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This article engages with current approaches to collecting born-digital objects in museums of art and design and reflects on the analysis of two case studies concerned with the respective acquisitions of a virtual reality artwork and a mobile app. The authors point to their non-standard preservation requirements and their unconventional objecthood to advocate for the value of adopting an experimental attitude to collecting. The case studies invite us to reconsider experimentation within the context of sensitive dialogic processes with creators and users who are unfamiliar with the conventions of museum collecting. Hence, the boundaries of experimentations are developed in relation to existing policies, organisational structures and practices, and defined by the stakes of multiple actors. To conclude, the authors argue that collecting institutions should prioritise building capacity and understanding needs and requirements for this emergent type of object, and embrace uncertainty over the imperative of long-term preservation in its fullest sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The end of entailed estates, or 'mayorazgos', in Spain brought about an unprecedented movement of art objects, although paradoxically the dispersal of art collections also gave rise to a renewed valuation of their restoration as a way to symbolize the restoration of the 'mayorazgo'. The legislation that ended the status of the 'mayorazgo' also gave rise to the proliferation of documentation on collections, often resulting in their reordering in a way that reflected the new paradigms of the institutionalization of the arts. This paper will shed light on the strategies adopted by the dukes of Alba at this complex crossroads, as they navigated the uncharted waters of managing an art collection during and immediately following its disentailment, balancing financial interests and cultural distinction in the transition from the Old to the New Regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Museums with historical art collections present the history of their art in different ways. This article distinguishes five typologies, based on the methods used by history teachers and the educational model of George E. Hein ([1998]. Learning in the Museum. London: Routledge). The past-oriented presentation concentrates on the history of the artworks and opts for a didactic, explanatory educational model. The present-oriented presentation uses old artworks to illuminate present-day issues. A variant is the ideological presentation, which aims not only to explain art like the present-oriented strategy but also to propagate a particular ideology. These politics of display use behaviorist stimulus-response methods. Postmodern presentations concentrate on the history of the artworks' reception over time, and emphasize the difference between the art objects from the past and the objects' history. Their favorite educational form is constructivism. This is also the case for the metamodern presentation, which makes inter-historical connections between old and new art works possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital technology advancements have had a significant impact on how people learn, search for information, and evaluate it. Indian cultural heritage institutions like GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) have also embraced a number of digitisation initiatives to increase access to their wide-ranging art collections. Digital paintings and other cultural heritage information artifacts can facilitate digital humanities research in multiple ways. Using an online content analysis and observation method, this study looks at how metadata elements are used to describe the different art collections in five national museums in India. The study finds that 13 categories of art objects are made available by all the museums. Each category is described by a different number of metadata entry elements. The study also finds the metadata elements that different museums prefer for different types of art objects, as well as the common elements. The findings highlight the need for standardisation in metadata practices to improve the discoverability and accessibility of cultural objects and show how crucial metadata is in facilitating access to cultural objects. The results could help GLAMs create metadata guidelines and strategies for their digital collections, which would make digital art objects more discoverable and accessible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay presents the first critical overview of the collection and display of art objects acquired by the Venetian nobleman Andrea di Nicolò Loredan (1450–1513). It focuses on the decoration of three key sites maintained by the Loredan clan: the governor's palace in Brescia, the location and contents of which are here identified for the first time; the Loredan palace on the Grand Canal in Venice; and the Loredan funerary chapel in the church of San Michele in Isola in the Venetian lagoon. Examination of Titian's grandiose easel painting the 'Flight into Egypt' (c.1507), recently discovered to have played a crucial role within the Loredan palace, helps to elucidate the range of material and devotional agendas of the art possessed by Andrea. Critical reconstruction of the Loredan collection is achieved through fresh attention to archival records, and a little-known panegyric (1504) by the Brescian friar Martino Codagnello. