Public Gifts Research Articles

Rethinking performativity: ethnographic conceptualism

ABSTRACT Ethnographic conceptualism takes its cue from conceptual art and uses artistic interventions as an anthropological research tool. The term ‘ethnographic conceptualism’ was coined to sum up the method of the exhibition project Gifts to Soviet Leaders (Kremlin Museum, Moscow 2006) as simultaneously a reflection on the vast and complex economy of public gifts to heads of Soviet state, a distinctly post-Soviet political and cultural artefact, and as a tool for ethnography of post-socialism. This article explores ethnographic conceptualism’s contribution to performativity theory. I look at how it makes visible the tension between what such projects perform and describe. In doing so, I use ethnographic conceptualism as a vantage point to revisit the foundational distinction of performativity theory between the constative and performative statements (Austin). Drawing in this artistic and research method, I redefine the performative, not as a domain or a type of utterance that is distinct from the constative, but as an act of drawing this distinction.

Memory, Materiality, and Provenance in Dio Chrysostom's “Rhodian Oration”

In the late first century CE, probably under the rule of the Roman Emperor Titus, the Greek Bithynian Sophist Dio Chrysostom traveled to the city of Rhodes to scold its citizens for their treatment of statues. These were not religious statues, nor were they exemplary works of art. They were certainly not the marble statues commissioned by wealthy individuals for private display. In what would be known as his “Rhodian Oration,” Dio interceded on behalf of honorific portrait statues, erected by the city to honor those who had provided public gifts or services. This exchange of gift and honor is now referred to as euergetism (good works) or benefactions—a system of finance and governance whereby individuals subsidized public functions (such as religious festivals) and the construction of public facilities (such as the baths) or provided other gifts and services to the city. According to Dio, Rhodes was reusing honorific portrait statues—authorizing artisans to chisel out the names of those previously honored and reinscribe the statues' bases with the names of new honorees. As Dio argues, the city was, effectively, plundering its own statues.

Between Text and Context: Schumann, Liszt, and the Reception of Dedications

Although marginalized in modern editions, dedications printed before the twentieth century dominated title pages with their size and elaborate ornamentation. Examining specifically the reciprocal dedications between Robert Schumann and Franz Liszt, this study argues that such prominent paratexts functioned in the mid-nineteenth-century marketplace simultaneously as advertisements for the works involved, as allusions to composer biography, and as public gifts. Contemporary reviews, letters, biographies, and similar dedications provide the evidence for this consideration of the ways in which a peripheral element of the published score can affect the reception and dissemination of the music itself.

Public Gifts and Political Identities: Sir Richard Acland, Common Wealth, and the Moral Politics of Land Ownership in the 1940s

In recent years there has emerged a fresh interpretation of popular politics in the 1940s which challenges earlier arguments on the significance of Wartime movements in transforming political relationships within British society. One important reference

For "The Honour and Welfare of the City": London's Gift to King Charles II on His Coming into His Kingdom, May 1660

Sometimes the account of a single small episode, especially when seen in conjunction with the great, dramatic, and eminently notable events of which it was itself a minor part, can be highly revealing. In the early days of May 1660, when Englishmen were looking forward to the restoration of King Charles II, the Common Council of London voted to send the king a gift of money, a public mark and manifestation of the city's hopeful confidence in him and in the prospect of monarchy restored. The very fact of the gift itself tells something about politics and finance in the 1660 City of London; the difficulties involved in raising the money, the questions posed, and the protests made by those called upon to contribute tell more. The episode reveals something about the city's Lord Mayor, Common Council, gilds and companies, and the giving of public gifts. And it provides a short, sharp glimpse into what Londoners, or at least those Londoners who had to do with presenting the gift, or with paying for it, really thought about the king's return. When at last Charles II returned to England late in May 1660 he was met by his subjects with all but universal joy. Only the most devoted of republicans, and they were few, did not look with hope and expectation to the restoration of the crown. Certainly no Englishmen were more enthusiastic than the Londoners, who cheered as the king and his two brothers rode into the city on May 29th, his thirtieth birthday. Some four weeks before this, on the first day of May 1660, John, Lord Mordaunt and Sir John Grenville had presented to the Lord Mayor of London, Thomas Alleyn, the Aldermen, and the Common Council a letter from Charles II together with a copy of the king's Declaration from Breda. Charles had high hopes and his subjects high expectations that monarchy would soon

Wealth and Munificence in Roman Africa

This paper utilises evidence for the size of public gifts in Roman Africa collected in a previous article to make a series of deductions about the classes from which the gifts came and about the gifts themselves. Because the questions asked here are for the most part different from those considered in the earlier paper, a reorganisation of the material has been necessary, and a table of African donations of known amount is given at the end of the article (pp. 173–5). The sample has been confined as far as possible to material from the period between the accession of Trajan and the death of Gordian III (A.D. 98–244), and gifts clearly belonging to other periods have been omitted.The topics discussed are, firstly, the distribution of wealth among the monied class; the conclusions are based on observations about the background and nature of Roman munificence, as well as on the tabulation of gift-sizes. Internal evidence suggests that it is, in most cases, legitimate to make rough comparisons between gifts from different points in the period without practical compensation for the effects of inflation. The second part of the paper contains estimates of the total number of donors in the period discussed; the frequency of donation among the decurial class (i.e. the members of the town-councils); the total sum subscribed in the form of public gifts in Africa within the period; and the fluctuations in the amount given from reign to reign. The series of estimates depends critically upon assessing the rate of inscription–survival with as much accuracy as possible, and this subject has been discussed in a separate Appendix (pp. 176–7).

Public Gifts: Trusts and Trusteeships—The Value, Extent and Flexibility of Fiduciary Purposes and Powers

Public Gifts: Trusts and Trusteeships—The Value, Extent and Flexibility of Fiduciary Purposes and Powers

Public Gifts

Public Gifts