 Hello, everyone. Welcome. I'm just going to start with a few housekeeping announcements. So this session will last approximately 50 minutes and will be followed by the opportunity to ask questions. The session will end no later than 730 audience members can type questions using the q amp a function so this is the q amp a box not the chat box. The session will be recorded and will be made available later and closed captioning is available. So if you would like that please click the CC button on your screen. All right. Now, please welcome. I, on behalf of Lloyd and myself, the conveners to the last lecture in our course on Britain and the world in the Middle Ages image and reality. Of course, we're sad to see the the course come to a close but we're delighted this evening we're able to bring you of what promises to be a wonderful lecture on our final course theme museums. Our speaker this evening is Professor Richard Majeed from the Department of Art History at Ithaca College, where she teaches museum studies in fact African art and medieval art, and where she curates exhibitions at the hand worker gallery. Which brings together these three fields at the arts of Europe and Africa, and the history and study of museums, as well as sort of more broadly the reception the modern understanding of these of these arts up until today. And more than this I would say she really brings these areas into conversation with one another in ways that illuminate the study of all three. In particular, her recent article against primitivism, but also more broadly her analyses of exhibitions, and also permanent displays in American museums. And so she's the perfect person really to be speaking to us on this topic. Please do join me in welcoming Russian. Please go ahead. To the Paul Mellon Center to Jessica for that great generous introduction introduction, and to Lloyd for inviting me so thank you everybody for being here. Wherever the here is where you are and I'll share my screen now. Okay, so I'm going to be talking about perceptions of the Middle Ages that have been conceived in museums. I will mainly be focusing on France, although England comes into play at some points and if we have time towards the end introduce some new ways of curating exhibitions that deal with the Western Middle Ages. So here is going to locate how the Middle Ages come into being in a way in museums and so that begins in my story with these two paintings, which might be familiar to you. But essentially, the beginning of the Middle Ages in the modern consciousness is a kind of ending to a certain way of being and looking and the kind of opening to the rest of the world. So after you have a portrait of Louis the 16th. On the right you have a portrait by Reynolds of oh my, who was a person brought over to England. On one of the voyages of Captain Cook, and you know the ending of course is Louis the 16th, because it's the impending French Revolution, and the beginning is the opening up of the world. And then through trade and then through colonization, which animates our, our kind of understanding of the Middle Ages in the museum. So here you have a map of France and it's also really important to remember that the way that we have configured national boundaries today, we're not at all the way they were fixed. This is the beginning of the 18th century where we're starting the story. And so this is a map of France, of course with the crown on top that has loosely sort of indicated regions. And when we look at a map post revolutionary map of France, you see that you have the various provinces very very sort of clearly delineated here. And these provincial identities are a big part of how we think about medieval French art in the 19th century, and it's also a way in which curators thinkers, academics scholars have created ideas of centers and peripheries, and how certain parts of the Middle Ages were generalized in the 19th century and others get valorized. There's a clear more modern map for you. So we begin with the French Revolution, the overthrow not only of the king but also the church. And so that the kind of emblematic image that you have the left of the kings head severed is something that directly we witnessed in the churches of France as well, because this is a sort of intense period of iconoclasm, and we're looking at a daguerreotype of the Cathedral of Notre Dame of Paris. What you'll see, or notice is that in the gallery of kings, you have empty niches to these sculptures were destroyed during the French Revolution. You know, as a kind of way as a surrogate for kingship, a mistaken surrogate for kingship. These were Old Testament kings in the, in the Middle Ages but in the French Revolution, at that point, kingship was kingship. So now you can see them in various collections around the world. The one on the right is from the Art Institute in Chicago, and the cluster that you see in the center is at the Clooney Museum in Paris which is, I believe is reopening a new building very shortly. And so they are mounted as if on stakes in a kind of sanguine way. The destruction was documented in many ways and when you have an intense period of destruction, it frequently is accompanied by a simultaneous desire to recuperate that which has been destroyed. So what you see on the left here is one of the first official museum men, and that is Alexander Lenoir. He's in the center here in this X shaped heroic gesture, and trying to stop, which maybe never happened the destruction of the Royal tombs in the Abbey of Saint Denis, which is just outside of Paris. And so the destruction of the tomb of Saint Denis also represented by this painting here, which seemed to be a much more systematic destruction than the kind of frenzied state that we see on the left with this skull coming out from one of the tombs here. So Lenoir became a kind of proto medievalist, because he opened a museum and understanding that the state of the field right the state of the political climate at this time was not at all sympathetic to the to the medieval period because it had seemingly an influence of the two things that were most aboard the church combined with the state and the person of the king. So we see Lenoir here on the left and you see his museum which he very tactfully called the Museum of French monuments, and his desire was not to preserve for their aesthetic value, but really to show the progress of the French nation from a period of what he called a barbarity into the present enlightenment. And so in this gallery, which you can see is a kind of period room. You have vaults. This was installed in a convent across the sun from the Louvre actually very quite deliberately. And the medieval gallery was painted in this kind of liminal zone right where there is not light, not dark. And you have this kind of sense of beginnings and endings. And you have tomb sculptures, you have sculptures from churches, the front front entrances to churches all over. And you have, you know, lighting, which would have been very dim. It doesn't have any natural lighting so you really have this atmosphere, which exemplifies what he wrote he also created a catalog for his museum, and he thought that the Middle Ages and this was a period in which magic by which people terrified by superstition were kept in a perpetual state of submission and quote. And as you move through these galleries and what you see on the right here is progress, you're visualizing progress through the metaphor of light. And you move through the introduction of naturalism so you move from medieval art into a much more sort of supple approach to the body, much more sort of sympathetic to the aesthetic horizons of a early 19th century audience. And of course, spaces