Oxford Museum Research Articles

Коллекция месопотамских древностей в Йенском университете им. Фридриха Шиллера: история и характеристика собрания

The “Frau Professor Hilprecht Collection”, kept at the Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Middle East at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, is the largest collection of Babylonian antiquities in Germany, rivaling in its cultural and historical significance the collections of the Museum of the Ancient Middle East in Berlin, the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, the Yale Babylonian Collection in New Haven, the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul, the British Museum in London, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and a number of other thematic museum collections. Standing out from their background due to the quality of objects, mainly discovered during the excavations of Nippur and dated from the Sumerian and Old Akkadian period (IV–III thousand BC) up to the early Islamic period, the Jena collection plays an important role in the study of culture, history, science and literature of the peoples of ancient Mesopotamia. The purpose of this article is an analytical review of this collection, highlighting the most significant and interesting artifacts, as well as considering the history of the origin, movement and study of this collection. Special attention is paid to the literary cuneiform tablets, some of which are unique and no longer found in any of the Mesopotamian collections, as well as the one-of-a-kind map of Nippur, dating from the middle of the II millennium BC and considered as the oldest map of the city in the world. The most important topic of the publication and translation of the texts of the tablets and the step-by-step digitization of all the objects of the collection is also touched upon.

Indigenous Voices and the Archive

Between 1914 and 1919, the British administrator and anthropologist John Henry Hutton (1885-1968) made fourteen cylinder recordings documenting the songs of Naga communities in the Naga Hills District, today part of the state of Nagaland in India. Little is known about the recording circumstances, as the documentation is limited to brief recording notes he sent with the cylinders to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, which holds the collection. Hutton’s publications, on the other hand, include transcriptions and translations of some of the recorded songs, but the poor sound quality makes it difficult to assign these to the published songs with certainty. This paper summarises the outcomes of a research project funded by the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives between January and March 2022, which aimed to reconnect Naga communities with Hutton’s recordings to elucidate the content and performance context of the recordings, and to provide digital copies of the collection with enhanced documentation to the Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology (Gurgaon) and the Highland Institute (Kohima). Fieldwork participants appreciated the opportunity to hear Hutton’s recordings, which they considered important historical documentation of Naga traditional music. Yet, most listeners struggled to identify the recorded songs, although a few were able to name and even perform some of them. The project concluded with an exhibition at the Highland Institute that featured Hutton’s recordings and more recent examples of Naga traditional music. Overall, few listeners were aware of the existence of Hutton’s recordings when we conducted our fieldwork in February 2022, although the recordings have been available online on the website of the Pitt Rivers Museum since 2013. Thus, I argue that initiatives of making historical sound recordings accessible online need to be supported by actions on the ground in countries of origin, to facilitate community engagement with audio collections uploaded to the web.

Muuseumikogude potentsiaali kaardistamine päritolu-uuringute kaudu

This article focuses on the possibilities created through provenance research in the museum. Setting out current interest in provenance research against the backdrop of antiracist and decolonial movements such as Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall, the article focuses specifically on the history of research in ethnographic museums shaped by legislative acts such as NAGPRA in the USA, critical thinking about representational practices in anthropology, and collaborative work with originating communities. Using the Siberian collection acquired by Maria Czaplicka in 1914 and held at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford as a case study, I argue that broad-ranging and open-ended provenance research akin to anthropological fieldwork allows to uncover different narratives pertaining to museum objects. It enables to understand why and how the objects were brought to the museum, the kinds of epistemic realities they have helped to build but also to attend to different cultural meanings and realities embedded in these objects. A close historical study of the Czaplicka collection has added to our understanding of the nature of ethnographic research in the early 20th century, brought to attention immoral acquisition of grave goods and human remains during the Siberian expedition but also highlighted close relations between ethnographers and their Indigenous hosts. Contemporary fieldwork in Siberia and creative engagement with the collection have further broadened the understanding of the origin of these objects in relation to Evenki worldview and lived experience. Through such nuanced research, a “thick description” emerges that enables a museum interpretation that can speak to the emergence of drifts and fault lines in the society, bring different worldviews into one space, and within that space address topics of global concern.

