Alle Beiträge von Felicity Bodenstein

My research focus is on the history of archaeological and ethnographic collections. After completing my PhD in art history at the University Paris-Sorbonne on the history of the collections of the department of coins and medals at the National Library in Paris, I began to consider questions of representation in the display of contested, translocated objects. My principal case study concerns the so-called Benin bronzes and the visual, narrative, and interpretative changes made by museums to their display in the past few decades. My current project for translocations is “A Twentieth Century History of Absence and Presence in Benin City: Presentations and Representations of Objects Looted in 1897".
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The Iconography of Translocations/Eine Ikonographie von Translocations

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Work description

The collection aims to show how different stages of the translocation process have been represented from Antiquity up until the present day and will contribute to a political iconography of the phenomenon itself[1]. Though it cannot make a claim to historical exhaustivity or full geographical coverage, it aims to underline certain mechanisms of claiming, removing, appropriating, personifying, substituting, and returning cultural assets in different contexts. It is useful here to introduce a tentative working definition of what ‘translocation’ designates in the context of this project and what differentiates it from related notions of transfer, or displacement in the humanities. As understood here, translocation is a term that encompasses the spatial and chronological dimensions as well as the relations of power that lead to the displacement of a cultural asset from one specific place in time to another. The Iconography of Translocations/Eine Ikonographie von Translocations weiterlesen →

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1837: Einzug eines restituierten Rubens-Gemäldes auf einem Kölner Gedenkblatt

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Kommentiert von: Bénédicte Savoy

Auch viele Jahre nach den Ereignissen ebbte in Deutschland die Erinnerung an den sogenannten Französischen Kunstraub der Revolution und des Empire nicht ab. In den 20er und 30er Jahren des 19. Jahrhunderts erschienen vielerorts Schriften und Bilder, die auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen (von wissenschaftlich bis populär) an die Wegnahme oder Rückführung von Kunstwerken in den Jahren 1794 bis 1815 erinnerten. Davon zeugt auch dieses Bildchen.

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1867: Aztec idols at the Paris World Fair

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Commented by: Susana Stussi Garcia

Throughout the second half of the 19th century, Paris hosted several World fairs, during which the French capital commanded the undivided attention of the world. These events chiefly celebrated the economic and industrial power of participant nations, but quickly became privileged spaces of scientific exchange (Ageorges 2006, Carré et al. 2012) and of representation of the “Other” (Demeulenaere-Douyère 2010). For its predominantly European public, World fairs became windows to faraway, exotic horizons.

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