Stevenson, Alice;
(2025)
Contemporary Art and the Display of Ancient Egypt.
UCL Press: London, UK.
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Abstract
Artistic interventions are now a popular means of delivering fresh perspectives on museum displays, including in galleries devoted to ancient Egypt. Installations are commonly said to put the past and present ‘into dialogue’ with each other, offering external critical voices on the work of decolonisation. Contemporary Art and the Display of Ancient Egypt argues that the contemporary and the ancient do not necessarily inform each other. Instead they are mediated by, and mediations of, the museum that produces them. Rather than explore how contemporary artists have been inspired by Egypt, this book examines how they have shaped the language and discourse around study of the Egyptian past by looking at the wider field of public display in which both have been historically situated. Building on this critical history of practice, the book draws from experiments in bringing contemporary artistic sculptures, conceptual pieces, multimedia films, sounds, smells and performances into galleries: at the British Museum in London, the Egyptian Museum in Turin and the State Museum of Egyptian Art in Munich. These are used to explore what contemporary art does in these spaces, the motivations for inviting artists in, and the legacies of those interventions. It ends with a reflection on how academics and curators can be involved in the creative process and how artists contribute to academic research.
| Type: | Book |
|---|---|
| Title: | Contemporary Art and the Display of Ancient Egypt |
| ISBN-13: | 9781800087576 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.14324/111.9781800087576 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800087576 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Text © Author, 2025 Images © Author and copyright holders named in captions, 2025 Any third-party material in this book is not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence. Details of the copyright ownership and permitted use of third-party material are given in the image (or extract) credit lines. If you would like to reuse any third-party material not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright owner. This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc/4.0/. This licence allows you to share and adapt the work for non-commercial use providing attribution is made to the author and publisher (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work) and any changes are indicated. Attribution should include the following information: Stevenson, A. 2025. Contemporary Art and the Display of Ancient Egypt. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800087576 Further details about Creative Commons licen |
| Keywords: | Artist interventions, contemporary art practice, ancient Egyptian art |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Institute of Archaeology UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Institute of Archaeology > Institute of Archaeology Gordon Square |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10202553 |
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