Lépinay Art of Memories

Curating at the Hermitage
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-0-231-54956-1
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 100 Seiten

Once the home of Catherine the Great’s private art collection, Russia’s State Hermitage Museum became the largest museum in the Soviet Union and, since the collapse of the USSR, one of the most active museums in the world. The Hermitage is a global model for the collection and preservation of fine art, deeply shaped by its need to protect itself and its holdings from the world beyond its gates. In Art of Memories, Vincent Antonin Lépinay documents the Hermitage’s curatorial practices in an innovative consideration of the museum as a cultural laboratory.

Lépinay analyzes the tensions between the museum as a space of exploration of the collections and as a culture heavily invested in self-protection from the outside world. During a time when traveling abroad was rare, a generation of art historians produced a culture of confined scholarship premised on their proximity to the holdings of a museum enclave. As the Hermitage has become increasingly present on the world museum scene, its culture of secrecy and orality has endured. Lépinay analyzes the ethos of Hermitage curators and scholars over the transition from Soviet to post-Soviet museum cultures, considering the mobility of art, documentation of the collection, and the transformation of expertise. Based on Lépinay’s extraordinary access to the Hermitage and the scholars who work there, Art of Memories opens the door of one of the world’s great museums to reveal how art history is made. It is an essential study for readers interested in the role that outside forces play in culture, organizations, and the production of knowledge.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lépinay, Vincent Antonin

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Kunstsammlung, Museen, Ausstellungen
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface: Experimenting with the Hermitage
Introduction: The Hermitage, a Cultural Laboratory
1. Moving Objects
Interlude 1: Art History and the Hermitage Before World War II
2. Documenting the Museum
3. Art History from the Collections Up
Interlude 2: Mobility at the Hermitage
4. The Nostalgic Modesty of Hermitage Restorers
5. Guides: Taking Science Down the Galleries
6. Spaces and Surprises: Technologies of Vision for a Long Winter
Conclusion: Secreting Memories
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Lépinay Vincent Antonin :

Vincent-Antonin Lépinay is a professor in the Department of Sociology and at the Médialab at Sciences Po in Paris. He is the author of Codes of Finance (2011) and coauthor with Brunco Latour of The Science of Passionate Interests (2009). He previously taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was the director of the Science and Technology Studies Center at the European University in Saint-Petersburg. He has a PhD in anthropology from École des Mines de Paris and a PhD in sociology from Columbia University.Vincent Antonin Lépinay is associate professor in the Department of Sociology and the Médialab at Sciences Po Paris. He is the author of Codes of Finance: Engineering Derivatives in a Global Bank (2011) as well as coauthor with Bruno Latour of The Science of Passionate Interests: An Introduction to Gabriel Tarde’s Economic Anthropology (2009) and with Mario Biagioli of From Russia with Code: Programming Migrations in Post-Soviet Times (2019).