Investigating the organic residues from the corrosion of a caccabus from Pompeii

A caccabus (a wide-mouthed copper alloy vessel used for cooking) was amongst the objects lent by the Parco Archeologico di Pompeii and exhibited at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (UK) in 2019. Kept in storage since excavation in the 1950′s, the object’s preparation for display presented an opportunity to investigate organic residues that may be trapped in its corrosion - a material currently commonly removed by conservators during the cleaning process. We adopted a multi-analytical approach to corrosion characterization comprised of Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and mass spectrometry techniques, including proteomics. Within the copper hydroxide carbonate matrices were markers for milk, beef and the fermentation of cereals, supporting the proposed use of the vessel in the past. The practice of removing corrosion from objects for display is widespread, leading to a significant level of information about life and culture being lost. Our research not only extends organic residue analysis in archaeology but has the potential to change current conservation practice.

The Museum as Object of Display: Experiencing the Ashmolean

Conventionally, museums are most often considered as a series of objects displayed, but I argue that the museum itself should be seen, first and foremost, as the object on display. The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, built at the high tide of British Imperialism, is a very interesting case study. Interested in its engagement with its own past, I do not seek to investigate the actions it takes as an institution, for instance, as regards to the politics of repatriation. Instead, I want to explore the whole experience it facilitates as an object in its own right. This experience begins with the architecture of the facade, with its plural references to both classical and eastern features. Proceeding inside, I analyze the phenomenological experience shaped by the interior architecture. From there, I will look at the objects, and how they fit into the museum’s larger message. All the while, I will consider the bigger contexts, such as colonialism, in which this experience is immersed. My investigation will show how museums, such as the Ashmolean, can provide a holistic and multi-sensory experience, one that can hold within it tensions and transcend contradictions.

A “Wise Measuring Banner” or the Artillery “Chetverogranetz” (Four-Sided Meter Stick): Revisiting the Attribution of “Peter I’s Half-Arshin” from the State Hermitage Collections

The article offers a substantiated attribution of “Peter I’s half-arshin”, a foursided ruler from the State Hermitage collections (accessory number ТХ-1252). This attribution is grounded in its comparison with similar items from the collections of the Lomonosov Museum (Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of Russian Academy of Sciences, the Kunstkamera), the History of Sciences Museum in Oxford, and the National Museum of American History. Several written historical sources such as the 17th – early 18th century artillery manuals (M. O. Rodigaevskii’s “Statute of Martial, Cannon, and Other Matters”, T. Brink’s “Description of Artillery…”, and “The newest theory and practice of artillery” by E. Braun) and a reputable publication “The Construction and Principle Uses of Mathematical Instruments”) by a French instrument-maker N. Bion also support the proposed attribution. The erroneous initial attribution is explained by the uniqueness of the item that has no equals: neither in the published catalogues of various collections nor in the electronic Russian State Catalogue of Museum Collections. The paper also reviews the basic principles of making and using this instrument and its significance during the period from the second third of the 16th century through the first half of the 19th century. It was mainly intended for military use. The possibility for calculating the cannon shot range and trajectory, the distance-to-target, the shooting power, and the amount of powder necessary for a particular combat task often, to a large extent, determined the level of artillery development. Therefore, the success of the battles depended on such instruments and on the skills of they use.

Identifying Medieval Fragments in Three Musical Instruments Made by Antonio Stradivari

This article identifies ten fragments, used as reinforcements in the sounding boxes of three instruments made by Antonio Stradivari (Cremona, ca. 1648–1737), which are now kept in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (the ‘Cipriani Potter’ violin, 1683, and the ‘Hill’ guitar, 1688) and the musée de la Musique in Paris (the ‘Vuillaume’ guitar). The fragments appear to come from a single book of hours, made in Italy no later than the mid-fifteenth century. This identification allows the documentation of the use of parchment fragments in the making process of Stradivari. The authors discuss what the common origin of parchment fragments found in three distinct instruments implies for the authenticity and relative dating of their making. Finally, this study sheds light on the potential of documenting reused parchment fragments, which are widely present in many string musical instruments produced in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.

Wenceslas Coberghers Grundrissentwurf für die siebeneckige Marienwallfahrtskirche in Scherpenheuvel/Montaigu

Abstract This paper examines an unusual heptagonal floor plan drawing held by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The drawing is identified as an early design plan (ca. 1606) for the heptagonal Marian Pilgrimage church at Scherpenheuvel/Montaigu (Belgium). After describing the drawing in detail and attributing it to Wenzeslas Cobergher, the paper interprets the ground plan against the backdrop of the design process of the domed Sanctuary as well as in the broader context of Scherpenheuvel’s transformation into a symbolic and programmatic Pilgrimage ensemble by the sovereigns of the Spanish Netherlands, Archduke Albert VII of Austria and Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia. With a view to the Italian architectural tradition, considerations are given to the ground plan’s geometry, its elevation and symbolic architectural motifs, before it is compared with the realized ground plan of the Pilgrimage church in Scherpenheuvel.

