Museum Pieces Research Articles

New Perceptions and Representation in the Museum. The case of the Museu particular from the Perspective of Professionals in the Cultural Sector

The study analyzes and examines the Museu particular, project of 2021 that set out to turn everyday objects into museum pieces, thus making us appreciate more the heritage around us while acknowledging the role it plays in our lives. The analysis used a methodological model of evaluation with participative strategies. Semi-structured interviews with a range of professionals from the cultural heritage and museum sector provided opinions and feedback on the project. Consequently, it has been possible to establish the characteristics of the project, highlight its successes and identify areas for improvement in its aim to fully reach its target audience. Furthermore, at a time when the role of museums is in transition, this project has studied the notion of self-representation in exhibitions as well as how the digital environment can act as a space for creation, didactics, education and exhibition for cultural institutions.

An intelligent climate monitoring system for hygrothermal virtual measurement in closed buildings using Internet-of-things and artificial hydrocarbon networks

Studies analyzing indoor thermal environments comprising temperature and humidity may be insufficient when obtaining data from sensors, which may be susceptible to inaccurate or failed information from internal and external factors. Therefore, this study proposes an intelligent climate monitoring using a supervised learning method for virtual hygrothermal measurement in enclosed buildings used to predict temperature and relative humidity when a sensor failure is detected. The methodology comprises the data collection from a wireless sensor network, the building of the learning model for predicting the dynamics of environmental variables, and the implementation of a sensor failure detection model. We use an artificial hydrocarbon network as the learning model for their simplicity and effectiveness under uncertain and noisy data. The experiments use data acquired in two settings: (1) a laboratory office and (2) a museum storage room. The first scenario has multiple workstations, and the staff turns on or off the air conditioning depending on the feeling of comfort, generating an uncontrolled environment for the variables of interest. The second scenario has controlled temperature and humidity to ensure the conservation conditions of the museum pieces. Both scenarios used 12 sensors that acquired data for one month, providing an average of 58,300 values for each variable. Results of the proposed methodology provide 95% of accuracy in terms of sensor failure detection and identification, and less than 0.22% of tolerance variability in temperature and humidity after sensor accommodation in both scenarios.

Mõõtuandev trükis talutoolidest / Notable publication about country chairs

The exhibition “Four Feet on the Ground. The Estonian Country Chair” was opened in the gallery of the Estonian National Museum on 23 February 2023. The exhibition’s catalogue, titled “Estonian Country Chairs”, was presented by the Estonian National Museum’s wood conservators Mariliis Vaks and Indrek Tirrul, and the exhibition’s curator Liisi Jääts on 1 March. The voluminous and richly illustrated book helps to give the enthusiast a closer look at the background of the making and use of our simpler farmhouse furniture. The more than 70 chairs presented in the book come mainly from the collections of the Estonian National Museum, which houses the largest collection of country chairs in Estonia. The described chairs date from the late 18th century until the 1940s, when home-made items began to be largely replaced by factory furniture. Country chairs were made locally and from the most suitable material, which is why many of the museum pieces are still in good condition a hundred or even two hundred years later. The catalogue also features stories of the more prominent regional chair makers, such as those behind the manufacture of round-backed resort chairs in Saaremaa, which began around the year 1880. The book has become well known among ethnography and crafts enthusiasts, both for its tasteful and measured design, including its inspiring freehand drawings, and for the richness of its content, and the diversity of objects, details and manufacturing techniques presented. In addition, the precisely inch-thick binding with its sturdy paperback covers can be used as a workbench support, a carpenter’s square, and perhaps occasionally even as a measuring tool.

To Wear or Not to Wear? The Women Who Dared to Parade Réne Lalique’s Jewellery

Since 1895, when René Lalique (1860-1945) first exhibited his jewellery in Paris, some of his creations were perceived as eccentric museum pieces and considered unwearable by some critics. More than a century later, the same question still stands about these jewels: were they wearable or not? Although they frequently resemble works of art that should be displayed in a museum, these pieces were actually made to be worn, but not by just anyone. In this sense, the aim of our essay is to reflect upon the wearers of these jewels, namely the women who dared to display them on their apparel. By categorising them in separate groups, we intend to understand who wore Lalique’s jewellery and what connection they had with their pieces. This will allow us to better understand the importance of the wearer in the reading and study of jewellery.

