Abstract
In this paper, I argue that aesthetics shaped to reflect specific ways of knowing the world support national narratives within government-funded or endorsed galleries and museums. In so doing they reflect that nations ‘soft power’ agendas in the present, and are politicised, becoming a tool for managing and shaping ideologies and values within society. This becomes problematic when the art and cultural objects make contemporary critics and curators feel uneasy about how they should interpret them, if they decide they should be seen at all, or even how they should feel when reappraising works that so fully reflect a period in history that remains problematic in the colonial present. I focus this study by looking at how ‘orientalist art’ became to be viewed as a product of such thinking albeit it represents Western artist’s journeys of selfhood explored through the frame of other cultures. How does the recent interest in, acquisition of, and display of Orientalist art in Turkish and Middle Eastern collections impact on the original meanings and aesthetics given to such works at the time of their creation, and indeed as part of art history. Is this a powerful statement of agency and a means to observe the self through the gaze of the Western “other?” Or does it suggest that such art spaces are embracing a new rationalism that transcends aesthetics to become a symbol of ownership, of contemporary self and nation-shaping and indeed in framing the notion of a museum of mankind?
Presenters
Elizabeth CarnegieAssociate Professor, Business School, Northumbria University, United Kingdom Derek Bryce
Senior Lecturer, Marketing, University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Inter-GovernmentalAgreements, Decolonisation, Orientalism, Representations, National-Museum/Galleries
Digital Media
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