Decolonising the Curatorial Process

Orson Nava’s Decolonising the Curatorial Process is a forty-minute documentary which invites us to a participate in a special, temporal and intellectual journey, engaging with dialogical practice and reflection on what decolonising art institutions and spaces entails. From the Museum of London Docklands in London, to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, and Cape Peninsula University, the film becomes a meeting point for researchers and practitioners committed to radically transforming museums and higher education institutions, as well as the collaboration between these to. Beyond this insightful call to dismantle long-established Eurocentric curatorial practice, Nava’s film and research statement evidence the dialogical and inter-disciplinary methodologies that participate in what is still an ongoing struggle. Such a process is enhanced by the integration of voices of two peer reviewers, who celebrate the visibility to the decolonial thinking process led by researchers of African heritage.

Los dibujos de Sevilla de Cecilia Montgomery (1792-1879) en su viaje por la península ibérica

El Museo Ashmolean de Oxford, Inglaterra, conserva dieciocho dibujos de arquitectura de Andalucía y siete de Portugal realizados por Cecilia Montgomery (1792-1879) durante un viaje por la península ibérica entre mayo y junio de 1838. Estas fechas tan tempranas posiblemente hacen de Montgomery la primera mujer artista-viajera de la que tenemos constancia en el sur de España. Sus dibujos son algo más que simples recuerdos, más bien son representaciones de temas arquitectónicos. Su importancia histórica se puede adscribir a su singularidad; algunos de ellos son las representaciones más antiguas de ciertos encuadres mientras que otros son los únicos documentos existentes de edificios desaparecidos. Debe destacarse la figura de su marido y compañero de viaje, George Augustus Montgomery (1793-1842), que rehabilitó la iglesia donde era rector con esculturas adquiridas en este viaje. Las ideas del matrimonio Montgomery, tanto arquitectónicas como religiosas, servirán en este artículo para interpretar dichos dibujos.

Frances LarsonUndreamed Shores: The Hidden Heroines of British Anthropology

BOOKS IN REVIEW Frances Larson Undreamed Shores:The Hidden Heroines of British Anthropology London. Granta. 2020. 352 pages. FRANCES LARSON IS AN anthropologist at the University of Durham and the author of three books on anthropologists, collectors of artifacts, and beheadings. Undreamed Shores is her latest addition to this list. It traces the lives of Britain’s first female anthropologists—a group of five women, all educated at Oxford in the early twentieth century. However diverse their backgrounds, all were confronted with the severe limitations to which English society subjugated their gender. While their brothers, male friends, and colleagues were privately educated and able to pursue university degrees and research positions, “most women were educated [to] become good wives and mothers.” We not only learn of the lives of these extraordinary women, the cultures they studied, and the times they lived in, but we also see the field of anthropology establish and define itself, as Larson’s heroines struggle to survive in a world both hostile to their gender and their field. To Larson, the slowly growing emancipation of women in England in the early twentieth century did not merely coincide with the birth of modern anthropology but was a necessary contribution to it. A woman’s perspective is an essential part to the study of any society and particularly valuable in the study of subjects such as the societal role of women, family structures, childbirth, and sexuality. In the context of field research specifically, female researchers may be perceived as a lesser threat than their male counterparts and may thus be more tolerated by certain subject groups. And finally, Larson’s anthropologists were less likely than some of their male colleagues to put tales of their own bravery before the content of their work. Their books were “modest and attentive . True to their data and its limitations . . . their work was respected without being celebrated.” Katherine Routledge, born 1866, sailed to Easter Island to study its Polynesian culture and past. Winifred Blackman, born 1872, lived with agricultural peasants of Upper Egypt for nineteen seasons. Barbara Freire-Marreco, born 1879, lived and worked in the pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona. Maria Czaplicka, born 1884, was a Polish citizen and traveled northern Siberia throughout the winter. Lastly, Beatrice Blackwood, born 1889, traveled to New Guinea twice and, for decades, held a leading role with the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, contributing more than two thousand objects herself. Braving all odds, these women made their way to Oxford at a time when there were only three university posts in anthroAugust 21 and September 19, 1939, in the Politeama Theater in his newfound hometown , coinciding with the outbreak of the war. Despite the imminent demise of world peace, Heinz is enveloped by a fatal infatuation with tomboy Sonja Graf, real-life German American chess master and dominatrix . Unlike the chess players who traveled to Buenos Aires, Heinz is not part of the “intellectual fraternity” that comes with being a master or connoisseur (or, more precisely victim) of the game; his preferred cerebral enigma is the enchanting woman who antagonizes him so profusely, refusing outright his attempts at courtship. Ultimately, Heinz gives up on the idea of love and takes on a new, more arduous task. In his long-winded soliloquies scattered throughout otherwise mundane diary entries, Heinz argues that the political boundaries between nations are “unnatural ,” similar to the checkered squares on the chessboard that were introduced to the blank expanse of the board in the tenth century. Heinz eventually transitions from a reserved pacifist into a full-blown anarchist. Determined to prevent the Germans from corrupting the most classical of ancient pastimes, Heinz, with the help of the Palestinian , French, and Polish teams, attempts to thwart the only remaining conquerable enterprise for the Germans: the world of chess. Ariel Magnus uses the sixty-four-square board as a canvas for the German domination of the “checkerboard of Europe”; the international chess competition that the Germans so effortlessly conquer symbolizes their eventual belligerent conquest of Europe. Chess with my Grandfather is laden with what seem to be long-winded bouts of inspiration that can be likened to a diver’s parlous journey into...