“Acaricié las cosas”

Abstract After her father’s death, the poetic subject in Luz Pichel’s Galician-language Casa pechada (Closed Home, 2006) returns from the city to clear the things in her house in a small Galician village. However, these things do not conform to any sense of social, emotional, or material permanence. The decay of closed-down houses and abandoned farm tools speaks to and reproduces the imprint of rural extractivism, symbolic violence, and ecological precarization on the Galician countryside. The act of naming can determine what things are and the emotions they awaken: utensils or trash, repurposed tools or ruins, personal souvenirs or museum pieces. However, the rural, at times impoverished, at times gentrified, may lack names for its materials. Pichel’s self-translation Cativa en su lughar (Cativa in Her Place, 2013) gets this point across by using familiar Castrapo rather than Spanish: a pidgin romance variation that belongs to no normative language that it is closely related to (Spanish, Galician, or Portuguese) but traverses them all. Phonetic aspects, like accent and phonemes (the “gheada”), resist incorporation to any standardized, state-sponsored language, and in turn, the names that may care for / curate rural things rely on paronomastic associations, identifications, and oppositions across languages. The article claims that in Cativa, signs and names may define the monetary value, the purpose, and the substance of things, but language’s material embodiment also supports and mobilizes their emotional and political meanings.

La Cantatrice Chauve (The Bald Soprano); La Leçon (The Lesson); Les Chaises (The Chairs)

La Cantatrice Chauve (The Bald Soprano); La Leçon (The Lesson); Les Chaises (The Chairs)

Museums and Anthropology in the Age of Engagement By Christina F. Kreps, New York:Routledge, 2020

Museum AnthropologyEarly View BOOK REVIEW Museums and Anthropology in the Age of Engagement By Christina F. Kreps, New York:Routledge, 2020 Scarlett Engle, Corresponding Author Scarlett Engle [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0003-1791-9147 University of Colorado Boulder Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author Scarlett Engle, Corresponding Author Scarlett Engle caitrin.eng[email protected] orcid.org/0000-0003-1791-9147 University of Colorado Boulder Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author First published: 03 May 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/muan.12273Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. REFERENCES Ames, Michael. 1992. Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes: the Anthropology of Museums. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Brown, Alison, and Laura Peers. 2013. “ The Blackfoot Shirts Project: ‘Our Ancestors Have Come to Visit.’” In The International Handbooks of Museum Studies, edited by Sharon Macdonald and Helen Rees Leahy, 1– 21. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Karp, Ivan, Corinne Kratz, Lynn Szwaja, and Tomas Ybarra-Frausto. 2006. Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kreps, Christina F. 2020. Museums and Anthropology in the Age of Engagement. New York: Routledge, 2020. Krmpotich, Cara, and Laura Peers. 2014. This Is Our Life: Haida Material Heritage and Changing Museum. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Lonetree, Amy. 2013. Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Marsh, Diana. 2019. Extinct Monsters to Deep Time: Conflict, Compromise, and the Making of Smithsonian's Fossil Halls. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Morphy, Howard. 2019. Museums, Infinity and the Culture of Protocols: Ethnographic Collections and Source Communities. London: Routledge. Phillips, Ruth B. 2011. Museum Pieces: Toward the Indigenization of Canadian Museums. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. Shannon, Jennifer A. 2014. Our Lives: Collaboration, Native Voice, and the Making of the National Museum of the American Indian. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press. Sleeper-Smith, Susan. 2009. Contesting Knowledge: Museums and Indigenous Perspectives. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue ReferencesRelatedInformation

Interior design in the renovation, modernization and aesthetic editing of the Museum of History and Ethnography in Ungheni

