G3 Class 1.1

Jul 2

Thinking about Museums

Our classes meet for 2 hours; I plan to cover several distinct topics in each class—usually two topics in total. For convenience, these topics are hidden when this page is first loaded; click on the + to unfold them. Prior to class, make sure to open, read, and respond to ALL items labelled as “Class Prep”; items labelled as “In Class” are presented here only so you can find them later in the semester. Note that each Class Prep section has its own HW assignment; you should complete BOTH Class Prep sections.

For the “Museum Reflection,” due in two weeks, you will visit the British Museum. So I want to focus in our first class on the cultural function of that institution. Established in 1753 as a cabinet of natural curiosities (fossils, preserved specimens, and the like), the museum became a repository for art and cultural artifacts beginning in the early 1800s, as British victory in the Napoleonic wars brought to London a trove of objects from ancient Egypt and Greece. The collection grew enormously over the next two hundred years. Today the vast collection of the British Museum stands as testament to Britain’s imperial might from 1800-1950.

The two “Class Prep” sections, below, offer contrasting answers to the question, “What is the cultural function of a museum?” The first gives a roundly positive answer; the second a far more negative account. Your task in the Museum Reflection assignment will be to reflect on these contrasting perspectives, and perhaps give an answer all your own. Today’s HW starts you on the process of that reflection—be sure to do both sections marked “Class Prep.”

Class Prep: Museum Encounters

Poets and Museum Artworks

The popular movie series, Night at the Museum, imagines displays coming to life after the doors close and the lights go off. This silly premise works, I suspect, because it draws upon something we already believe to be true: that museums are more than just storehouses of dusty relics, that they are staging-grounds where the visitor encounters the “Other”—whether in the form of a long-dead creature, a rare beetle, or a foreign culture.

Reading: as witnesses to this phenomenon, I call to the stand four poets. Each writes in response to a museum artifact, employing ekphrasis to set the artwork before the reader’s eye and (sometimes) apostrophe and prosopopoeia to engage it in conversation:

  • Percy Bysshe Shelley “Ozymandias,” 1817 (link)
  • John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” 1818 (link)
  • W.H. Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts,” 1938 (link)
  • George the Poet, “The Benin bronze,” 2015 (link)

Writing: Respond to ONE of the following prompts. Keep your response short, posting as a reply under the appropriate heading in the comments section:

  1. Highlight a moment in one of these poems where the object responds to inquiry in an unexpected way, surprising the poet—or teaching the audience something new.
  2. All four poems dramatize the poet’s encounter with the past. Focusing on one or two of them, reflect on what they teach us about history and/or the passage of time.
Class Prep: Debating Museums

Museums and the Legacy of Imperialism

The Parthenon Marbles were transported to Britain over the course of a decade beginning in 1801 under the direction of Lord Elgin, Britain’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. The Parthenon had lain in ruins for over a century, many of the sculptures from its marble frieze fallen to the ground after the building was used to store gunpowder and then struck by a shell during a war. Elgin claimed to have received permission for the dig from local Ottoman officials, and his ownership was ratified by Parliament when it purchased them for the Crown, designating the British Museum as trustee on the condition that the collection be displayed as the “Elgin Marbles.”

The presence of the marbles in London has been a matter of international debate since 1983, when the Greek parliament formally requested their return. Pressure intensified in 2009, when Greece completed construction of an on-site museum, and again in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics in London. As detailed in a NYTimes article, “The debate has only deepened in recent years as the actions of old empires have come under new scrutiny, and restitution battles have come to challenge the foundations of Western museums” (link). Some of these battles involve ancient artifacts like the Rosetta Stone, which Egypt in 2003 requested to be returned. Others involve ritual objects taken from living cultures, as for example the Benin Bronzes.

Viewing: some famous acquisitions to the British Museum during the nineteenth century.

Reading: recent NYTimes coverage of museums and the legacy of 19th century imperialism.

Writing: Respond to ONE of the following prompts. Keep your response short, posting as a reply under the appropriate heading in the comments section:

  1. What do the four images included above suggest about public enthusiasm toward archaeology back in the nineteenth century? To put it another way, what emotions do these images evoke: wonder? national pride? something else? In your response, focus our attention on particular details in ONE or at most TWO of the images.
  2. Click over to the British Museum excursion (top right) and use the embedded links to examine some of the artifacts you’ll have a chance to see on your visit. Focusing on one artifact in particular, why is it important for objects like this one to be on public display? What positive cultural function do museums serve in today’s society?
  3. The articles linked above all challenge the claim of museums to being the ideal repository of cultural artifacts. Citing one article in particular, paraphrase the critique being levied against museums.
In Class: Contemporary Debate Regarding the Elgin Marbles

Surprisingly, shipping the Parthenon Marbles to London was controversial at the time. This was due, in no small part, to the instant popularity of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, in which the Romantic poet Byron reflected on his travels in around the Mediterranean, especially Greece. In the second canto of that 1815 poem, Byron described the ruins of the Parthenon and condemned Elgin as a barbarian pillager. Other Romantic poets disagreed. In 1817 Felicia Hemans responded to Byron’s work with a poem in a similar style and meter, but arguing that the marbles were better off in British hands. And in the same year John Keats wrote an appreciation of the “Elgin Marbles” after making a visit to see them at the British Museum.

Optional Reading:

  • George Gordon Byron, selections from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, 1815 (link)
  • Felicia Hemans, selections from Modern Greece, 1817 (link)
  • John Keats, “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles,” 1817 (link)

Show/Hide Museum Encounters HW
Show/Hide Debating Museums HW

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