The philosophers and the crucibles. New data on the 17th–18th century remains from the Old Ashmolean laboratory, Oxford

The differentiation between alchemy and chemistry as separate disciplines is relatively recent. As such, an understanding of the early history of chemistry requires an approach to actual laboratory activities that avoids anachronistic biases and generalisations. This paper presents the analytical study of an assemblage of early modern chemical vessels used in the laboratory of the Old Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the first university institution in Britain where chemistry was taught. We explore the nature and range of laboratory activities conducted there in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, at a time when Europe witnessed the rise of the new experimental sciences and major technological advancements. The assemblage comprises crucibles of different types, ceramic distillation equipment and other containers. The analyses of residues found within them indicate that the laboratory’s experimental programme engaged some of the most relevant technological as well as philosophical quests of the time, including the production/working of new types of glass and the distillation of zinc. The results reinforce the idea of a tightly connected chemical community operating in early modern Oxford and beyond, with members including both natural philosophers and industrial entrepreneurs, and whose aims straddled the investigation of nature as well as the pursuit of profit. Moreover, this archaeological study makes visible the epistemic exchanges between the more scholarly and the more artisanal worlds, thus making a relevant contribution to the history of early modern science.

The ethnographic archive and the poetics of history: Revisiting Godfrey Lienhardt’s archive

ABSTRACT This article develops an approach for working with vernacular texts in ethnographic archives. It examines Dinka song texts collected in (South) Sudan by the anthropologist Godfrey Lienhardt (between 1947 and 1951), now archived at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. Songs were central to developing Lienhardt’s ethnographic analysis; they are also an exciting and unique record of popular and artistic expression at the time of his research. The songs he transcribed offer perspectives on life under colonial rule that are often occluded in the documentary and ethnographic record (including Lienhardt’s own writing). In this article, I examine a selection of songs, showing that to be understood today they must be seen as both a product of Lienhardt’s data collecting practices and works of art in their own right. It is possible to usefully recontextualize these songs by triangulating between Lienhardt’s published work, his unpublished field notes and other academic studies in South Sudanese history and anthropology. Importantly, these songs must be treated as verbal arts – and read with an appreciation of their aesthetic and stylistic qualities. Their meaning and significance is not always straightforward, in fact they are often deliberately opaque. Any interpretation must embrace these ‘difficult’ aspects.

Культура эллинистической Бактрии и находки надписей в конце XX – начала XXI в.