get increasingly light filled as you move through the museum. One museum that followed Lenmore's Museum was the original Clooney Museum, which was headed by a man named Alexander do summer art. And this was a historic building used to be the palace of the habits of Clooney the Burgundian abbey. And after Lenmore's Museum shot Alexander do summer art started collecting medieval art himself, but in a very different fashion, whereas one was the kind of proto nationalistic enterprise. This was much more of a kind of proto I would say ethnographic kind of space. And you don't have very many images of what his museum look like but here's a sense, and the, the museum for the Middle Ages, the gallery is on the left, and you'll see that he is not primarily concerned with what we would consider to be art. And in the kind of, you know, art art. He's really looking at all kinds of material culture from the Middle Ages, including knives forks, books, mirrors, things that are that are give us a sense will live life of a time period. And that's where you really see in this room here. And that also is accompanied by other rooms that celebrate different time periods. So this painting here is much later. His museum was given to the French state after his death in 1843 and so this painting is from 1867, showing the room that was that was dedicated to Francis the first, and even in his own lifetime. And his summer art was kind of made fun of because he collected everything right it's seemingly seemingly he did not have any kind of standard or hierarchy as to what he would mount in that museum. So you have a portrait of him on the left. And then on the right is a caricature of him made in his own time, which shows him cutting, you know, a Gothic object. And he was shown with a Gothic, a Gothic chair back there and then he has also of course like a chimney sweep, holding in his hands that that kind of indiscriminate sense of everything, belonging together. As you look into history. And the kind of work that I do is archival in French museums and so these are some of the other elements that elements were rather artifacts that were collected by do summer art. And this included everything that had no categorical home in Paris at the time so these were things that were being brought back from the from places like Oceania from Africa from the Americas shields, weapons, etc. It seems to me, he thought were akin to or are comparable to the types of objects that he was collecting from the Western Middle Ages. And that in fact is is has been made even more prominent through recent exhibitions and exhibitions continue to color and amplify not only the medieval past, but also but also the 19th century, kind of collecting artifacts. So this is an exhibition from a few years ago at the Metropolitan Museum of Art here in New York City, which do their provenance research, realize that this horn, this massive tusk is turned into a horn comes from the Congo which first made contact very early with the Portuguese in the 15th century, but this actually belonged to Alexander do summer art as the label shows us. And so he could possibly have conceived of this really very luxurious, finally carved object as something that, sorry, as something that was a luxury item even in its own time period he may have thought it originated from the Middle Ages, and we can see that in the unicorn tapestries that horns are carried for the hunt in the beginning of the hunt. And so it wasn't so far fetched for him to think that it was a medieval object. At the same time, as you have collecting, because objects are dislodged from their original context as a result of the revolution, you also have restoration. This is a moment of restoration ideologies and theories that are coming forth. And again on the left is the daguerreotype of the damaged building of Notre Dame. And on the right is the restoration by the Duke, one of one character who really defines the 19th century. His restoration is what is being what the restoration of Notre Dame today is also being modeled after so you can see now we look across the gallery, and it has been repopulated by those kings and so will do vision of this building is really what what we have been experiencing for most of our lives. And his inventions so there are some elements of what will do did architecturally speaking which are comparable approximate the original context of the building, and then there are complete inventions, for example, probably the most famous sculpture of Paris is not a medieval one, but it's one that was designed by will do you see on the left here is the gargoyles on the balustrade of Notre Dame Paris. It is also a time of increasing prominence and competition between nations, as, as sort of becomes really visualized in a, in a constant kind of a way in what can be imagined as these really sort of exciting spaces a new kind of architecture. The Crystal Palace of course, the site of the first world's fair and World's fairs were places where nations displayed not only works, you know, of their own enterprise technology, for example, art of their own past, and based on their own path so stained glass is what you see here. The interior of the Crystal Palace, here is a famous fountain. And then here you also see objects that are brought back from the colony so you'll have stupas coming from India coming from, coming from Angkor Wat, for example, all of the objects that are now under question under sort of the, the, the, the contest of the museum, right, were first displayed and collected in the 19th century and in places like this palace for World's Fair. You also have a desire to, to create a kind of canon to create objects from history that are worthy of seeing for all kinds of people and that's where the South Kensington Museum which most of you probably now know as the Victorian Albert Museum was also open for this reason and the most famous galleries in that museum, right, are the cast collections which thankfully we still have today a lot of museums have gotten rid of their cast collections. So the V&A has a robust dedication to their cast and you have a period photograph here on the left, showing the portal of Santiago de Compostela being assembled and then here it is this is a contemporary image with doors from Hildesheim, Celtic crosses, etc. And in comparison, right, bringing together a kind of first slide lecture, right, you can see things that would never have been seen before in reproduction in these galleries. And this, excuse me, was something very hilarious that I found in one of the catalogs from the V&A which is the assembled David plaster cast and then just as lower half taken before the whole sculpture has come together I understand the kind of constructed nature of making these collections and how many sort of decisions go into them. This is the Great Stupa, or this is the actual Great Stupa in Sanjay in India, and the cast was made on site but of course a British in India at this point in the 19th century, and also shown in the South Kensington Museum. Here you have an element from Emperor Upper's throne room on the floor, they're also taken from the actual monument itself. So you have the colonies and you have the Middle Ages and you have a kind of hierarchy being created of what is aesthetically valid and valuable in a comparative framework. And this is something that gives ire to our friend Ville Le Duc who wants to create a cast collection of French medieval art in dialogue with with the arts that are being introduced into Europe through the process of colonization. And so for the World's Fair of 1878, Ville Le Duc starts complaining about not having cast very early in the 1850s. But then he finally gets his wish