Antiquity in the Museum: Archaeology, Cu

The seminar introduces graduate students to works of ancient art and architecture held in museum collections. It explores the modern history of their study as antiquities, a category which required a detailed connoisseurship set within a framework of newly arising aesthetic and racial theories and classifications that accompanied imperial archaeological endeavour. The seminar’s focus is on Mesopotamian, Anatolian, Egyptian and Greek antiquities, as ancient works in their original context and as extracted objects that mark an imperial trail. Students will also be introduced to the development of archaeological field methods within the colonial context, and archaeology’s varied forms of visual documentation which became instrumental to imperial knowledge production: architectural and scientific illustrations, excavation images, and archaeological photography, and by the early twentieth century, the introduction of aerial photography as a way of visualizing sites and ruins. Taking ancient works and their display as a starting point, the seminar also explores the ways in which archaeology and the collecting of antiquities were inextricably linked to the technologies and economies of empire and colonialism. Reading and discussions include museum histories and theories of collecting, as well as the history and theories of archaeology and ancient art. Permission of the instructor is required before registration. Please submit a seminar application to the Department of Art History and Archaeology.