Spoils of War among the Art Treasures
Exhibiting Empire in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11944574 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lewis Ryder (0000-0003-0592-8484, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 52 |
| Issue | 4-5 |
| Pages | 600-630 |
| Publication date | 2024-04-27 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Imperial & Commonwealth History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0308-6534 • E-ISSN: 1743-9329 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/03086534.2024.2344247 |
| OpenAlex | W4395703626 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 42 |
This essay investigates the assemblage, curation and reception of ‘oriental’ material culture at the Exhibition of Art Treasures of the United Kingdom held in Manchester in 1857. It does so to examine the relationship between exhibitions and empire in the mid-nineteenth century. Going ‘behind the scenes’ of the exhibition, interrogating the provenance of the objects and the actors involved in the assemblage, the essay reveals how some of the objects were infamous spoils of war, a detail omitted from the exhibition narrative as they were recast as ‘art treasures’, generously donated by their British owners for the benefit of the public. In analysing this dynamic, the essay builds on the current scholarship on imperial exhibitions by demonstrating an alternative, more subtle, way in which empire was ‘domesticated’ to British audiences. In addition, the essay challenges our current understanding of imperial exhibitions as masculine endeavours by revealing that Annette Royle played a key role in the curation of ‘oriental’ objects in Manchester, as well as at the other major exhibitions of Indian material culture in this period
Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Empire · Historical Art and Culture Studies · History · Photography and Visual Culture · Visual Culture and Art Theory
Much maligned monsters
Propaganda and empire
Collecting and Displaying China’s “Summer Palace” in the West
Empire on Display
Cherishing Men from Afar
Negotiating with Imperialism
The absent-minded imperialists
The Scramble for China
The Bible and Empire
The Lives of Chinese Objects
The Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857. Entrepreneurs, Connoisseurs and the Public
From India to Independence
Collecting on campaign
Emotional Reactions to the Great Exhibition of 1851
Oriental Antiquities/Far Eastern Art
Autumn 1857
Curating Empire
Shaping the Ordnance Office Collections at the Tower of London
Material Turns in British History
Material Turns in British History
Koh-i-Noor
Exhibiting the empire
Company Curiosities. Nature, Culture and the East India Company, 1600–1874
Country houses and the British Empire, 1700–1930
The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj. Merchants, Rulers, and the British in the Nineteenth-Century Gulf
Attitudes to the Displacement of Cultural Property in the Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon
Carbon, Mere Carbon
Exposing wounds
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |