Olympic Museum Research Articles

Objects, Olympics, and Femininity: Exploring the Impact of a 1924 Handheld Fan on Gender at the Games

Abstract On the second level of the Olympic Museum in Switzerland lives a handheld fan from the 1924 Paris Olympics featuring five sportswomen. The museum describes the fan as a souvenir from the Games and an advertisement for a French perfume company. However, this fan is much more than an advertisement or souvenir. Drawing upon new materialist theory, which envisions objects as lively, this article looks toward the ways the fan was productive in developing ideas around gender at the Olympics. Using an object biography, this research explores how the fan contributed to the New Woman femininity of the 1920s and currently produces a narrative of the International Olympic Committee as being a gender progressive organization. In so doing, it explores how an object that is often overlooked by many at the museum plays a powerful role in understandings of gender across the history of the Games.

Beijing becomes part of the Olympic Museum Network

Beijing becomes part of the Olympic Museum Network

Sport and Defection From Romania During the Cold War

During the Cold War in Eastern Europe, sport and politics became increasingly intertwined and complicated as the communist states, which strictly controlled the movement of its athletes, allowed athletes to travel abroad for competition, consequently opening opportunities for defection. In search of a better life, many athletes knowingly put themselves and their families at great risk, seeking opportunities to defect to other countries once outside their national borders. The purpose of this study is to analyze how the communist state in Romania acted to stop the defection of athletes from Romania, focusing on two defection situations which occurred at different points during the Cold War, one in 1956 and the second in 1981. Historical data for this study were retrieved from the National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives (CNSAS) in Romania, the archives at the Lausanne Olympic Museum in Switzerland, and the online archives from the National Archives of Australia (NAA).

Brief Report From the 3rd International Meeting on Bone Marrow Adiposity (BMA 2017).

The 3rd International Meeting on Bone Marrow Adiposity (BMA) was held at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, on August 31st and September 1st, 2017. This brief monograph summarizes the scientific contents of the meeting and highlights the birth of the International Bone Marrow Adiposity Society (BMAS).

Art as a Source for Research on the History of Sport in France: A Historiographical Study

After the exhibition on the sporting image of women in the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland in 2003, the CESH (European Committee for Sport History) organized a symposium in 2007 on sport and art. Many researchers from all over Europe attended it. But in France, few sports historians work with sport and art. The general purpose of this article is to provide a historiographical overview of the work of French sports historians who have attempted to include both art and sport in their research. After categorizing the studies, we focus on the materials and methodologies used by French researchers. The challenge of this paper is to show French historians that, when they incorporate art into their study, they will be able to characterize the evolution of sport differently and, in doing so, bring forth new issues worthy of study. We will also present an inventory of as-yet-untapped art sources for sport in France.

Decoding Olympic History in a Painting by Charles de Coubertin

When Pierre de Coubertin died in 1937, he left an impressive amount of writings, which have enabled international sport historians to research his modern Olympic Games to this day. Besides the written sources on Olympic history, other artefacts play a minor role in the research of sport historians; visual sources such as artworks, in particular, have been overlooked and consequently are not used to their full potential. This observation does not seem to be important unless Pierre de Coubertin’s artistic family background is taken into account. The fact that his father, Charles de Coubertin (1822–1908), had been a painter sheds new light on visual sources and makes it necessary to take a more detailed look at them. This paper concentrates on one of Charles de Coubertin’s paintings, which is exhibited in the Olympic Museum in Lausanne. Drawing on Olympic history documents and art historical sources, the painting is decoded according to an art history method. Beyond that, artefacts created by the artist were discovered in the archives of the descendants of the Coubertin family. The combination of these sources evidences that Charles de Coubertin was a close observer of his son’s ideas and witnessed developments in Olympic history.

스포츠와 예술의 결합가능성에 대한 고찰 : 소마미술관을 중심으로

근대 올림픽 창시자인 쿠베르탱은 고대 올림픽의 현대적 부활을 꿈꾸며 문화예술이 올림픽운동의 큰 축으로 자리매김하길 원했다. 이에 근대 올림픽 초창기의 문화프로그램은 스포츠경기와 마찬가지로 예술경연 형태로 진행되었다. 하지만 1956년 멜버른 올림픽부터 경연이 아닌 문화축제, 전시회, 이벤트 등의 형태로 그 명맥을 유지하고 있다. 단순히 개최도시와 국가의 문화예술을 홍보하는데 활용되고 있으며 올림픽대회의 구색을 맞추는 수단으로 역할이 크게 축소되었다. 이런 맥락에서 소마미술관의 지난 10여년 간 행보에 주목할 필요가 있다. 소마미술관은 1988년 서울올림픽의 문화적 성과를 보존하고 올림픽정신을 계승, 발전시키기 위하여 지난 2004년 개관하였으나 스포츠와 예술계 양쪽의 기대에 부응하지는 못하고 있다.BR 따라서 본 연구는 IOC 올림픽 문화프로그램과 소마미술관의 역사적 배경을 살펴보고, 소마미술관의 역할과 활동을 중심으로 한 사례분석을 통해 스포츠와 예술의 조화로운 결합을 저해하는 원인을 분석한다. 아울러, 소마미술관이 ‘올림픽’미술관으로서 정체성을 강화하고 올림픽운동에 기여할 수 있는 방안을 제시하고자 한다.

