Lecture: The Museum of Modernity and the End of Archaic Globalization

Cologne Media Lecture No. 48
Wednesday, June 16, 2021, 5:45 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. CET (via zoom, please see PDF announcement for zoom link).

Prof. Dr. Erhard Schüttpelz
Universität Siegen

The Museum of Modernity and the End of Archaic Globalization

The museum for all is a modern invention and no older than the French Revolution, whose iconoclasm and vandalism were answered by collections of monuments, their protection as inalienable property and their (partial) exhibition. So says the tradition. But what happens when this story is placed in a different framework, or viewed through, say, Christopher Bayly’s prism of an “Archaic Globalization” of collections and travel in the service of imperial and religious cosmologies? Was the modern museum an end to archaic collections or their blatant continuation? Are contemporary museum debates such an end or the triumph of the modern museum idea? The lecture will go through the criteria for these answers.