Recent funding will enable collaboration between classicists and museum curators, and shape a major re-display of Greek and Roman art and archaeology.
Recent funding will enable collaboration between classicists and museum curators, and shape a major re-display of Greek and Roman art and archaeology.
The project will put people back into the history of art and provide an important opportunity to integrate The Fitzwilliam’s collections into the study of classics in Cambridge,
Lucilla Burn
Scholars from The Fitzwilliam Museum and Faculty of Classics have won a major Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) grant to undertake research that will underpin the re-display of the Museum’s Greek and Roman collections. The three-year project grant funds a full-time research assistant and aims to bring university-based research in classical art and archaeology into conversation with museum-based display practices.
Traditional museum displays of Greek and Roman material tend to privilege either a chronological or a thematic approach. The former offers a stylistic history of Greek and Roman art that plays down the original context and nature of the objects, while the latter presents these objects as though transparent evidence for ‘daily life’. Both leave out of the picture the role of collectors in shaping museum collections.
Recent research has exposed the inadequacy of seeing the history of art purely in terms of stylistic progression, and has improved our understanding of the importance of changing technology, the complexities of workshop practices, and the role of ancient markets in influencing production. The Fitzwilliam re-display offers an opportunity to re-assess the collections both in the light of these advances and as collections.
‘The project will put people back into the history of art and provide an important opportunity to integrate The Fitzwilliam’s collections into the study of classics in Cambridge,’ explained Dr Lucilla Burn, Keeper of Antiquities and Principal Investigator. ‘It will also provide the Faculty with both the opportunity to engage with actual objects and a broader public forum in which to share and transfer their knowledge and expertise,’ added Professor Robin Osborne who, with Dr Caroline Vout and Professor Mary Beard, represents the Faculty of Classics component of the project.
The research will be disseminated to the public in an online public-access catalogue and new web pages for "virtual" visitors. Talks, workshops and family activities drawing on the research will also be an important part of the Museum’s education provision for children and adults.
For more information, please contact The Fitzwilliam Museum (www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk).
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