and he devises a program for this museum which he calls a Museum of Comparative Sculpture, and that was intended for this place which no longer exists. That is the Trocadero Palace, which is on the Shia Hill, and it's was there crowning the sun made for the World's Fair of 1878, and these two massive arms housed two different museums that lasted for quite some time before the whole thing was raised in 1937. Here's a view so the Eiffel Tower came afterwards actually it's obviously still there and this is a view from across the sun, looking at the Trocadero when it was still there. This is, is something that is entirely contingent on, you know what is now known as the scramble for Africa the museums that that in that are installed in that palace. So you have the breaking up of the continent, according to the different European powers who controlled those regions. And so there is a direct relationship between the ethnographic museums that are being installed at this time in the late 19th century, and the objects that are brought back from the colonies. And so Britain of course has the Benin bronzes France has sculptures and artifacts from the places that it controlled and so on the left you have the regions, according to the European powers that that controlled them at that time. And that is very much a part of and in dialogue with this consolidation of French identity that is being brought together in Paris as well that's how I would like you to think about the Museum of comparative sculpture sort of bringing things to Paris. Whether that is from far away or from far away in French in the French landscape as well. So, here are two period photographs of the museums I just mentioned on the left is the Museum of ethnography, and on the right is the Museum of comparative sculpture so we'll do actually never he created the plans for these museums he was also involved in the museum of ethnography to become important for us in a minute. But he died actually before before these museums really came to fruition. And on the left, you'll see that, you know, there are lots of lots of innovations that happen in these early museum so the introduction of mannequins right to reinforce the concept of the primitive of close to nature. The sort of haphazard mingling of secular and sacred of weapons and ritual objects that's all happening here, as well, pedestals labels, all these things are are being innovated in these spaces. And then so that is on one side that's on this side of the trucker Darrell on this side of the trucker Darrell right across the way, right. This is this museum of comparative sculpture. And you see the opening gallery here, it is, he called it village do called it the hieratic gallery. And this was devoted to Romanesque sculpture. Romanesque is a time period that predates Gothic. It originates around the year 1000 to 1200 or so. What he did was create a create a list of the cast he wanted of the French Romanesque monuments in this gallery. And those were meant to be seen with Egyptian art and archaic Greek art, as well as Assyrian art. And you see that this is the great portal from days away the central portal of the Burgundian church, and that's this will become important for us in a second as well. But here you have fragmentation this is just the tympanum from a place called Mossack, right which has a big portal, and you're really kind of excerpting monuments things that you think are important about that monument in reproduction and then deploying them for purposes in these gallery spaces in all intents and purposes as the South Kensington Museum was also meant to instruct about the Middle Ages so this was also meant for artists to learn by looking at plaster cast because at this time people did not travel in the same kind of fashion that we do today, even though the railroad was gaining prominence. So here are the archival documents that show us what will do cat and visaged for this museum. And so the first room here, what he calls the hieratic periods has monuments listed, and then you also have the naturalistic room, which is devoted to Gothic and to Greek art so you don't have all of the elements that are associated with with what he called the populations with too much melanin, which I always thought was a very hilarious way of saying, not white. And these are in together you see the Romanesque room or the hieratic gallery on the left, and you see here now the gallery of Gothic, which has classical Greece as a comparison, because we'll do thought that Gothic was comparable to the greatest achievements of the classical world, and for him it was the pinnacle of Frenchness was Gothic sculpture and so you'll see that, even, you know as Lenoy's museum became increasingly light filled so did so did be the Leducs you move from a darkened area to here with light being shunned into these galleries with with Tempana from Amia, and we have these angels from the Cathedral of France, which I'll show you here. Here you have the gallery which I'm pointing out and actually he asked for the cast of the cariatid from the Erexion from the British Museum. The Erexion Museum has one of them and I'm showing you it installed down here so the cast of classical sculpture was not taken from Athens but taken from London. Here you have the jam figures of Rask Cathedral, and this is the Erexion itself, and those angels are being compared to the cariatid figure because of that intense kind of crinkled drapery, and the the evidence of movement that we call a contrapasto that reverberates in the clothing that these figures are wearing, and this becomes the pinnacle of French identity, according to be able to do. And this is not a kind of innocent way of thinking about the Middle Ages because at this point there is also theories that are circulating about how different time people tell us about the mental acuity of the time, and that's based on studying the head, right so here, if I showed you justice, justice cast, you might not recognize it as the famous Apollo Belvedere, but it is based on the Apollo Belvedere and the head has been shaved literally to show the shape, right, to confirm that it is of a superior race than other sculptures, and this, you know, this is a very imaginative shaving of the head to reveal a skull shape which we can only guess at. Beleduke was really very interested in race, and his last works, alongside the museums that I just showed you was also a history of human habitation or domestic architecture, and each one of his chapters he created this type of the kinds of people who would have made that architecture to have primitive man. You have what he called a semi right darker skin on groomed in profile, and of course an Arian. The area is very sympathetic looking well groomed and three quarter of you, able to speak the mouth is open, and you understand that this drawing is based on a Gothic sculpture. And the sculpture. This is a photograph from the archives of the Museum of comparative sculpture was in the galleries of that museum, but it is based on a jam figure. Okay, from the cathedral of chart, which is just outside of Paris, as well and I think you can see the similarities in the hairstyle and and the physiognomy of the face here. And so he really he really inflected he infused Gothic with racial ideas of superiority. And that's something that has been taken to extremes in the early part of the 20th century and it's something that that kind of that that idea of purity and origins and innovation that animate discussion of medieval period is something that medieval are still kind of trying to do away with in our language in our curatorial strategies, etc. And when we think back with the with the understanding of race as a pulse