Introductory description

The module addresses the significance of setting, context, presentation and audience for Renaissance/Early Modern works of art – both today and in the past. In recent years, museum and exhibition curators have become increasingly engaged in the display of Renaissance/Early Modern objects and works of art in ways that echo practices of display that can be reconstructed within the Renaissance/Early Modern period (vis-à-vis lighting, eye-level, ensembles of objects and material that echo documented groupings and spatial arrangements). This is a fraught issue within current curatorial practice, as it opens central questions around authenticity, illusion, appropriation, power and the role of conservation. Students on this course will consider the evidence for display within the historical period, and how modern museum practice seeks to evoke or replicate arrangements that have been reconstructed through academic and museum-based research. The ethics of reconstructing lost spaces, exhibiting appropriated objects and fragmentary originals will be analysed, together with the challenges modern displays pose to traditional taxonomies and divisions between ‘high’ and ‘low’, ‘fine’ and ‘decorative’, ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’, and ‘gendered’ artefacts.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Introduction
Domestic contexts
Devotional and sacred contexts
Courtly contexts
The scholar's study, cabinets of curiosities and the origins of the museum
Renaissance/Early Modern collectors and practices of material appropriation
The formation of national collections
Displaying the Renaissance/Early Modern in the twentieth century
Displaying domesticity in the modern museum
Displaying making in the modern museum
Displaying ‘ethnographic’ artefacts in the modern museum

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Command a knowledge of key elements of art production, consumption and display in Renaissance/Early Modern Europe
• Demonstrate understanding of the social, political and economic significance of art display practices in the period 1400-1700
• Display an understanding of key conceptual and theoretical frameworks within which the collecting and display of works of art have been discussed by art and cultural historians
• Demonstrate an ability to interpret differing modes of and approaches to displaying historical objects within current museum practice
• Present an argument, initiate and sustain group discussion through intelligent questioning and debate at an appropriate level
• Ability to undertake research and to write up the results in the form of a well-structured argument at an appropriate level
• Familiarity with essential ICT skills
• Ability to collaborate effectively with others
• Show understanding of diverse viewpoints
• Ability to find, select, organize and synthesize evidence
• Ability to formulate a sustained argument
• Think conceptually and independently at an appropriate level
• Sophisticated visual analysis
• Bibliographical skills at an appropriate level
• Critical analysis of cultural artefacts in their context
• Ability to select and respond to particular methodological approaches when dealing with material and visual evidence

Indicative reading list

• Tim Barringer, Colonialism and the object: Empire, material culture and the museum (Routledge, 1998)
• Daniela Bleichmar and Peter Mancall (eds.), Collecting Across Cultures. Material Exchanges in the Early Modern Atlantic World (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011)
• Constance Classen (ed.), The Book of Touch (Berg, 2002)
• Surekha Davies, Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human (Cambridge University Press, 2016)
• Richard Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1300-1600 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993)
• Ivan Karp and Steven. D. Levine (eds.), Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991)
• Martin Kemp, Behind the Picture. Art and Evidence in the Italian Renaissance (Yale University Press, 1997)
• Michelle O’Malley and Evelyn Welch (eds.), The Material Renaissance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007) [esp. chs. 2-5]
• Luke Syson and Dora Thornton, Objects of Virtue: Art in Renaissance Italy (British Museum Publications, 2001)
• Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Flora Dennis (eds.), At Home in Renaissance Italy, (V&A Publications, 2006)

Subject specific skills

• Command a knowledge of key elements of art production, consumption and display in Renaissance/Early Modern Europe
• Demonstrate understanding of the social, political and economic significance of art display practices in the period 1400-1700
• Display an understanding of key conceptual and theoretical frameworks within which the collecting and display of works of art have been discussed by art and cultural historians
• Demonstrate an ability to interpret differing modes of and approaches to displaying historical objects within current museum practice
• critical analysis of cultural artefacts in their context
• ability to select and respond to particular methodological approaches when dealing with material and visual evidence

Transferable skills

• present an argument, initiate and sustain group discussion through intelligent questioning and debate at an appropriate level
• ability to undertake research and to write up the results in the form of a well-structured argument at an appropriate level
• familiarity with essential ICT skills
• ability to collaborate effectively with others
• Show understanding of diverse viewpoints
• ability to find, select, organize and synthesize evidence
• ability to formulate a sustained argument
• think conceptually and independently at an appropriate level
• bibliographical skills at an appropriate level