Universal histories and universal museums

Franco-British project in partnership with the Care for the Future program (Arts & Humanities Research Council - United Kingdom)

Universal histories and universal museums: a transnational comparison

Since the end of the 18th century and co-existing with the philosophical reflection on human rights during the Enlightenment, Western thinkers have developed a corpus of thought about human universality in universal histories and universal museums. The project proposes to study the history of museum collections in order to understand how exactly History is constituted, presented, and imparted through uses, legacies, and representations of the past. The project aims to showcase the constitutive elements of the encyclopedic knowledge of western universalities of humankind, from the 19th century to the present, along with their presuppositions and limits. This will be done with a critical investigation and two case-studies (the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Quai Branly Museum). They will emphasize disciplinary divisions and taxonomies (sciences/arts, history/ethnography), their transformations, and their structuring effects on knowledge to the present. The project’s second phase will consist of a small exhibition, based on the case-studies, articulated by a colloquium.

Project managers

Hervé INGLEBERT , Director of the history department , University Paris Nanterre

Sandra KEMP , Victoria and Albert Museum

Internal cluster partners

• Quai Branly Museum - Jacques Chirac
• Archeologies and Sciences of Antiquity (ArScAn) - UMR 7041

Associated partners

Victoria & Albert Museum London
https://www.vam.ac.uk/

Duration