Aesthetic Otherness, Authenticity and the Roads to Museological Appropriation

This paper examines the travels and travel writing of Henry Cole in the 1850s and considers their importance for the early development of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Cole's travel writing is contextualised both within his career and within the development of practices of art history. Cole's travels in continental Europe supplied him with objects for the V&A collection and ideas which subsequently influenced the institutional and architectural development of the museum. Cole's travel journals provided an outlet for reflection on issues relating to heritage and museology and enabled him to frame complex and paradoxical views of foreignness: for example, Cole revered the historical material culture of Italy, but viewed its contemporary condition as degenerate. It is argued that these views provided premises for the V&A's appropriation of historical foreign material culture. The paper concludes with a brief account of the relationships between travel and the museum; it considers museum interiors in which foreign, historical contexts are recreated, and explores the notion of the museum visit as surrogate or compressed travel

Aesthetics · Appropriation · Art · Art history · Epistemology · Literature · Sociology · Travel writing · Visual arts · Historical Art and Culture Studies · History · Museology · Museums and Cultural Heritage · Philosophy · Travel Writing and Literature

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