The present paper deals with a scientific analysis of the interior design within the licensing process concerned with the renovation, modernization and aesthetic editing of the Museum of History and Ethnography in Ungheni, carried out in 2022. In the context, the historical course of formation and evolution of the museum is described, prominent personalities who contributed to the development of the museum, museum pieces and categories of exhibits in the museum's possession. All these have been used in value through the vision of interior design which is researched through the historical, ethnographic and artistic prism. Through the research, the role and responsibility of interior design in the process of consolidation and valorization of the national cultural heritage is highlighted. The given study presents the result of the interior design project, concerned with the correspondence or synchronization of the new modern implementations with the ethnographic data inherited from the historical period.

Przypadkowa kolekcja starożytności. Muzeum Narodowew Krakowie i jego darczyńcy

The information on collectors responsible for the museum collections is dominated by those who have donated the largest number of or the most spectacular works of art. The collection of ancient art in the National Museum in Krakow (MNK) is mostly known for the museum pieces from the Princes Czartoryski Museum, which had been established by Prince Władysław Czartoryski in 1876, three years before the National Museum in Krakow was opened. It overshadows the collections of the National Museum in Krakow, which were created accidentally thanks to numerous people who, for personal reasons, often wished to donate or sell sometimes just one or several ancient items to this institution. The article aims at commemorating several people and discussing modest gifts, ones that were the basis for creating the collection of the MNK ancient art after having been collected for several dozen years. These museum pieces, although they are not the most representative ones of a given culture, are a significant testament to the development of craft that completes Władysław Czartoryski’s collection and the permanent exhibition in the MNK’s Arsenal.

Charles Macklin and the Theatres of London

Charles Macklin and the Theatres of London

‘The word’s challenging opposite’: the visual language of Lorcan Walshe’s The Artefacts Project and Museum Pieces

The work of Dublin-based painter Lorcan Walshe is particularly concerned with the relationship between inscription in its broadest sense and the visual image. His two related series, The Artefacts Project (2007) and Museum Pieces (2008), engage with Ireland’s precolonial past in search of personal artistic, as well as broader cultural, roots during a period when national narratives were being challenged and reconfigured as a result of an increasingly diverse Irish society. The Artefacts Project and Museum Pieces reflect on whether the art of the precolonial past can still be read in a meaningful way in a postcolonial present in which Ireland finds itself part of a globalized world. Reaching across the chasm of history, Walshe’s works emphasize that our reading of the past must always involve an act of translation in order to retain significance in the present: the meaning of the artefact is created anew as it is translated not only from one historical moment into another, but also from one artistic medium into another. This article argues that Walshe’s The Artefacts Project and Museum Pieces question the hierarchical division between writing and the visual image by reading the artefacts of Ireland’s past as visual texts. In this context, drawing and painting themselves emerge as forms of inscription that are part of the process of reading and acts of translation. As a result, the artefact becomes a palimpsest of translations and inscriptions.

ANALYSIS OF TRANSFER AND APPLICATION OF THE CONCEPTUAL DIMENSIONS OF THE HISTORICAL COSTUME FROM THE XIX CENTURY IN THE PRACTICE OF THE FASHION DESIGNERS OF WOMEN'S FASHION IN THE BEGINNING OF THE XXI CENTURY – YEAR 2004 (FALL-WINTER COLLECTIONS)