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple factors influence the degree of completeness of any thematic collection, such as a biological collection encompassing any natural group, but even any collection of man-made items (including art collections and object collections) that encompass any specific theme. The concept of “completeness” itself is both subjective, inasmuch as it may refer to any purpose unilaterally defined by the collector, and objective, inasmuch as that purpose includes an exhaustive coverage of the actual diversity inherent in the chosen group. In a general sense, also the factors (or “conditions”) that exert their influence on the collection process can be grouped in two dimensions: objective (availability)and subjective (desirability). The former, quantitatively ranging from rarity to abundance, is subject to collection bias as scientifically defined, while the latter defines the subjective aims of the collector. Both are influenced by cognitive biases, whose discussion is beyond the scope of this short paper, meant just to provide a graphical representation, based on logical Venn diagrams, of those main conditions, and to elucidate the discrete categories at the intersection of the observed sets of items. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines polyvalent reasons for the use of found objects by contemporary Zimbabwean artists. Data were generated through ethnographic interviews, observations, and analysis of textile artworks and sculptures by five contemporary artists. Results indicate that found objects can be up cycled to create artworks that attract international acclaim, which are subsequently exhibited in prestigious art galleries and museums. The use of found objects in the Zimbabwean context is often a response to the high cost and shortage of art materials. The study recommends the exploration of found objects as alternative art media to encourage environmental sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In-depth studies of the manufacture and composition of late nineteenth century Korean lacquerware from the Joseon dynasty are underrepresented in the English-language literature. This article, the first to offer a comprehensive layer-by-layer analysis of late Joseon dynasty lacquerware, shows that these objects are made using a mixture of traditional lacquerware techniques and materials together with new materials and methods. Through conservation and analysis of four lacquerware objects from the exhibition Mother-of-Pearl Lacquerware from Korea at the Asian Art Museum (29 April–23 October 2016), we identify the materials and techniques used in manufacture and present a new technique to allow conservators to compensate for losses of ray skin inlay. Our discovery that artists used shellac at multiple stages during manufacture calls into question the assumption that shellac was used only as a surface coating. Our findings demonstrate the material and technological complexity of Korean lacquerware from this period and can inform efforts at conservation and analysis of similar objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What happens to a library in the desert? How does it transform as a material object under these pressures, and what might these transformations tell us about its capacity for bearing and registering history? This article considers these questions in relation to the artist Noah Purifoy's found-object installation Library of Congress , one of approximately thirty works that make up the ten-acre space of the Noah Purifoy Desert Art Museum of Assemblage Art in Joshua Tree, California. The museum consists of a wide range of found-object sculptures, all deeply enmeshed within the space of the desert. The museum, and indeed Purifoy's work as a whole, are deeply invested in a complex social and political dialogue with assemblage and thing theory of the sort popularized by Bill Brown and Jane Bennett, constellating objects within space as a way of mapping the shape of postwar Blackness. Library in particular consciously asks what happens to the racial stakes of assemblage when the things in question are books and the site in question is a library. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Intus-Legere Historia is the property of Intus-Legere Historia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

At the beginning of the 1930s, Ernst Waldschmidt and his wife Rose set off on a two-year acquisition trip to Sri Lanka and India on behalf of the Berlin Museum fur Vólkerkunde. Since then, more than 400 mainly decorative art objects and textiles have expanded the Indian department of the museum. During this time, the Waldschmidts kept a detailed work diary, which is preserved together with letters and other archive material at the Asian Art Museum Berlin, as a unique source for researching the underlying ambitions and the acquisitions themselves. The aim of the article is to present these documents and to give access to some of the acquisition contexts of the Waldschmidt Collection to the public. Due to the size of the collection, the essay concentrates on the exhibited objects of the Asian Art Museum Berlin, revealing dealer contacts and acquisition strategies and trying to show the difficulties that arise while researching the provenances of larger collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article aims to study the deaccession and acquisition of a Byzantine artefact today held in the collection at Dumbarton Oaks, an ivory plaque depicting the Incredulity of Thomas. The object’s previous provenance will be examined as well as the interests of the two parties involved in its exchange, as well as the agents entangled in this transaction and its consequences for the collecting strategy of the American buyers, Mildred Barnes Bliss and Robert Woods Bliss. The fate of this Byzantine artifact depicting the incredulity of Thomas shall shed light on the