in Vila duke's thinking, we can also bring that to bear on the choices he made for the first room that I showed you earlier the Romanesque room. Vila has a very specific and unique subject matter for the time period. It's the time period of the crusades in which Vila is made in the mid 12th century, and it shows the mission to the Apostles Christ mission to evangelize the world. What is here in detail you see this is actually another photograph of a cast in the museum itself, and in the coffers that surround price and his apostles, you have figures that are Muslims on the edge here the last coffer, and then in the down here, you have all the unconverted people as the Middle Ages understood them based on classical sources so people with very large ears there's a pig me shown here so it's about this. It's almost a kind of ethnographic equivalent in the medieval galleries and the fact that the ethnographic museum is right across from it, right, is is something that we need to kind of put in dialogue with one another, understanding is enriched and contextualized in a more precise fashion when we understand them together. So, here you have two versions of the African galleries. And these are coda reliquary guardian figures from Gabon which was controlled by the French. This is a very famous figure. And it is now in the Louvre, it is, I think, about to restituted to the kingdom of the phone kingdom. Here was a place not only to study right peoples and their habits and their cultures, although the terminology of that time was a bit different. There's also an archival document on the left here that shows us how the ethnographic museum was organized so we have the Americas, we have both Siena Asia, Africa, and also Europe. This was not just about the rest of the world, it was also about looking within and looking at the Middle Ages was a way of finding your own origins of what what people were like that were equivalent to these people who who were perceived to be by the French to be backwards to be primitive to be in a state of nature. And so, when we look at the dioramas and images from the European galleries you have France that is represented there I don't know if you can really see but it says France here. And so you have these dioramas of women doing you know the kinds of activities associated with those provinces whether it's turning a particular type of butter whether it's a kind of sewing, you know men playing cards really a kind of look into what that world is like Imagine that as a Parisian right in the late 19th century the place you know what Benjamin Walter Benjamin called the capital of the 19th century, you're really looking as if you're looking into your own past, when you're looking at the provinces, and indeed, that is what was intended because these are the, these are the postcards that were sold at the Museum of ethnography so you had Fang warriors, right shown in full regalia with all of these wonderful, wonderful hairstyles jewelry and friends buying pictures of people essentially, and then the same thing was happening with with France so you have the different regions of France represented by the costumes of these old aged women right. And this is actually from the region where Mossack is, you know, very specific types of bonnets very specific types of aprons and dress, and shown as types. And of course, their photographs so they were taken at the time in which they're being sold so it is contemporary but has that kind of separation of time as if we're in a different time, then then the people that we see in the images as tokens of visiting that museum. And so, in this, in this time period you really have Romanesque is not something that is in Paris Romanesque is a is a style of architecture and sculpture that for the most part is in the provinces of Paris far away from Paris and gothic is not so far away. So Paris is in Paris, that is the emblematic gothic building brass is not very far from Paris. Sandini, you can even perhaps walk to in Paris right so gothic is this northern centralized phenomenon as conceived by the 19th century whereas Romanesque in reality as well is a you know so called provincial architecture and sculpture. And so, this is something you know that pervades not only our historical thinking of the 19th century but also more importantly, I think the popular conceptions of the Middle Ages, with such illustrious writers as Proust. But I'm giving you a quote here now from Huisman, who wrote a book called our bore, which was quite controversial but you know it's a classic now as controversies go, and he's describing Romanesque in this passage so I'll read that for you. So instead of expressing regret and tranquility, it rouses a suggestion of the childish glee of an old savage in his second childhood, who laughs when his tattoo marks are renewed, and the skin roughcast with crude ochre so he, and quote, so he's really in this museum it's not that Huisman ever really went to see Mossack or to see Vaisalé or to see, you know, objects from the Poitou, etc. He really thinks of it as this kind of primitive barbaric art form you know and Gothic is the kind of clarity and vision that that is to be celebrated and of course those ideas are are positioned in the museum in Paris for for everyone to see. And so it's not really a coincidence, right, that Notre Dame of Paris is emblematic of French identity and of Paris itself here in. This is an ad for the French National Railways Paris represented by Notre Dame and a postage stamp also, you know, the nation as the cathedral. So that's to give you a sense of some of the ideas that are erroneous but need to be recognized from the 19th century, but that we have been dealing with and dismantling through different kinds of different kinds of strategies so in the second part of this work I would like to simply introduce some ideas which I think have been very, very exciting to think about and to change the way we look at the Middle Ages, and we have, for example, a renewed interest in where things come, right, we are beginning to understand the medieval period as the topic as the larger sort of aegis of these of these conversations is that, you know, we have always been global. Right, Britain has always been global. And so where do materials come from well just on the screen here are things that you find all throughout the Western Middle Ages. This is Lazuli, which is from Afghanistan, we've got gold, of course, rock salt ivory, different kinds of ivory walrus ivory, also elephant ivory. And, you know, for a long time, medieval is perhaps this is an obvious thing right, of course something has to come from somewhere, but to really understand trade networks has opened us up to two places like Africa. And also, further north. I mean, of course, some of you must be familiar with the Lewis chess men. And I'm showing you also another, another chess piece that's in the collection here in New York at the Met. And these are made of walrus ivory, and walrus ivory is coming to us in England from the north. And recent this rostrum has resulted in some new research that shows the shift from the north as a source of procurement of ivory to the transparent trade. But in fact, it seems that both are operative at the same time. And this is something I was just kind of looking through the collection. When I was looking at ivory and this is such an interesting image because you're looking at a draft piece. And it is made out of walrus ivory. So it says. But it's showing you an elephant with a palanquin. Okay, and massive tasks right even longer than his trunk, which is kind of amazing and perhaps it is a it is an acknowledgement of the dual sources of the material of which it is made and