ARTH 498 Special Topics in the History of Art and Architecture: Decorative Arts & the Museum; From the “Chamber of Horrors” to the Period Room

• Tuesdays, 15:00-17:30
• EV-3-760
• Instructor: Dr. Marie-Ève Marchand

This seminar will critically appraise the collecting and curating of decorative arts and design within the museum context. The ways in which objects are displayed impact their significations and, in return, the exhibition strategies adopted by the institution offer a perspective on the cultural preoccupations and ideologies prevailing at the time the display was created. For instance, what does it mean – for both objects and visitors – to group together goods considered to be made upon “false principles of design” in a gallery designated as a “Chamber of Horrors”? What are the financial, pedagogical, and cultural motivations that lie behind the choice of ordering objects according to their material or according to their style? How do period settings and period rooms transform the ways in which visitors understand and experience objects? Whether it is a matter of using objets d’art to decorate picture galleries (as in Paris Palais du Luxembourg) or creating a museum exclusively dedicated to the “applied arts” (as in London South Kensington Museum, today the V&A), what do curatorial strategies tell us about the targeted publics, the mission of the institution, or the status granted to decorative arts and design? Through case studies of historical and current collections and displays, students will explore the societal, political, and epistemological issues underlying the display of decorative arts and design in European and North American museums since the late eighteenth century. Among other things, they will engage with decorative arts and design theories, the construction of canonical hierarchies in art history, and the values of these objects in today’s society.