Like any phenomenon and objectified human activity, the implication of the historical costume of the19th century in the fashion of the new century is not accidental, but has its roots and protoforms. That is why it isnecessary to examine these protoforms very briefly, and then to successfully explain what is happening on theirbasis. The framework in which the given study is placed has the following parameters – historically it concerns thefashion of the 19th century, taking into account the revolutionary influence of the French Bourgeois Revolution, thevisual expression of the fashionable French women's suit, as well as the male business English suit is taken intoaccount. On the other hand, the most significant and successful fashion collections are examined in terms ofapplying the implication and conceptual dimensions of the historical costume of the 19th century in the practice ofwomen's fashion designers at the beginning of the 21st century. The purpose of the study is most concentrated inshowing the transfer of the successful historical fashion decisions of the costume from the 19th century, which are„noticed again” in the fashion costume at the beginning and the first decade of the 21st century – specifically in thistext 2004, with the key terms of implication and conceptual dimensions of 19th and 21st century fashion costume inthe most successful designer collections. As a researcher, my attention is drawn to the potential contained in theimplication of fashion costume, which is increasingly penetrating the artistic culture of designing and producingfashion clothes and accessories. On the other hand, the wide consumption and strong influence of fashion on humanlife impose the need not only for a philosophical or sociological analysis of the new phenomena of culture, but alsofor a comprehensive and in-depth scientific-theoretical study of the implication in fashion, covered by postmodernistideas. The question arises: what are the reasons for individual achievements and finds of one era to be preserved andcarefully transferred to other eras, even at the risk of the re-contextualization of the image originally created andembodied in clothing. Today, no one wears historical costumes just to protect themselves from the elements. Thehistorical costume and the fashion and artistic trends it embodies make it an expensive museum piece. One learnsfrom the taste of the old masters of clothing, from the combination of fabrics, colors and ornaments, from the ideasthat the modern person (whether professional or ordinary consumer) can draw from the found cultural artifacts in thefield of children's, women's fashion or the men's business suit.

ANALYSIS OF TRANSFER AND APPLICATION OF THE CONCEPTUAL DIMENSIONS OF THE HISTORICAL COSTUME FROM THE XIX CENTURY IN THE PRACTICE OF THE FASHION DESIGNERS OF WOMEN'S FASHION IN THE BEGINNING OF THE XXI CENTURY – YEAR 2004 (SPRING-SUMMER COLLECTIONS)

Like any phenomenon and objectified human activity, the implication of the historical costume of the19th century in the fashion of the new century is not accidental, but has its roots and protoforms. That is why it isnecessary to examine these protoforms very briefly, and then to successfully explain what is happening on theirbasis. The framework in which the given study is placed has the following parameters – historically it concerns thefashion of the 19th century, taking into account the revolutionary influence of the French Bourgeois Revolution, thevisual expression of the fashionable French women's suit, as well as the male business English suit is taken intoaccount. On the other hand, the most significant and successful fashion collections are examined in terms ofapplying the implication and conceptual dimensions of the historical costume of the 19th century in the practice ofwomen's fashion designers at the beginning of the 21st century. The purpose of the study is most concentrated inshowing the transfer of the successful historical fashion decisions of the costume from the 19th century, which are„noticed again” in the fashion costume at the beginning and the first decade of the 21st century – specifically in thistext 2004, with the key terms of implication and conceptual dimensions of 19th and 21st century fashion costume inthe most successful designer collections. As a researcher, my attention is drawn to the potential contained in theimplication of fashion costume, which is increasingly penetrating the artistic culture of designing and producingfashion clothes and accessories. On the other hand, the wide consumption and strong influence of fashion on humanlife impose the need not only for a philosophical or sociological analysis of the new phenomena of culture, but alsofor a comprehensive and in-depth scientific-theoretical study of the implication in fashion, covered by postmodernistideas. The question arises: what are the reasons for individual achievements and finds of one era to be preserved andcarefully transferred to other eras, even at the risk of the re-contextualization of the image originally created andembodied in clothing. Today, no one wears historical costumes just to protect themselves from the elements. Thehistorical costume and the fashion and artistic trends it embodies make it an expensive museum piece. One learnsfrom the taste of the old masters of clothing, from the combination of fabrics, colors and ornaments, from the ideasthat the modern person (whether professional or ordinary consumer) can draw from the found cultural artifacts in thefield of children's, women's fashion or the men's business suit.