that's a working theory. But if we look, you know, we have earlier examples. We have textiles that that depict elephants we have entire all the fans in earlier ivories 11th century ivories you see this figure holding one. And you have a great sort of profusion of elephant ivory in the form of caskets and materials that are used in the church and church treasuries, both walrus and elephant ivory. And the great exhibition, which I'll show you an installation of caravans of gold was among the first to specifically engage with the trans the Trans-Saharan trade, and it's relevant to Western Europe in in this time period really from 1100 to about 1400 or so. And this is known as the Catalan Alice that shows the figure of Mansa Musa holding the gold that is so essential to the objects that church treasuries celebrate and collect. And you see a nomad here, approaching the sovereign, and it is really through the camel, right, which is known as the ship of the desert. Here's a camel from a painting in northern Spain that shows really pretty good, very good likeness of the camel that understanding the camel because what you have here is the Sahara sub Saharan Africa is where gold and ivory is coming from. But to navigate the Sahara you do need that camel, and you need somebody who knows what to do with the camel. And that are that are the nomadic cultures and so this 14th century depiction shows us that there's an equivalence of movement, the ability to have not only the luxury material but also to move it you know if you can't move it. It's not, it's not going to work. This is a map from that great exhibition, which was called caravans of gold, and it shows you the trade routes that led all the way up to southern Spain which in this time period you know is controlled by Muslims, as is North Africa so the Sahara runs across the continent of Spain. However, it's not shown here as a barrier really shown as a kind of network of roots that allow places like Iboku and gal to connect with connect with the Mediterranean and further up into Spain, and into France. So, then when we read, look at our ivories that are coming to us from sub Saharan Africa you understand that you're looking at an African object in some ways right that this is showing us the, the very real connections knowledge systems that are required in the other ivory, in order to make the most sort of iconic of medieval objects which is this Madonna and child here's another one. And ivory elephant ivory is prized because it's not sort of marbled and veined in the same way as walrus ivory is and as a transfer and trade sort of intensifies through the 12th century you have more and more elephant ivory in 13th century over where these, where these objects come from. And vice versa, the trade is fruitful not just for the north but also for also for cultures south of the Sahara and so we see these unbelievable bronzes, depicting elephants and the elephant one of the cutest things ever from the 14th to the 15th centuries from what is now Nigeria little tusk coming out and this is really quite large, but and also very finely cast you see how thin the cast is and the damage that has been done to it. And elephants are shown because they, they are, they are, they are creating wealth as well for for that particular place. And you know the sort of bend the famous Gothic S curve which we all learned about in, you know, graduate school or in college or whenever you first learned about this, never really told you why it moves the way it does I mean obviously it corresponds to the shape of the material right the tusk itself and so here's another example of that curve tusk and elephant in terracotta. Also excavated in a place called ife in contemporary Nigeria. So what I will do is show another example of a church treasury in a few minutes. And then, perhaps, and, and take your questions and have some discussion. So one more point to make is, for example, this is the Treasury of Sandini. This is a royal burial church that was, you know, destroyed a lot of it was destroyed in the French Revolution, including its treasury. And what you see here is the treasury before its destruction and the kinds of things that we see in this treasury. Give us as if we really look at the materials and we really look at the craftsmanship as our abbots to share who writes to us from the 12th century tells us about these things. They are really giving us a really capacious view of the world and habits who shares famous chalice. Sorry, shown here is in the National Gallery in Washington DC, right which is such an odd thing to consider that an abbots chalice from France is now in Washington, but it is a composite object right it's made out of sardonyx which is a composite object and it's much earlier the material itself and the mount, the mount is what the Abbott has made in the 12th century of gold and jewels and the gold of course is coming from Africa, as well. Another object that is very well known from the Treasury of Sandini is now in the Louvre, and it is this rock crystal year that has an inscription running across the top here. And these are these are Fatima objects they come from Egypt from the Muslim rulers of Egypt and frequently are inscribed with the names of the rulers. So here, the abbot suger has added the gold lid I'm showing you another example which is now the Victorian Albert Museum, on the right, without that lid. So he had you know he further sort of amplified the luxurious nature of the object. And you begin to understand that in the introduction of Islamic objects in church treasuries, you know we can pose a lot of different kinds of questions of not only contact, but meaning, and, and and also begin to understand and propose that perhaps luxury workmanship materiality is the extended faith, right that it didn't matter so much that this was the enemy the so called enemy of the time remember again the period of the crusades been more so that it was magnificently carved, made out of rare materials right further distinguished by the gold by the gold covering added by the Abbott. Thank you very much for listening and I have lots more slides if we if we want to look further, but I'll end with that and open it up to questions. Thanks. Thank you risham that was really wonderful and so much food for thought I'm sure there's, I'm sure there's many people around the world clapping in their homes right now for for your lecture. Thank you for that and have lots of questions and we'll just invite again anyone. Anyone watching to put your questions in the, in the Q amp a, but while people are doing that. I guess I'll just take the opportunity to ask you a question myself one that that I was thinking about while you were presenting these different, the, these different variations of museums and in France and and and in Britain in the 19th century there are the objectives of some of the founders of the museums are some of the people associated from the collectors. But how did these, how did these spaces function from day to day you know what kind of people were coming to, to visit the museums and, and, and, and do we know what they thought about the displays and you were people visiting the collections and the medieval collections and were they connecting them in the way that you, you are in your lecture and and as a kind of follow on questions that too. Do we know if these spaces were used by students were they being used to teach with, because I think that's something that's really interesting about the V&A versus somewhere like the British Museum where you have an emphasis say the V&A about design and it's being a place really to think about craft and making. So yeah I don't know if you might want to say something