nationalistic policy followed by German museums in the 1930s, as well as on American collecting patterns that took advantage of this policy. The museum and academic character of the Incredulity plaque in the 1930s was rich in contrast. Firstly, it existed as a non-German decorative arts object in a museum that had grown to prioritize German fine arts, where it thus played a minor role. At the same time, this piece had gradually been discussed, displayed and reproduced in groundbreaking publications in the field of Byzantine art, increasingly gaining recognition among scholars. The nationalistic tendencies that only increased after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 would eventually change the Incredulity plaque’s fate as part of the GNM collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zbornik is the property of Museum of Applied Art and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article aims to show the transformation in the way African art is displayed in museums which has taken place over the last few decades. Over the last 70 years, from the second half of the twentieth century, the field of African Art studies, as well as the forms taken by art exhibitions, have changed considerably. Since W. Rubin's controversial exhibition Primitivism in 20th Century Art at MoMA (1984), art originating from Africa has begun to be more widely presented in museums with a strictly artistic profile, in contrast to the previous exhibitions which were mostly located in ethnographical museums. This could be the result of the changes that have occurred in the perception of the role of museums in the vein of new museology and the concept of a "curatorial turn" within museology. But on the other hand, it seems that the recognition of the artistic values of old and contemporary art from the African continent allows art dealers to make large profits from selling such works. This article also considers the evolution of the idea of African art as a commodity and the modern form of presentations of African art objects. The current breakthrough exhibition at the Bode Museum in Berlin is thoroughly analysed. This exhibition, entitled Beyond compare, presents unexpected juxtapositions of old works of European art and African objects of worship. Thus, the major purpose of this article is to present various benefits of shifting meaning from "African artefacts" to "African objects of art," and therefore to relocate them from ethnographic museums to art museums and galleries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we discuss the relationship between art and natural objects such as stuffed animals, skins, bones, dried plants or minerals and their aesthetical value from their position as artworks or elements of an artwork. In Cluj, between 2017 and 2019, artworks and exhibitions which integrate this type of practices and natural history materiality flourished. We aim to compose an inventory that could contribute to the archive of local art events, artworks, and artists in order to serve further analysis of local specificity, which could eventually find relevance in the theoretic approaches of art. In conclusion, we underline some of the theoretical approaches of the dynamics of natural object's values and of the procedures established by organizations such as museums and galleries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The exhibition 17/71 with the theme ” Goresan Juang Kemerdekaan” or “The Scratch for Independent Struggles” was held from the 17th to the 30th of August 2016 at the Indonesian National Gallery in Jakarta. The showroom combined multiple visual elements, including shape, symbol, lines of narration, and color. The most influential element was the color management. The exhibition presented collections of Indonesian art paintings focusing on the Indonesian struggle for independence, and included paintings from Indonesian artists as well as foreign contributions. This paper offers an overview of the effectiveness and contribution to the overall appeal of the exhibition of the colour management techniques. The researcher used qualitative and semiotic methods to demonstrate that the meaning of color and its symbol of strength have become the potential reference for management of art objects collection in the showrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Felix Ganz was a businessman from Mainz in southwest Germany. He was managing director of Ludwig Ganz AG, a carpet and textile company. Felix Ganz was also an art collector with a substantial collection of art objects from the Middle East and East Asia. As soon as the National Socialists came to power, Ganz (though baptised a Protestant) was persecuted as Jew. In 1934, his company was "aryanized", in 1941 his home was seized and in 1942 Ganz and his second wife Erna (née Benfey) were deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp. In 1944, the couple was murdered in Auschwitz. Even though his three children survived, the art collection had disappeared, and only a rough description of the items from restitution claims remains. The aim of the project presented in this article is it to reconstruct the scope and character of Felix Ganz' art collection and to research the mechanisms of its dispersion between 1933 and 1945 as well as the location of the objects today. The article was co-authored by the great-grandson of Felix Ganz and a French-German art historian specialising in provenance research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The valuation and display of African art in museum contexts entails contrasting strategies of objectification. In this process, objects may be used as material evidence for larger cultural trends and new