Museum Exhibitions of Fossil Specimens Into Commercial Products: Unexpected Outflow of 3D Models due to Unwritten Image Policies

Recent innovations and cost reductions in photogrammetry-based 3D modeling have enabled museum visitors to create 3D models based on photographs exhibited in galleries without breaking museum policies. While several museums make 3D museum data available on sharing platforms, museum visitors publish unofficial 3D data belonging to museum exhibits using a photogrammetry-based approach. This study shows that photogrammetry-based 3D models can be generated without breaking conventional photo policies (i.e., no use of flash and tripods) and that museum visitors can create commercial products based on these models. 3D models certainly enhance scientific value and promote broader and deeper interests in the natural sciences; however, the rights of owners of museum pieces are ambiguous with regard to the dissemination of unofficial data. This also makes information attributable to the original specimen unclear, which can potentially lead to revenue loss. We propose a set of best practices for museum photo policies covering the data use of visitor-generated 3D models of displayed objects.

William Stimpson and the Golden Age of American Natural History

This biography of Williams Stimpson is much more than the history of a zoologist of the nineteenth century. The author's decades of research have given us a volume that goes beyond the facts of Stimpson's life but also gives insight into life in the mid-1800s and the beginning of the major scientific communities of the United States.Stimpson's professional career only lasted about twenty years until his death from tuberculosis at forty. He was born in a fairly affluent family in New England, where he had the opportunity to receive a higher education. His father steered his education toward business, but Stimpson also took courses in Latin, which prepared him for his future career in science.Stimpson's career path was influenced by two great naturalists of the day: Augustus A. Gould, who provided Stimpson a copy of his Report on Invertebrata of Massachusetts at Stimpson's request and became a mentor until Gould's death, and Louis Agassiz, a leading naturalist who introduced Stimpson to offshore dredging for marine life. Stimpson converted his father's basement into an aquarium of sorts where he observed mollusks and their life cycle. The author notes that Stimpson was one of the first to create the right mix of plants and animals to form a self-regulating ecosystem in an aquarium.Stimpson first published his observations and discoveries at seventeen years of age and joined societies that exposed him to others in the scientific community. This led to a two-year apprenticeship with Agassiz. Stimpson learned much of his taxonomy and zoological practices from Agassiz, but found Agassiz had difficulty recognizing his former students as equals. Vasile explores the difficulties Stimpson had with his early mentor throughout the book.The author spends several chapters chronicling Stimpson's early adventures as a field naturalist on exploration vessels in the Pacific. He collected multiple specimens, made new discoveries, and published and edited journals. Stimpson became a defender of the American scientific community, which was often looked down upon as inferior by the more established European scientists.In the mid to late 1850s Stimpson found himself living in Washington, DC, working to classify the growing collections of the Smithsonian Institution. While in Washington, Stimpson became a founding member of a gentlemen's social club called the Megatherium Club. With the Civil War looming large in the nation's capital, Stimpson also struggled to publish a major volume on mollusks, which would have included many of his own illustrations.During the Civil War, Stimpson worked on classifying the invertebrates in Agassiz's museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and made his only trip to Europe. Stimpson also began courting Ann Louis Gordon, whom he married. Together, they had a son and later boy and girl twins. He spent his honeymoon doing field work in New Jersey.In 1865, Stimpson was hired to what he thought was a temporary assignment to replace his friend and colleague Robert Kennicott, the curator of the Chicago Academy of Sciences. He took the position while a pregnant Ann stayed behind in Maryland with her parents. Many of his former ties, especially with the Smithsonian, allowed him to greatly expand the specimens of the academy.In the final chapters, the author shows how the last few years of Stimpson's life brought many tragedies. First, a fire at the Smithsonian destroyed many of his unpublished papers and materials. Both his friend, Robert Kennicott, and his early mentor, Alexander Gould, passed away. A fire at the academy damaged many museum pieces and much of his unpublished book on mollusks. Finally, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 completely destroyed the building and contents of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, including what remained of Stimpson's material for the mollusk book. The following year, after many episodes of sickness, he died from tuberculosis.Ronald Scott Vasile has assembled a wonderful biography of William Stimpson that is both scholarly and an entertaining read. The book includes an appendix of Stimpson's taxonomic work, notes on each chapter, a bibliography, references, and other source material. The author has indexed the work both by subject and name. This book will be an excellent resource to anyone interested in Stimpson, his work, his contemporaries, and life in the mid to late 1800s.