about that. It's a it's a great question Lloyd because of course as a curator you know you know you have a certain intention and then people wander in and take away what they take away. I think ways that we look here are evidence for this type of thinking comes to us from artists mainly from this time period. So of course I didn't get into this in this lecture, but artists are, you know, we have a cart de tute. So you have to fill out a form in order to study the cast and so we have, you know, these cards from people like Cézanne from Renoir. We have them for medievalist working at the time we know the Meyer Shapiro went to these galleries for example, you know anyone who went to Paris, who was studying medieval art went there. Even people working you know on their dissertations in the 60s used to go and study the cast, when they couldn't get to the site itself right so it really did become a surrogate for the monument. When it comes to thinking about the two of them together. The idea of the primitive is something that is reaches its peak with a person like Picasso, who is in both of these galleries, who famously goes to see the museum of comparative sculpture, because he's an artist and that's what he's told to do in Paris, you know young Picasso 19 five 19 six. And he wanders into the ethnographic museum and that's where he first sees African art. And that, you know that story is pretty famous and results in that kind of canonical document of primitivism. So, you know, in the work of artists we see it we see it in the writing of different artists we see it in the thoughts that are being generated and scholars who are able to compare material that they never would have before. So, I would say that you know you have to look in places that are unexpected to make the connections, because some of the connections are so are so taken for granted in their own time that we're kind of trying to return to what people actually thought when looking at that time. That's fascinating, I mean I think thinking about it through the lens of the artist is also really rewarding I mean makes me think obviously of of Henry Moore in England and who is equally interested in the medieval and is a collector of works of art and that's obviously a major influence on the way that he makes his sculptures and I mean I think he even writes about the Romanesque sculptures that were discovered at Chichester. Let me bring up the Q&A box and just have a look at what people are asking. We have a question from Bonnie, who asks, I wonder if carving elephants on walrus ivy was meant to imply the ivory was higher grade, higher status than a sort of play on materials. So I guess a kind of comment rather than a question but maybe you have something to say about that. Sure, I mean this is something that I thought of you know yesterday quite frankly so I don't know I don't have a very long answer for that but I should. I think there's an awareness of materiality that is a Vincent that object and perhaps you're right perhaps it is a kind of competitive bravado that's being accessed there. Great, we have a question from Matthew Westerby, hi Matt, I don't think I've seen you since Kalamazoo a few years ago so it's good to see you logging on to this talk. Nice way of connecting with some some colleagues from pre pandemic times. So, Matt says thank you for this wonderful talk. I think to consider how medieval sculpture was reproduced in plaster in the 19th century. At the same time, objects are being extracted around the world with 3d models more common today in art museum spaces is there parallel to be made as objects are repatriated. That's a great question meaning that we should create, create a reproduction and return the original. Is that the implication. I would yeah I'd read that is as, but I guess they're not. They're not costs. I mean maybe you know that the costs are predominantly made of European works of art. Right, there's no sense of them in the 19th century going to make costs of medieval monuments from West Africa, for instance, whereas I guess now it's it's the kind of sense of having to to think about the absence of those objects in those countries. Yeah, no I mean I think you know monumental architecture and architectural sculpture is the priority of the 19th century why which is why you have something like the stupa. You know that is cast on site, but when we think about monuments from West Africa palaces, etc. We also have seen about materials you know that also engages in the hierarchy that is present here because you think about the great mosque and it's it's a mud building, you know, and was not really regarded as even as architecture so some of the exhibitions like caravans of gold like Sahel. You know that is introducing objects and architectures to us today at that time, what wouldn't having been on the horizon, but I think the implications of what Matthew saying here of, yes, that time we're interested in having a cast of you know Western monuments, but in the discourse of repatriation. There is also the possibility of having a reproduction of an object in the museum, in which it's in and the return of the original, you know if it's asked for to to its context, I mean I think that's a viable option that people are considering. I have an anonymous question here. In addition to the theme you introduced of tracing materials, what are your thoughts of tracing techniques to work the materials for example, how the knowledge to cast bronze using hollow spaces transferred some places by not others I assume that's the lost wax method being mentioned here. So by kind of. Yeah, technology is a way of understanding the movement of ideas I guess. Yeah, I mean, why not, you know, one of the reasons why the Benin bronzes were were so incredulous to. I don't have that here but incredulous to, you know for Benius was that he thought that there's no way that these primitive people could have made lost wax sculptures with that distinction right. And so he thought that you know it was the lost city of Atlantis and of course it was from somewhere else so that that's an aside but I think it would be really interesting to see different ways of making the same material into a pliable medium. You know there was an I read somewhere about an exhibition on just clay would be really interesting, you know every single culture has a relationship to clay, and what that might yield I think that's a great idea. I mean there was famously this this exhibition in London called bronze. In something like 2011 I can't I can't remember. And I had, you know, it was kind of similar some of the images you showed you know had objects from all over the world unified by the material. So thinking about the history of bronze casting as a way to, to tell some kind of story, although you know it was it was on the whole, the most extraordinary examples of bronze casting from whatever particular culture the the objects had come from but it was a very rewarding show. And in lots of ways. So the question. How was the trucker deer palace destroyed in 1937 that was from Kathleen Costa. I mean it was destroyed because it was out of style the architecture, and it was destroyed to make room for what is there now, which is the Palais de Chaillot. So that kind of like, you know, hard and you know classical architecture that you have there now was a replacement for an out of date style. So Joanne Stracke, I hope I'm pronouncing a surname right asks were in fact the rock crystal carvings from Egypt with script and Muslim decorative emblems collected as examples of collected artifacts by the conquerors. I think conquest potentially means people engaging from Western Europe with the with the Islamic East during the