The Official Memory of Seoul Olympic Represented in Seoul Olympic Museum

The Official Memory of Seoul Olympic Represented in Seoul Olympic Museum

Development of the Olympic Museum in the light of the centennial anniversary of Olympism in Serbia

The 2010 centennial celebration of the Olympic Movement in Serbia was the reason for re-raising the issue of setting up a permanent Olympic Museum exhibition and also reconsidering the legacy exhibits related to the history of Serbian sports. This paper provides an analysis of the development of the Belgrade Olympic Museum since setting up of the first collection in 1947 at the old DIF (State Institute of Physical Culture), through formation of a permanent exhibition at the Faculty of Sport and Physical Education in 1979, on to the last exhibition in London during the 2012 Olympics. Moreover, it highlights the problem of constantly increasing collection deposits, as well as the methods for its long-term solution. Special attention is given to the promotion of the Olympic Museum through the presentation of exhibitions in-house and abroad, as well as the possibility for their presentation to a broad audience through the concept of new museology.

Our Games! The Pan-Arab Games (1953–1965)

This paper is the academic result of research conducted by the Qatar Olympic & Sports Museum into the history of the Arab Games in preparation for The Arab Games Exhibition which took place in Doha, Qatar from October 5 until December 23, 2011. This paper aims to understand the establishment of the Arab Games and their role as Regional Games during the Pan-Arab movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Analysing the historical context of the first four Arab Games (Alexandria 1953, Beirut 1957, Casablanca 1961 and Egypt 1965), the paper follows the hypothesis that the first Arab Games strengthened the bonds of Arab identity and created a representation of an imagined community.

Virtual Reality in the Digital Olympic Museum

This paper presents virtual reality in digital Olympic museum using animation and supporting cross-media information retrieval. The visitors use an avatar to navigate the DOM. DOM is a large-scale distributed 3D virtual environment for demonstrating the Olympics' history, culture and highlights.

Postscript: History as anthropology

Postscript: History as anthropology

The Human Factor

Introduction: This paper analyzes the ways in which the International Olympic Committee (IOC) confronted and made critical policy decisions based on highly technical scientific and medical knowledge, in the period leading up to and including the 1960s. Methods: This paper utilizes the historical method to examine the topics of science and medicine within the Olympic Movement. Additionally, it brings an external and analytical perspective to a question that has thus far been examined either from an intestine approach or in an extensively descriptive manner. Research is drawn from primary sources such as scientific and medical reports from the 1960s, press reports about athletics and science, and the archives of the IOC (including reports of the nascent Medical Commission and correspondence among members of the Commission and the IOC). The 1960s were a crucial time for the IOC; particularly in the way that this group comes to understand the enormous amount of scientific information that became critical to the conduct of elite sport in that decade. Results: Prior to the 1960s, the IOC rarely had to deal with matters of a scientific or medical nature. When necessary, FIMS was consulted in these matters. In the 1960s, however, the IOC was forced to hastily confront complex scientific and medical information and struggled to create a process to assist in understanding altitude physiology, drug testing and gender verification. The composition and influence of the IOC Medical Commission at its inception continues to influence the Commission more than 30 years later. Discussion: The IOC continues to be confronted with critical decisions based on highly technical scientific and medical knowledge. Over the past 30 years the Medical Commission of the IOC has emerged as the vehicle through which this information is analyzed by the IOC. A better understanding of how certain institutions within the elite sports world were created can help us to understand the institution and its operation today. Recent historical research seems to suggest that the IOC was slow in responding to the doping issue in the past. The organization of the IOC was, in large part, responsible for any tardiness. Scientific issues that emerged in the 1960s are still the focus of debate today. There is a belief that the athletes, who “by an accident of geography” are born, grow up and train at a high altitude, are predisposed to success in distance events in track and field. The problem of doping in sport has yet to be eliminated. The more sophisticated the testing procedures become, the savvier some athletes and trainers become in evading those tests. It is not only the money that has entered the previously amateur Olympics that pushes some athletes to take performance enhancing drugs, the fame associated with an Olympic medal is also a motivating factor. The IOC decided, perhaps because of social (not just scientific or medical) pressure, to end the test for gender at the 2000 Games in Sydney (unless accusations were made about a specific athlete). Acknowledgements: Research for this project was funded, in part, by the Postgraduate Research Grant Programme, 1999, of the IOC Olympic Studies Center and the Olympic Museum.

Combining art, culture and sport in an Olympic museum

The Olympic Museum in Lausanne is an institution that not only has a past and a present but is also developing. It is presented here to Museum readers by its director, several times capped for the national distance and middle‐distance running team and manager of the Lausanne 20‐kilometre race from 1982 to 1989.

The Olympic Museum of Benin: doing what it can with what it has

Heat, humidity, lack oj money, etc., are just a few of the obstacles facing any museum‐creating initiative in sub‐Saharan Africa. They were certainly there right on cue for the creation of the Olympic Museum of Benin. Its director, a former footballer and handballer and at present head of the education and documentation department of Benin's National Olympic Academy, relates the adventure with all its ups and downs.

The Olympic Museum

The Olympic Museum