Цвет в искусстве традиционного костюма коренных малочисленных народов Тюменского Севера (на примере анализа музейных экспонатов)

Research objective: The authors set a goal to analyze the color symbolics in the folk costume of indigenous ethnic groups of North (Nenets, Khanty and Mansi) of the Tyumen region on the example of authentic sources, museum pieces and compare it with the main functions of the Luscher personality color analysis, to reveal the “collective subconscious”, nature of ethnic groups, their mentality. Sources: The basis of the article was the works of many researchers in various fields of science and culture (I. Newton, I.V. von Goethe, M. Lomonosov, N. Volkov, V. Kandinsky, I. Itten, M.O. Surina, R.G. Gadiyeva, O.Yu. Evseeva, O.A. Bakiyeva and others). In the course of the color analysis of the traditional folk costume and the identification of the color mentality of the ethnic group, color diagnostics according to M. Luscher was used. Content: The research of color was associated with the cultural activities of the peoples of the North of the Khanty (Ostyaks), Nenets (Samoyeds) and Mansi (Voguls). The color system was examined in traditional folk costume, it was developed over many centuries and carried information about the views of the people about the world around, their psychological characteristics (national character) and mentality. The novelty of the research is the relation of color preference, which the masters used in the manufacture of traditional clothing, and psyche features of these ethnic groups. Considering the color concept of Max Luscher and its relation with the psychological characteristics of a person and ethnic group, we developed criteria of color analysis of products of cooperative creative thought of ethnic groups (traditional costume): dominant (fundamental colors), subdominant (color in ornamental symbols), tonic (color emphasis in details), which would correspond to the main functions of color diagnostics in order to determine the color mentality of each nation individually. The article analyzes the color symbolism in the costume of the northern, eastern and southern Khanty, Nenets, Mansi on museum pieces in Tyumen, Tobolsk, Khanty-Mansiysk. The analysis obtained was compared with Luscher's color diagnostics and the results were verified according to the characteristics of textbooks on ethnopsychology. All this proves the certain intention in choice of the color scheme in a traditional costume, as well as provide the opportunity to highlight the features of the art of folk costume in different northern ethnic groups. Conclusions: In general, the color designation in the ornament of the indigenous small peoples of the Tyumen North (Khanty, Mansi and Nenets) disclose information about the way of life, folk traditions, rituals, the world outlook of the people who nomadized, was engaged in reindeer herding, hunting, fishing, and also the nature of the ethnic group, color mentality. The distinctive character traits of the small indigenous people can be identified by analyzing the color codes in the clothes: red-activity, blue - restraint, green - modesty, love of nature, for his family, etc. In general, the color mentality reveals cultural traditions with elements of the Ob-Ugric archaic, which is in harmony with nature, in balance.

Johannes Scherr: Mediating Culture in the German Nineteenth Century by Andrew Cusack