Crusades. If that's how I'm reading that. I mean how the how the rock crystal you are made its way to Sandini by conquest or by trade. Don't know, we don't really know that. So many different examples actually one of the things I didn't get to which thank you for your question. Which we can perhaps look at now is the notion of of a much more intimate understanding of Islamic cultures in in in France at this time, not necessarily as ways of announcing conquest right or desire for conquest or superiority. You know, we see it in so many different places and so many different media, you know, this is in would you have that this is a there as it's an honorific that's given as, you know, sort of appreciation to visitors in in different cultures, and you see that appearing you know not exactly in anything legible on the hem of the garment of the Virgin, which happens increasingly as we move through the Middle Ages, this is a capital that's made one year after the conquest of Jerusalem in the Abbey of Mossack the cloister there. So it's the the interpretive lens, you know, I think we need more on this I don't think it's simply conquest. It's not necessarily appreciation on its own but it has both both thoughts are embedded in in this representation, I think they can work in both ways. I think it's also interesting to consider the going back to the last question and thinking about technology and thinking about what that says about these objects the fact that rock crystal carving in Western Europe at the same time is relatively poor in comparison to Fatima rock crystal carving which is obviously completely extraordinary. And we have a cup at the British Museum that's made in Germany in the 12th century and it's so obvious that the imitation of the forms of the ceramic rock crystal carving, but you know it's, it's, it's very poor in comparison in terms of its technique I mean you can see that they kind of shape almost shaking of the of the lines trying to be engraved into the rock crystal versus the incredible control of the form. And so, so the kind of virtuosic nature of the object being something that was kind of like China you know Chinese, Boston being imported into Europe at the same time the fact that it was kind of impossible to make is something that I think was such a such a huge draw. That's a great point. Is that techniques transcend cultures in ways and and that's something also there's so much overlap for example you know, when you look at the dome of the rock and Jerusalem and the mosaics there. Oh, like our famously argued that this is a, this is a monument made by Christians, right, who know how to work as a for this, this monument this Muslim monument of victory so you know techniques and identity can be separated in a way that that is I think really fruitful to look into the past. We have a couple of questions from Alfred higher one of our previous speakers so very nice to see you Alfred and thank you for your questions. Alfred asks two questions so are we the disparagement of the Romanesque, were the French provincial museums or intellectuals championing it in opposition to the advocates of the Gothic. And then to as a follow on the asks, also alternatively, how do you read the cloisters in New York in relation to the history of museum formation you have outlined. Regarding the provincial museums, they were much more interested in in gothicizing Romanesque a lot of ways, creating these proto portals you know they look like chart for example which were of course not. And in fact what they were. And then you also have with regards to the cloisters so that's, that's George Ray Bernard and he is working, of course with the reason why he can procure what he procures is because of the Revolution, and the wars of religion, but in a American context, it does have the same connotations that it has for a French context and so what he creates his first museum is a sort of hodgepodge of Romanesque Gothic this like basilica form of a church. It's really, you know, as we sort of move into the documents that tell us about why Romanesque is the architect Charles Collins and Joseph Brack, the first curator, and then later James Rorimer, who are looking much more sort of deliberately and I would say in a kind of archaeological way because they're, they're really trying to reconstruct these fragments. You know, and that's a totally different time period to we're talking about the 20s into the 30s and I'm thinking really more of, you know the 1830s to the 1870s so I think that all very much accelerates and changes, according to the American context, and it's relationship to archaeology. Yeah, it's that's completely fascinating I think the kind of making the fragment whole thing that happens in America is is really interesting in the, and the whole history of conservation restoration in, in, in terms of the works of art that are being collected I mean that's really interesting in relationship to, to museums in, in, in Britain, you know the British Museum that the collecting of fragments and the display, particularly in terms of, of English history and the Reformation is very difficult I think something that that museum still struggle with a bit in terms of displaying fragments. I can see your hand up and I imagine you want to get in on this question. Yeah, I just wanted to ask a quick follow up question before we get to everyone else's questions which is, you know, I'm, among other things are fascinated by this idea that you've kind of of the role of kind of medieval art and ideas about medieval art in essentially modern state formation really. And I just wondered if you had any thoughts about ways in which I, France, Britain, the United States, other places as well perhaps might have been responding to one another's sort of receptions of the Middle Ages and ideas about the Middle Ages and in how they exhibited it. And, you know, perhaps something about the, the international exhibitions might have played a role I don't know. But I'd be interested in what you, what you sort of think about that. And there's all of this, you know, now we think of this kind of amusing rhetoric around art historical primacy, you know, once you figure out, this is the good thing, who did it first. It was like, was it, you know, was it German, was it Italian, was it French, was it Spain, that's the famous argument, you know, between Porter, the American medievalist and, and Deschamps and France, of his first Romanesque French, or is it Spanish, you know, and Porter is arguing for Spain and Deschamps, of course, is arguing for France. So this goes on for quite some time. And it's like this kind of myth of origins, you know, indicating, indicating superiority in the, in the contemporary nation is very much part of this puzzle. Yeah. I have a question from an anonymous, anonymous, anonymous attendee who asks, was there any art that they avoided bringing into Britain's Museums. Any art that they avoided bringing into British museums. I don't know that I could say about French museums perhaps and I mean I might be able to say something about Britain's Museums. I don't really not bring in. I think, I don't really have an answer to that. I think they, they were interested in almost everything and devised spaces to accommodate those things, you know, whatever they were finding. They didn't all go into a national museum, or this museum, or you know the ethnographic museum, but they're all kinds of you know the museums of antiquities their museums that have things from all over the world. I don't know that there was any kind of filtration system as to know we can't possibly have this, you know, considering we have something like the pit rivers. And if you've been to the pit rivers. There