Amazon cover image
Image from Amazon.com

Antiquity on display : regimes of the authentic in Berlin's Pergamon Museum / Can Bilsel.

By: Bilsel, S. M. Can, 1970-Material type: TextTextSeries: Classical presencesPublication details: Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2012. Description: xvii, 281 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. (some col.), map ; 24 cmISBN: 9780199570553 (hardback); 0199570558 (hardback)Uniform titles: University press scholarship online. Subject(s): Pergamonmuseum (Berlin, Germany) | Archaeology -- Philosophy | Archaeological museums and collections -- Germany -- Berlin | Museum architecture -- Designs and plans | Antiquities -- Collection and preservation | Museum techniques | Archaeological museums and collections | Museum architecture -- Germany -- Berlin | Bergama (Turkey) -- Antiquities | Pergamum (Extinct city)DDC classification: 930.1 LOC classification: CC72 | .B55 2012
Contents:
Introduction : Space and relief in the Pergamon Room ; the original and its double ; On the museum's context: historical monument or a décor? ; A critical biography of the spaces in the museum ; Hegemonies and the longe durée -- No place like Greece: Berlin's Museum Island and the architectures of history : Karl Friedrich Schinkel's A view of Greece in its prime ; Greece: from a trope to a terriroire ; The destination of antiquities: what the museum lacks ; 'All men will be brothers'? Bildung and the vocation of the museum ; The world seen through an Ionic window: the Altes Museum ; The Neues Museum: a tower or a tree? -- Reconstructing Pergamon: antique fragments, modern visions : Marbles lost and found: Carl Humann in Bergama ; The problem of the frieze: tectonic or painterly? ; The Pergamon Panorama: urban visions for Prussia and France ; Temple inside a temple: the first Pergamon Museum by Fritz Wolff -- A museum for the empire: the problem of style : Sculpting the void: Alfred Messel's project for the Museum Island ; The fin-de-siècle critique: redeemer-art ; Art versus ethnology: taxonomies of an empire ; Wilhelm Gode's style rooms: the original setting and the bourgeois intérior -- Reconstructing Babylon: the return of the Archaic : Transgressing Bilderverbot: back to Babylon ; Prussia's Assyria: in search of an organic essence ; The lion of Babylon in the age of the work of art ; Symbol, ornament, art: figures of the counter-enlightenment -- Architecture in the museum: monuments of a mass spectacle : The altar and its frames ; Berlin's museum war ; A total vision: Theodor Wiegand's 'living people's museum' ; Reproductions without originals? -- Epilogue : Regimes of the authentic : The master of the copies ; The rank and file: bureaucracies of the authentic ; Tableaux vivants: performing the aura.
Summary: "[This book] is a critical biography of Berlin's Pergamon Museum and its popular architectural displays: the Great Altar of Pergamon, the Market Gate of Miletus, and the Ishtar Gate of Babylon. [The author] argues that the museum has produced a modern décor, an iconic image, which has replaced the lost ancient monuments rather than creating an explicitly hypothetical representation of antiquity. Addressing the dilemmas raised by the continuing presence of these displays, which embody the distinctive traits of the artistic and ideological programs of the last two centuries, Bilsel questions what the process of reproduction and authentication of antiquity in the museum tells us about our changing perceptions of historic monuments. Documenting the process through which these imaginative reproductions of architecture were conceived, staged, and came to be perceived as authentic monuments, this volume offers an insight into the history of Berlin's Museum Island and the shifting regimes of the authentic in museum displays from the 19th century to the present."--Book jacket.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Status Date due Barcode
Books Books The BIAA David H. French Library
Shelf 38 - Main Room
G2d BILSE 29790 Not for loan BOOKS-000000022723

Includes bibliographical references (p. [237]-268) and index.

Introduction : Space and relief in the Pergamon Room ; the original and its double ; On the museum's context: historical monument or a décor? ; A critical biography of the spaces in the museum ; Hegemonies and the longe durée -- No place like Greece: Berlin's Museum Island and the architectures of history : Karl Friedrich Schinkel's A view of Greece in its prime ; Greece: from a trope to a terriroire ; The destination of antiquities: what the museum lacks ; 'All men will be brothers'? Bildung and the vocation of the museum ; The world seen through an Ionic window: the Altes Museum ; The Neues Museum: a tower or a tree? -- Reconstructing Pergamon: antique fragments, modern visions : Marbles lost and found: Carl Humann in Bergama ; The problem of the frieze: tectonic or painterly? ; The Pergamon Panorama: urban visions for Prussia and France ; Temple inside a temple: the first Pergamon Museum by Fritz Wolff -- A museum for the empire: the problem of style : Sculpting the void: Alfred Messel's project for the Museum Island ; The fin-de-siècle critique: redeemer-art ; Art versus ethnology: taxonomies of an empire ; Wilhelm Gode's style rooms: the original setting and the bourgeois intérior -- Reconstructing Babylon: the return of the Archaic : Transgressing Bilderverbot: back to Babylon ; Prussia's Assyria: in search of an organic essence ; The lion of Babylon in the age of the work of art ; Symbol, ornament, art: figures of the counter-enlightenment -- Architecture in the museum: monuments of a mass spectacle : The altar and its frames ; Berlin's museum war ; A total vision: Theodor Wiegand's 'living people's museum' ; Reproductions without originals? -- Epilogue : Regimes of the authentic : The master of the copies ; The rank and file: bureaucracies of the authentic ; Tableaux vivants: performing the aura.

"[This book] is a critical biography of Berlin's Pergamon Museum and its popular architectural displays: the Great Altar of Pergamon, the Market Gate of Miletus, and the Ishtar Gate of Babylon. [The author] argues that the museum has produced a modern décor, an iconic image, which has replaced the lost ancient monuments rather than creating an explicitly hypothetical representation of antiquity. Addressing the dilemmas raised by the continuing presence of these displays, which embody the distinctive traits of the artistic and ideological programs of the last two centuries, Bilsel questions what the process of reproduction and authentication of antiquity in the museum tells us about our changing perceptions of historic monuments. Documenting the process through which these imaginative reproductions of architecture were conceived, staged, and came to be perceived as authentic monuments, this volume offers an insight into the history of Berlin's Museum Island and the shifting regimes of the authentic in museum displays from the 19th century to the present."--Book jacket.