Module Outline
The module addresses the significance of setting, context, presentation and audience for Renaissance/EarlyModern 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 isa 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 Format
This module is seminar based, which means that the weekly sessions are primarily student-led. This is achieved through presentations, participating in group work and class discussions. Everyone must read the set texts and wider reading is strongly suggested. The teaching is underpinned by three MA specific tutorials spread throughout the term which will also provide support for students in devising the topic for their assessment.
Module Aims
- To examine the ways in which works of art were experienced and consumed in Renaissance and Early ModernEurope, in order to better understand their changing functions and meanings over time.
- To consider the development of collecting as a key factor in the production and consumption of works of art.
- To analyse the material and visual culture from which a variety of artefacts and display practices originated, by addressing such issues as the relationships between expenditure and ethics, art market dynamics, appropriation,patronage and taste, and political and social concerns.
- To evaluate the process and ethics involved in reconstructing lost spaces and fragmentary originals, together with the challenges that modern displays pose to traditional divisions and taxonomies.
Key Learning Outcomes
- Demonstrate a good understanding of collecting and display practices of Renaissance/Early Modern works of art, both at the time and now.
- Demonstrate a grasp of the significance of setting, context, presentation and audience for Renaissance/EarlyModern works of art – both today and in the past.- Relate the development of collecting and display of Renaissance/Early Modern artefacts to the wider material and visual cultures from which they originated.
- Show critical awareness of current debates around reconstruction, replication and appropriation of Renaissance/Early modern works of art.
Workload
1 x 2-hour seminars per week
3 x Tutorials
2 x field visits
You should carry out a minimum of 20 hours reading and preparing for seminars per week on this module
Assessment
1 x 5,000 word research project (90%)
Spoken engagement or alternative for specific learning differences (10%)
Tutor
Dr Marta Ajmar
Email: Marta.Ajmar@warwick.ac.uk
Advice and Feedback Hours: Thursdays 13.30-15.00, FAB 5.65.
Seminar time and location
Thursdays 13.00-15.00 HO.02
Field visits
Field visit 1: Thursday 15 February, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Field visit 2: to be announced
Introductory Reading
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 ModernAtlantic 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 UniversityPress, 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)