movements. This essay examines the role of curatorial networks in creating discourses about African art objects that reframe their cultural significance and economic value. These curatorial networks are treated as a habitus for the art and a discursive framework for its valuation. This analysis builds upon a taxonomic nodal model, which may be used to identify the reconfiguration of museum discourses, curatorial knowledge, and markets for artistic circulation. Two case studies, examining the paintings of Congolese artist Tshibumba Kanda Matulu (1947–circa 1981) from the 1970s and the collection of legendary Malian photographer Seydou Keïta (1921–2001) from the 1960s and the 1970s, demonstrate how curatorial networks reframe the circulation and evidential status of African art over time. The article concludes with an assessment of repatriation claims with relationship to a framework for analyzing the evidential claims of museums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern research of museum archaeological collections, their attribution and digitizing are relevant questions of science, culture, and education in the world. The paper presents archaeological materials of the Siberian Upper Paleolithic sites Mal'ta and Buret' and the ways of their systematization and documentation in a form of an information system on the internet. The system has a full-fledged item attribution, scientific description and extensive multimedia support including 3D models and macro photographs. The collections were obtained during the excavations under the direction of M. M. Gerasimov and A. P. Okladnikov, carried out in the early to mid-20th century; the unique artifacts from the collections are kept in the funds of various museums in different cities of Russia (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Irkutsk) in a scattered and unsystematic form. Our project is aimed to the developing of the documentation of unique items from the collection of the Upper Paleolithic Mal'ta-Buret' archaeological culture and presenting the results in a systematic way with visual materials. The collection includes a number of anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, ornithomorphic figurines, ornamented discs and plates, as well as items of personal ornamentation, and other unique artefacts. As part of the project, we took photographs and macro photographs of the objects, their 3D models using the photogrammetry method, made a detailed description and collected all available publications on them, both modern and the earliest. The art objects of the fragmented collection are systematized and presented in the form of a single virtual collection on the Internet -- Information System of Mal'ta and Buret' Mobile Art. Descriptions, photographic images and three-dimensional models of objects, the results of microscopic studies and trace analysis have been published. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In October 2018, the Aga Khan Museum was invited to contribute to the conference 'Properties of Things: Collective Knowledge and Objects of the Museum', sponsored by Ryerson and Mount Allison Universities. The event was conceived to throw an innovative, and intellectually bold, multidisciplinary spotlight onto curatorship within a museum context, and to engender discussions around the multifarious ways in which objects might be re-considered, re-contextualised, and re-interpreted for the benefit of and in line with the interests of a broad, contemporary public. What follows is a summary of the conceptual considerations and questions that underpinned the workshop explorations the Museum devised for four distinct display contexts: the Bellerive Room, the Permanent Collection Gallery, and two temporary exhibitions on show at the time: Emperors and Jewels - Treasures of the Indian Courts from the Al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait and Transforming Traditions, an exploration of the arts of nineteenth-century Iran. Coming from the overarching question of how to democratize interpretative object narratives beyond rigid discipline-imposed taxonomies and parameters, and somewhat provocatively entitled, 'Whose Object is it Anyway?', the workshops proposed four different ways of contemplating the multi-layered and often shifting meanings and identities of Islamic art objects in a museum context, at the same time raising awareness of the challenges associated with the recovering, restoring and communicating of object narratives lost or neglected across time and space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the collection of prisoners' objects displayed at the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum for the exhibition "The Humanitarian Adventure." It says that the objects are made by conflict-related detainees and given to the members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The role of the objects are also discussed including the comb made in Ansar Camp in Lebanon, the guitar at Machava Prison, and the sculpture made by Htein Lin.

B On the Cover: b Neo-Assyrian openwork furniture ivory plaque with a rearing goat from Nimrud. Photograph © Metropolitan Museum of Art; object no. 61.197.6. [Extracted from the article]

An essay is presented on the approaches used by scholars in encountering, understanding, and studying decorative arts in the discipline of art history. It examines the factors that caused the separation between high art and the decorative arts in the field of scholarship and in many modern museums. It also explains the ecological approach used by scholars to study early modern furniture, textiles, and decorative objects that recognize the interrelatedness of art and decorative arts.