seems to be absolutely no rhyme or reason for collecting there's just oddities, you know, Lloyd maybe you have more to say about that. Well, all I was going to say was actually one of the things that that I mean the British Museum avoided bringing in was was British medieval art. I mean, during the very early period that you're talking about it was, it was something not forced on them but but what what what they wanted to collect at the time was was works of art from Greece and Rome, and, and you know the towny collection the major formation of classical sculptural collections. That was the absolute pinnacle of collecting. And what they called at the time national antiquities were really things being formed in private museums. And there was a sense, you know, if you think about is a frontispiece to to a book on on English tomb figures, and in it you have a fragment being carried away by time as a drawing to the frontispiece this idea that the fragments are literally disappearing before our eyes, and that there's some sense that these must be collected so it's really only from the second half of the 19th century that that that what they called at the time national antiquities start to be collected in any sense. But then they obviously get on on with it pretty quickly and they start amassing quite large collections like they do in France. Yeah, so we. There's a question to questions from Richard Souter who once is, thank you for the fabulous images and scholarship you brought us we can agree with Richard on that point. And then he asks a question about, which I'm not, I don't totally understand actually is that a real person standing in the in the what in the in the mediric so I don't know exactly he's asking so maybe we'll just move on. I think you're talking. He's talking about the photograph. Let me go to that one second. Is that a real person. Now what is a drawing. So I think you might be, I showed you probably shouldn't have done that showed you a drawing and a photograph in the same image, this one. Sorry one sec. This yeah this is a real person if that's the one you're referring to. Oh, there we are. Yeah, Mediric. I mean these are these are two fascinating images I thought when you brought them up. And I had a question about polychromy and Vela Dukes interest in polychromy. And, and, and you'll talk about Vela Dukes and race was very interesting to me to think about was he interested in actually thinking about the, the tones of how different peoples were represented on things like the vessel a portal or mosaic. And so on, you know, was he, because there's obviously kind of you know, interesting art historical things going on in the juxtaposition of these different objects, but was he doing a kind of technical analysis. Well, at the same time I mean it's in in Britain at least you start to see the beginnings of technical analysis of monumental sculpture in the 19th century pigment sampling and so on. I mean I don't know if you know and have an answer to that question but it just struck me as something interesting. Yeah I mean this is something you know that's an argument that's put forth by. I can't believe I'm forgetting his name, the German famous German our story in 19th century on polychromy. What is his name, forgetting his name anyway that's put forth and I do recall it that Vela Dukes takes it up in his dictionary, but I don't know that he has any specific. I don't know about his report because he restored Vasile as well. His report on the sculptures there if there's any evidence of polychromy there. I don't have a very good answer about that and his relationship to it. Certainly the plaster casts are made to look like stone and completely sort of uncolored stone. And the first asks, when did the change happen from Wunderkammer in into museums. Yeah, I mean, I think you know you have, you have that the sense of that public collection is still there in the 18th century. How do you start having something like societies of ethnography which in France begin in the in the 1820s and and go well into the 19th century I think that idea of the curiosity of the sense of wonder is is recedes as you have much more kind of naturalization and categorization of the natural world alongside the art world you know everything has a category in the 19th century rate. And so those spaces which are meant to incite a desire and wonder and possession and curiosity, partially for lack of information is what they are really is is superseded by by these by the natural history kind of intensification of the 19th century. Okay, I think we'll take one more, one more question. And then I'm sure people want to kind of get off and have, have their dinner. And, and then do a quick wrap up but we have a question from Shelly Williams who asks, can you elaborate on the connection between the Kufic script and the over and Madonna, I've never noticed the text on her home before. So kind of the status of Islamic text in Europe at the time. Yeah, yeah sure let me just pull that up. So you know when we look at the hem of a sculpture like this which is from about 1150 to 1175. You see that you've got multiple layers right 123 and they're all different types of textiles. And these textiles are not any textiles right they're extremely expensive they're coming from different places they're different technologies. And I think that's what I've accessed here, that this kind of the hem is where this, this, this the rose would have been sewn onto a garment. And so, you know you see it not only in versions, and, but you see it all throughout the middle ages so in the over and Walter Khan wrote a book on this is that you have these Kufic pseudo Kufic inscriptions based on Arabic writing that appear all throughout the mid 12th century in different media. The fact that this is exactly where it should be in context this would be where it would have been in the Muslim context as well, to me indicates that there's greater knowledge about what it is, and what it signifies, then a random sort of or seemingly a random inscription. And I don't know if you can even call that, you know, a pseudo Kufic decoration on that capital. And of course there's, you know, more than 50 years between these two, and you still have you know the crusades on going so I think it can also probably tell more about the state of knowledge, comparing these two. Then, then then previously has been thought about. I think that's a, that's a great place to end and a very nice nod to, to last week's lecture by Amanda which was really discussing the importation and the status and the significance of Islamic textiles in Britain in the, in the 12th and 13th centuries. Thank you again Risham for that lecture was really wonderful. And thank you for providing the perfect way to end what's been seven lectures so far. I'm going to come by in a flash, and it's been extremely fun and extremely rewarding so I'd just like to say thank you so much to all of our previous speakers to Alex Bovee to Alfred Hyatt to Tom Nixon to Amanda Leicester. And especially to say thank you to the Paul Mellon Center for inviting Jessica and inviting myself to co convenience series to Mark Hallett to Shria Chatterjee to Norman Abdullah and to the rest of the team at the PMC we're really grateful to you. Thank you so much. It's been, it's been very, very fun. But that just leaves me to say thank you again to Risham for tonight's lecture. We are going to sign out now. But I think the PMC are going to do a little bit of a wrap up on the chat so thank you all to everyone who joined us tonight and to everyone who's joined us for the whole lecture series. Thank you very much. Bye bye. Bye thank you so much. Bye bye. Thank you. See you soon I hope.