The article is dedicated to the development of the modern researches of inscriptions which were found on the territory of Hellenistic Bactria (IV–I centuries BC). The emphasis is made on the texts discovered on clay and stone, as well as parchments. There are two important points in this work: the tax receipt on the parchment from the collection of Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the contract with the Scythian detachment on the parchment, which was found in the Balkh region. The article tells about the dedication of Iromois to Oxus from Takhti-Sangin. The stone inscriptions from Kandahar take the important place: the first tells on behalf of some “son of Aristonax”, the second is the stele of a man named Sophytos son of Naratos. The written dedication to the goddess Hestia by Heliodotus discovered about Kuliab plays the main role. These documents illustrate a lot of cultural realities of Hellenistic Bactria. They touch upon the problems, connected with religion, education and literature and social, economic and political spheres.

George Graham and the Orrery

Abstract In his 1734 discourse on the planetarium, John Theophilus Desaguliers was careful to point out that the invention of the orrery had been incorrectly attributed to John Rowley and that it was George Graham who had made the first truthful working model of the Earth and Moon’s motion around the Sun. Two such models by Graham survive in Museum collections: one at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago and the other at the History of Science Museum in Oxford, UK. This paper assesses the differences between the two instruments and the physical evidence contained within to test out the unfounded assertion made by Henry C. King that the Adler instrument is the prototype and the Oxford orrery a developed commercial product.

Comparison of historical violins by non-destructive MRI depth profiling

The back plates of master violins at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Museo del Violino in Cremona were analyzed by portable magnetic resonance imaging with the NMR-MOUSE in terms of depth profiles. Distributions of transverse NMR relaxation times were recorded versus depth at points of small curvature across the violin back plates providing insight into the physical states of the materials. Their analysis reveals the effects of surface treatments, wood treatment, and possible wood degradation. While conclusions about the type of treatment cannot be drawn, the profiles report surprising differences between the violins from the museums in Oxford and Cremona.

Lady scientist, technological treasures and the making of a discipline

Abstract The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford is known for its abundant ethnographic and archaeological collections and typological displays. Conceived as an educational museum serving the purposes of evolutionist anthropology and its comparative practice, the collections grew considerably in size and geographical scope during Henry Balfour’s curatorship (1893–1939). The museum’s Siberian collection is almost entirely made up of objects from a single expedition to the Yenisei valley in 1914–15, led by a recent graduate from the University of Oxford Diploma in Anthropology, Maria Antonina Czaplicka (1884–1921). This article follows the journey of the making of this collection, starting from the context of the newly established diploma, and moving through international networks of museum professionals, into the Illimpei tundra, and back to what is now its institutional home in Oxford. Examining the practices of an early professionally trained anthropologist, the article offers novel insights into the complex entanglement of museum collecting and early twentieth-century anthropological teaching and research.

Beytülmakdis'in Osmanlı Anıtları: Creswell'in 1919-1920 Arşiv Fotoğraf Koleksiyonunun İncelenmesi

يتناول هذا البحث آثار بيت المقدس العثمانية: دراسة لمجموعة صور أرشيفية لكريزويل من سنة 1919 إلى سنة 1920، من خلال دراسة لمجموعة صور أرشيفية لمجموعة خاصة بالباحثة قام بتصويرها عالم الآثار الإسلامية الإنجليزي "كيبيل أرتشيبلد كاميرون كريزويل"(Keppel Archibald Cameron Creswell) أو "كريزيول" الذي قام بزيارة المشرق الإسلامي في الفترة من سنة 1919 إلى سنة 1920، تلتها عدة زيارات إلى المشرق الإسلامي حتى سنة 1924 قبل أن يستقر بمصر، ويبدأ عمله بها في معهد الآثار الإسلامية ولجنة حفظ الآثار العربية، ومن ثم البدء في عمل مؤلفاته وأبحاثه ومقالاته عن الآثار الإسلامية في العالم الإسلامي. كان "كريزويل" ضابطا في الجيش الإنجليزي عندما بدأ رحلته من لندن اتجاه المشرق العربي، فكانت أولى محطة رحلته الطويلة في مجال الآثار الإسلامية في القدس أثناء الاحتلال البريطاني بعد الحرب العالمية الأولى، ثم انتقل إلى مصر سنة 1917، ثم سافر إلى سوريا سنة 1919 بعد انتهاء الحرب العالمية الأولى؛ حيث قام كريزويل بتصوير مدن سوريا التي كان يُطلق عليها اسم سوريا الكبرى، وتضم سوريا ووادي الأردن وعَمان والعراق، تلتها عدة زيارات للقدس قام فيها بتصوير وتوثيق أثار بيت المقدس وفلسطين، مخلفا وراءه مجموعة كبيرة من هذه الصور التاريخية. تحتفظ الباحثة بجزء كبير من صور بيت المقدس وآثاره التي قام "كريزويل" بتصويرها في مجموعتها الخاصة الشخصية، وهي نسخة أصلية قام كريزويل بطباعتها في لندن في الغالب، وأعاد طباعتها فيما بعد طوال فترة حياته، وحتى وفاته سنة 1974 وأهدى نسخة منها للجامعة الأمريكية بالقاهرة The American University in Cairo، أما اللوحات الزجاجية أو النيجاتيف الخاص بالصور فإنها موجودة في متحف الأشموليان Ashmolean Museum بأكسفورد بإنجلترا. ينقسم هذا البحث إلى ثلاثة أقسام: القسم الأول: خاص بالأحداث التاريخية ببلاد المشرق العربي في أوائل القرن العشرين، ويتناول هذا القسم المؤامرات التي تمت على بلاد المشرق العربي، والخلفيات التاريخية التي أدت إلى قيام الحرب العالمية الأولى ثم انتهائها، وأثر ذلك على بلاد المشرق العربي والدولة العثمانية. أما القسم الثاني: فهو خاص برحلة "كريزويل" إلى المشرق العربي وبيت المقدس وتوثيقه لبعض الآثار الموجودة به. والقسم الثالث فيه عرض لبعض الآثار التي يرجع تاريخها للعصر العثماني من خلال الصور التي قام بتصويرها كريزويل، ونبذة تاريخية ومعمارية عن كل أثر.