Reviewed by: Johannes Scherr: Mediating Culture in the German Nineteenth Century by Andrew Cusack Osman Durrani Johannes Scherr: Mediating Culture in the German Nineteenth Century. By Andrew Cusack. Woodbridge: Camden House. 2021. 214 pp. £75. ISBN 978–1–64014–057–8. While researching the cultural historian Johannes Scherr (1817–1886), the author of the present volume was often asked why he had chosen such an obscure and now almost entirely forgotten person as the focus of his labours. The immediate answer was that Scherr was widely read and translated and continuously republished during the nineteenth-century Gründerzeit and beyond, when his books outsold those of Gustav Freytag and Jacob Burckhardt. His versatility is another factor: besides monumental surveys of past epochs, he found time to write fiction, biographies, gender studies (Frauenwelt, 1880), reviews, translations, and essays on many topical subjects. In his early days he served as a regional deputy in the doomed Württemberg Assembly of 1848–49, narrowly escaping a sentence of fifteen years’ hard labour for his support of democracy. His status as a refugee in Switzerland, where he eventually obtained a teaching post at the Zurich Polytechnic, marks him out as a ‘liminal’ man, a permanent exile, whose unstable world-view may be linked to the experience of deracination. What was Scherr’s contribution to scholarship and what makes him interesting to today’s readers? On the first point, Andrew Cusack struggles to present him as a progressive spirit. It is evident that in common with Burckhardt and Nietzsche, Scherr refused to treat the past as a cosy collection of museum pieces, but there [End Page 137] the similarity ends, and the tub-thumping style in which he couched his robust, at times embarrassingly patriotic, views is hard to ignore. One example should suffice to indicate that any attempt at rehabilitation will be an uphill task: ‘Seitdem die jungdeutsche Französelei vorübergegangen [. . .] ist es uns mehr und mehr zum Bewußtsein gekommen, daß die Idee des Vaterlandes die Seele aller Kulturarbeit sein müsse’ (Allgemeine Geschichte der deutschen Literatur (1861), cited p. 100). While Cusack stresses Scherr’s ‘liminality’, it will be remembered that many of his contemporaries, including Ferdinand Freiligrath and Georg Herwegh, faced far greater challenges as victims and outcasts. Scherr’s trajectory was less dramatic than theirs. The man who started off as an icon of the Vormärz movement, promoting and translating George Sand, eventually opted for a measure of conformity in response to the clarion call of Bismarckian nationalism. Yet it would be simplistic to present him as no more than the barometer of a turbulent sociopolitical environment. Theodor Lessing identified his inconsistencies: Weltbürger beside Vaterlandfanatiker, Fortschrittsgläubiger and yet also Verzweiflungspessimist (p. 5). It is the exploration of these striking paradoxes that makes this a valuable study of a figure who, by Cusack’s own admission, was no more than a ‘personality of second rank’ (p. 55). Scherr’s bluster may have been the inevitable consequence of his compulsive productivity, derisively described as Vielschreiberei, a habit ingrained in him during his exigent years in Stuttgart. He suffered the consequences of having been raised in Württemberg, with the result that his literary style displays both ‘Ur-Swabian coarseness’ and archaisms and far-fetched analogies as favoured by the ‘Young Germans’ (p. 56). In addition to ‘programmatic wavering’ between nationalism and cosmopolitanism (p. 101), there are unresolved dissonances in his attempts to distinguish between ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ cultures, no less than in his thoughts on gender: while campaigning for women’s rights, he opposed the recruitment of female students. It is entirely appropriate that Cusack should leave us with several oxymoronic labels, ‘aristocratic democrat’, ‘world citizen and fanatical patriot’, ‘believer in progress and pessimist out of despair’ (pp. 134, 141), that invite further enquiry into a tantalizingly evasive figure whose influence, via the likes of Oswald Spengler, extends well into the twentieth century. Osman Durrani University of Kent Copyright © 2022 Modern Humanities Research Association