This study aims to investigate how, and the extent to which, different interpretation techniques (e.g. visual, verbal and interactive) at a cultural heritage museum affect children's behaviour, associated with their engagement with interpretive materials and their understanding of the content and its key ideas and messages presented as cultural lessons. An exploratory study with classes of primary-school-aged children, adopting a qualitative method including observation and post-visit in-depth interviews, was carried out. The results did not indicate any discernible difference between the types of interpretation technique used, with regard to their interaction with the site, or their understanding of the museum's content. Rather, it is the circumstances under which the interpretation techniques were used by the children. Two main variations in the way that the children interacted with their peers and the interpretation were found to affect the level of understanding of different stories, and female and male children showed generalised preferences for different forms of behaviour. How these behavioural patterns impacted on their understanding of the interpretation and meanings of the displayed objects at the museum is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how the topic of ‘Orientalism’ is addressed by art museum actors as part of practices implicated in exhibition development. The author demonstrates how different articulations of the ‘art object’ emerge as unfolding epistemic objects through which actors work to manage their working relationships and the uncertainties and risks that transpire during the exhibition development process from tackling notions of ‘difference’. She argues that these competing material and performative configurations of the ‘art object’ shape contingent forms of action, knowledge and agency, and are aligned to, and resourceful for, professional practices, identity and expertise. These configurations influence how ‘difference’ is addressed and managed as part of ‘cultural diversity’ initiatives in the art museum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the disturbing of fine arts with objects at display in art galleries. It offers information on the role of curator, spectator and the author among others that have suffered speculative shifts due to the unassisted readymades of artist Marcel Duchamp. The author focuses on the differences between readymade and handmade objects of craft.

This paper reports the work in process of the interaction design space of a digital interface created to exhibit online a Pre-Hispanic collection. The digital interface that is being created will be used to display online the most representative archaeological objects from 'El Museo de Antropología de Xalapa'. This museum, located in Mexico, exhibits about 1,500 artefacts, from a total collection of 29,000, which were created by the Pre-Hispanic cultures that developed in the Gulf of Mexico, before the arrival of the Spaniards to Mexico in 1519. The paper describes the design phases that were followed for the design thinking, as well as the theory and the methods used for the development of the interaction design space. Additionally, it presents some examples of the digital interactions that are afforded in the digital interface, by presenting the design of the first digital interactive prototype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A standard comprehension of curatorial practice is conditioned upon the organizing of relations between objects and meaning, between art and its perception and between objects and other objects. A widespread tendency established in a culture of critique in art and curatorial practice responds to this primacy of the organizational by retreating from it by producing 'open frameworks of interaction' in the hope that this naturalism will secure itself away from what it sees to be problematic instrumentalism of the image. This attitude is underscored, moreover, in practices where the horror of a conscious inability to make this retreat is further standardized in ironic forms of production that correlate a theory of constraint to the materialities of economic dominance. This article argues that both these responses to meaning meet at the same terminus, impoverishing the image and its potential. Looking to and setting out some further problems within Quentin Meillassoux's speculative materialism, this text seeks to move past these problematic realisms to examine the possibility for a future of the image without limits, asking first whether this thinking is possible, and if it is, what this demands for our understanding of its politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article was written in conjunction with my production of the Morris Kitsch Archive. The archive contains 530 images, largely drawn from the Internet, of commercial objects decorated with William Morris patterns. I excluded objects that been produced in multiples with different patterns, and objects that claim to be inspired or influenced by Morris but where a Morris design is not identifiable. The images are individually laminated in A4 sheets and hung thematically in a grid. Morris Kitsch Archive was first shown as part of Have Nothing in your Houses That You Do Not Know to Be Useful, or Believe to Be Beautiful at Leo Kamen Gallery, Toronto, February 21-March 21, 2009. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces three new attributions made in the group of foreign art over the past five years. It illustrates the research work conducted by the National Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis Art Museum and opens opportunities to integrate the data of discoveries into reinterpretation, evaluation and exhibition of the works of art under discussion. Such first discovery was made about the exhibit from Mykolas Žilinskas collection, a painting Lot and His Daughters, which is now attributed to the painter Bartolomeo Guidobono (1654-1709) from Northern Italy. The new attribution was made in 2003 by the Italian art expert Marco Riccomini, corroborated by the data from the archive M. Žilinskas, conclusions made in 1960 by Professor Hermann Voss. The information on the real author of the painting, biographical data and illustrations presented in his monograph, provided the opportunity to compare this painting against other versions of the same subject. There were differences identified to provide new impetus to semantic interpretations which, in turn, established chronological shifts in the artist's interpretation of the theme, leading, eventually, to preliminary dating of the work in M. Žilinskas collection. The second new discovery is a pastelwork of Claude Pougino de Saint Aubin (prior to 1730-1783), Portrait Jean-Josepho Chabaille d'Auvigny de Morinval. Its attribution and iconography was verified by the English specialist Neil Jeffares. The investigation established that the pastel work should be attributed to Claude Pougino de Saint Aubin, versus Augustin, the identity of the person portrayed was also specified. It also turned out that the work under discussion is the only in the world known pastel work by the artist with its location now established. The uniqueness of the work of art has promoted it to a new level of evaluation; with new weight of significance added, it emerged among the best works of the collection. The third discovery was the Armenian artist Makhokhian (1869-1937) whose canvas The Stormy Sea is safeguarded in the collection of M. Žilinskas. Our previously limited knowledge of the artist was widened by new biographical data provided in 2005 by the art researcher from Armenia Ara Hakobjan, involved, at the time, in writing a monograph on the artist. The information provided opportunities for stylistic or biographic comparisons (parallels in his life and art provide for comparison with these of M. K. Čiurlionis) and helped to date the work, prompting, by the same token, insights regarding exhibition projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Es presenten els estàndards i projectes principals relacionats amb la descripció d’obres d’art. En la primera part del treball s’analitzen els estàndards de descripció, catalogació i validació de les dades (vocabularis controlats) i en la segona es presenten cinc projectes presents a Internet (Object ID, MOAC, AMICO, Joconde i ACH) que empren alguns dels estàndards comentats. En les conclusions es posa de manifest l’oportunitat que suposa l’ús de les tecnologies de la informació per descriure les obres d’art, i es constata la manca de consolidació dels estàndards.The major standards and projects related to the description of works of art are presented. The first part of the article presents standards for description, cataloguing and validation of data (controlled vocabularies); the second part introduces five Internet-based projects (Object ID, MOAC, AMICO, Joconde and ACH) that employ some of these standards. The article concludes by stressing the opportunities presented by the use of information technologies in describing works of art while, at the same time, noting the lack of consolidation of the standards.Se presentan los principales estándares y proyectos relacionados con la descripción de obras de arte. Enla primera parte del trabajo se analizan los estándares de descripción, catalogación y validación de datos (vocabularios controlados) y en la segunda se presentan cinco proyectos presentes en Internet (Object ID, MOAC, AMICO, Joconde y ACH) que utilizan alguno de los estándares comentados. En las conclusiones se pone de manifiesto la oportunidad que supone el uso de las tecnologías de la información en la descripción de las obras de arte, y se constata también la falta de consolidación de los estándares.

The relationship between Madame Tussaud's waxworks and the phenomenon of renown is close but remains hitherto unexamined. Studying the historic changes in this and previous waxwork exhibitions, however, reveals shifts in the underlying concepts of renown since the late 1600s. The most prominent shifts are from the baroque 'hero' to the grand homme of the Enlightenment, and from the 'great man' to the 'celebrity' in the nineteenth century. Madame Tussaud can be attributed with popularizing the Enlightenment idea of the 'great man' in Britain and with including in her exhibition the first media celebrities, whose renown she reinforced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the art exhibition "Picasso and Africa," at the Standard Bank Gallery on February 10 to March 19, 2006 and at the Iziko South African National Gallery in South Africa on April 13 to May 21, 2006.