A Collection of Tapestry Cartoons at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford

L’Ashmolean Museum d’Oxford possède vingt-et-un fragments de cartons de tapisseries exécutés en grandeur réelle. Ils ont été remis à l’université d’Oxford en 1846 comme partie d’un ensemble plus vaste, suivant une offre publique d’acquisition de dessins italiens issus de la collection du portraitiste britannique Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830). Lawrence avait constitué une collection inégalée de dessins de maîtres anciens, y compris le plus vaste et le plus important ensemble de dessins de Raphaël au monde, aujourd’hui conservé à l’Ashmolean. Parmi ces vingt-et-un fragments, dix-huit sont des études préparatoires pour les douze tapisseries de la série Scuola Nuova au Vatican. Les fragments conservés à l’Ashmolean sont issus des cartons à taille réelle pour « Le massacre des Innocents », « L’adoration des bergers », « L’adoration des mages », « La présentation au temple », « La résurrection du Christ » et « L’ascension du Christ ». Trois fragments ne semblent toutefois pas relever de cette série. Ceux-ci ont été attribués par le passé à de nombreux artistes, y compris au peintre flamand Pieter de Kempeneer. Par le biais de cet exposé, nous approfondirons les questions d’attribution et de provenance de cet ensemble impressionnant de fragments. Ils seront présentés en parallèle à d’autres fragments de ces mêmes cartons, conservés notamment à Christ Church (université d’Oxford), aux National Galleries d’Écosse (Édimbourg), au British Museum et au Foundling Hospital (Londres).

‘Islamic Art Curation in Perspective: A Comparison with East Asian Models through the Case of the Leeum Samsung Museum’

With the development of a global museum culture since the eighties, called ‘curationism’ by David Balzer, the question of how to show ancient art both in newly founded institutions and in refurbished historic displays, is more than ever relevant. As much as contemporary art, artistic heritage participates in the new cultural discourse defining nations and communities, channelled through world-class museums and galleries. In that context, the Islamic artistic traditions gained tremendous visibility, as venues like the Museum of the Islamic Art in Doha or the Louvre’s new scenography in Paris, put these traditions on the forefront of the international stage. This article examines this museology in transcultural perspective, through a comparison between Islamic and Korean ceramics installations in the renovated Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and in the Leeum, in Seoul. The former privileges an archaeological narrative, the latter an aesthetic phenomenological approach. In revealing a qualitative asymmetry between the exhibitory practices in the areas of Islamic and East Asian art, this comparison allows for further discussion about museological issues such as the tension between didacticism and aesthetics, or the competitive relationship between architecture, design, and art in the displays’ space. Ultimately, the comparison posits East Asian experimentalism as a model from which to draw inspiration for reinventing the curation of Islamic art.