“A Long Story: Objects, Museums, and Archaeology” a presentation by Daniel J. Sherman, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Daniel J. Sherman is the Lineberger Distinguished Professor of Art History and History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of, among other books, The Construction of Memory in Interwar France and French Primitivism and the Ends of Empire, 1945–1975, both published by the University of Chicago Press and will be speaking on a topic related to his most recent book, Sensations.
Abstract: Sherman’s talk concerns the centuries-old relationship between art museums and archaeology. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, archaeology moved away from the mode of treasure hunting and search for aesthetically pleasing objects and towards the systematic study of the past through its material traces. In so doing, archaeologists became less preoccupied with filling museums and more inclined to define themselves in terms of the protocols of field research and publication. The talk argues that these developments, as well as the emergence of art museums tied to collecting and connoisseurship, have left traces, what Sherman calls an “archaeological unconscious,” that museums have not fully come to terms with. The talk concludes with a set of reflections on issues of provenance and restitution, a foretaste of Sherman’s new research project.
This event is sponsored by the Department of History, Department of Anthropology, Department of Art History, Department of Classics, GISRAM Program (Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization: Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean), and the French Center of Excellence.