case for recognizing Du Bois "as an early visual theorist of race and racism" (25). She argues that Du Bois adapts William James's Principles of Psychology to illuminate how race informs—if not shapes—the process of identity formation. She then moves into a Lacanian reading of Du Bois's double consciousness/double vision and explores a "fundamental fracture" in development, a "psychological splitting of black consciousness under a white gaze" as evidenced later in Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks (33). This theoretical line could have taken her to James Baldwin...

Charles V. Riley, France, and Phylloxera

In this paper, the authors examine Charles V. Riley's relationship with France and French scientists (1855–1895), with special reference to Riley's role in the Phylloxera campaign (ca. 1869–1885). Riley's French connections represent a significant aspect of a projected full-length Riley biography. Riley was born and reared in England; he made his career as an agricultural entomologist in the United States. Nevertheless, his tenure at a boarding school in Dieppe, France (1855–1857) established Francophile patterns that persisted throughout his life. For example, he entered portions of his personal diary in French, made eight trips to France, and placed two daughters in French finishing schools. Most important, Riley's early French contact prepared him, as Missouri State Entomologist (1868–1877) and Chief U.S. Entomologist (1878–1894), to join with Jules Emile Planchon, Jules Lichtenstein, Victor Signoret, and other French scientists in the historic campaign against the grape Phylloxera in France. Riley's field studies, experiments, articles, illustrations, and American Phylloxera specimens helped establish key aspects of the Phylloxera 's life history. With American data, he confirmed that the American and European Phylloxera were identical and that the species originated in America; he also discovered the previously unknown American root form and demonstrated its polymorphic relationship to the leaf form. Riley was able to explain, on Darwinian grounds, that the consistent failure of European vines in eastern North America was due to their lack of resistance to Phylloxera . Riley's support of Planchon and Lichtenstein—who held that Phylloxera was the cause of the dying vines, and not an effect as maintained by Signoret and other defenders of “pure” French vineyards—helped the “Americanists” prevail in their diagnosis of the problem. His summary of resistant American vines, along with his drawings and descriptions, helped convince French vintners that the eventual solution lay in grafting French vines on American rootstock. Although Riley withdrew from active participation in Phylloxera affairs after the mid-1880s, he returned to France frequently for rest and recuperation. When Riley represented the U.S. Department of Agriculture at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1889, the French government presented him with the Legion of Honor, its highest award, for his assistance in Phylloxera affairs. Official recognition, along with collegial relations with French scientists, and general acceptance and gratitude among the French people, helped compensate for the hostility and conflict Riley frequently experienced among colleagues and superiors in the federal bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. Riley's partnership with the French in the Phylloxera challenge not only allowed him to repay his debt of gratitude to France, but also to demonstrate how the fledgling field of economic entomology could meet a major insect crisis in the international arena.

The Great Paris Exhibition Telescope of 1900

The Great Paris Exhibition Telescope of 1900

Expressing Local Specificity: The Flemish Renaissance Revival in Belgium and the Antwerp City Architect Pieter Jan Auguste Dens

While globalizing trends stimulate the creation of entirely new regions, established regional and local identities remain. Architectural historians, among others, explore the ways in which regionalism has been — and continues to be — defined and redefined. Current issues in this debate include what regional architectural traditions might be; whether regions can be defined by architecture; and how regional traditions of architecture have been defined and interpreted by artists, authors and scholars. Nineteenth-century Belgian architecture is particularly relevant in this context. The formation of Belgian Art Nouveau’s style and identity have both been the object of numerous studies, but while Art Nouveau is probably the best-known creation of Belgian nineteenth-century architecture, it is hardly the only one, nor indeed the only interesting one. One of the sources identified for Belgian Art Nouveau has been the milieu of the so-called Flemish Renaissance Revival, which produced such architectural gems as Emile Janlet’s (1839–1919) Belgian pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris (1878) and Jean Winders’ (1849–1936) own house and studio (1882–83) in Antwerp (Fig. 1).

History, Strong Stories and New Traditions: The Case of ‘Etched on Bark 1854’

In early 2004 the author, Elizabeth Willis, curated an exhibition at Museum Victoria that displayed two Victorian Aboriginal bark etchings and a ceremonial piece made in 1854. It described interactions between the Kulin people and the squatter, John Hunter Kerr, who commissioned the etchings and displayed them at exhibitions in Bendigo, Melbourne and Paris. At the end of the exhibition the Dja Dja Warrung people imposed an injunction against the objects’ return to the London museums which had lent them for display. This paper discusses the use of ‘history’ during the exhibition and its aftermath, and considers the political uses of ‘history’ in response to different perspectives on the past. This article has been peer-reviewed.

Science in culture: A culture of knowledge

An exhibition in Paris explores the golden age of Islamic science.