Methodist Christology: From the Wesleys to the Twenty-First Century

All too often Methodist theology can fall into one of two camps. On the one hand, it can become a scholastic (better still, encyclopaedic, in the unlovely sense of that word) engagement with the thought of the Wesleys—repeating them with an ever greater exactitude and believing that to do so is to fulfil the task of theology, speaking as if the gulf of nearly 300 years to the present did not exist and was of no importance. On the other hand, Methodist theology can act in such a manner as to believe that gulf so insurmountable (never mind the 1,700 years of theology preceding it) that we should proceed as if we were working always with a novum—reinventing the theological bicycle with engagements that owe more to creative writing than serious engagement with the theological traditions. This volume of serious historical, dogmatic, doctrinal, systematic, contextual, and constructive engagements is not only important, therefore, in terms of its discussion of Christology but also in moving Methodist theology in general beyond the unhelpful binarized forms it so often takes. Here, tradition and history are explored and taken seriously but neither viewed through the chilly light of scientific historicism, nor treated as a museum piece to be treasured and preserved at all costs. And the theological enterprises that follow engage in a manner that brings the tradition(s) to life in dialogue with other major theological movements, dealing formatively with the contours of Methodist thought on Christology in relation to a variety of figures, movements, contexts, and theologians. False dichotomies of the constructive or the systematic, the dogmatic or the creative, the historical or the theological are finally put to bed. This is a volume whose significance is far beyond the essays it contains on Christology.Vickers and Van Kuiken have assembled an excellent cast of (North American) authors to tackle questions relating to Christology. Identifying the centrality of Christology to the Christian faith (and Methodism more specifically) and the contested ground on which Christological dogmas sit, the essays are arranged into three sections: first, an historical discussion of the Wesleys, the early Methodists, and the nineteenth-century Methodist dogmaticians; second, a focus on the twentieth century and Methodist engagements with Christology in this century (albeit the choices of figures are a little narrow perhaps); and third, a series of essays on the future of Methodist Christologies, including discussion of womanist, feminist, Latina/o, and Christologies ‘after’ significant figures or movements.If I were to be (overly) critical, it might have been good to see some more biblical engagement, and to consider the significant contributions that have been made by Methodist scholars (perhaps dominantly this side of ‘the Pond’) to New Testament Christology: Morna Hooker, James Dunn, and C. K. Barrett all spring to mind. And, as is all too often the case (in our theology), the essays lacked much detail on the preceding context that leads to the Wesleys: chapters on the Reformation and on Patristic Christologies as context for the first section would have helped. But only so much can be done in any volume. And this one is a tremendous achievement of first-rate theological endeavour.

La tentación de la imagen: El hipertexto de la Nueva Crónica y Buen Gobierno de Guamán Poma de Ayala en el imaginario gráfico del Perú contemporáneo

Guamán Poma de Ayala’s Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno, even though unjustly disregarded by its early critics, has had a tremendous influence in Peruvian iconographic culture. From museum pieces and book covers to liquor bottles and bank advertisements, the style of the Nueva Corónica has become common currency in intellectual and public spaces, an immediately recognizable token for the diffuse idea of what is authentically Peruvian. This text sets out to explore the ample world of images explicitly or covertly inspired by Guamán Poma de Ayala’s text and artwork as well as analyze the distinct circumstances in which these processes of intertextuality occur. What elements of Guamán Poma’s images are kept or left out and why? What makes these instances of appropriation differ from each other? Using the intertextual model we set out to analyze the Nueva Corónica’s ever-growing hypertexts, their purpose and their motivations.

The growth of unproductive labour and the new crisis of management: the case of Australia

PurposeManagement history has long acknowledged the existence of unproductive labour. Despite becoming unfashionable in modern times, the growth of unproductive labour within the economic composition of Australia’s labour force, witnessed since the late 1980s, brings to the fore old debates with a modern resonance, debates as to how and when labour contributes to economic growth. Using Australia as a case study, this paper aims to explore the economic cost increasing rates of unproductive labour, typically associated with government-imposed regulation, may have upon an organisation, and more broadly society.Design/methodology/approachThis paper explores the theoretical frameworks developed by classical and neoclassical economists on the subject of productive and unproductive labour and uses key elements to explain the economic consequences of the current labour economy and regulatory environment that exists within modern Australia.FindingsIt is the growth of unproductive roles within the Australian economy since the late 1980s that contributes not only to the rising cost of employing domestically and the rising cost of living, but furthermore, to the fragility of Australia’s long-term economic security.Originality/valueAustralia’s economy is bound by chains of regulation. No longer does productivity fuel a growing economy, but rather, economies are powered by the rein of unproductive labour – labour that does not produce value but rather, consumes it. Unproductive labour is not a “dusty museum piece”. Rather, it is a defining characteristic of modern Australia, one that impacts immensely the cost of domestic business, and ultimately, society and the cost of living.