Cemeteries as Museums, Museums as Cemeteries: Exhibiting Funerary Sculpture in Spain, ca. 1880 to the present

The nineteenth-century idea that cemeteries are 'museums of sculpture’ has, today, become a cliché, and is often used as away of packaging a visitor experience which is otherwise difficult to classify or sell. This paper critically examines some of the interrelations and differences between the...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autor: Sharpe, Chloe Marie Monique
Tipo de documento: capítulo de livro
Data de publicação:2019
País:España
Recursos:Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Repositório:Docta Complutense
Idioma:inglês
OAI Identifier:oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/112859
Acesso em linha:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/112859
Access Level:Acceso aberto
Palavra-chave:069.01
Museum
Cemetery
Spain
Monument
Museología
5101.06 Museología
Descrição
Resumo:The nineteenth-century idea that cemeteries are 'museums of sculpture’ has, today, become a cliché, and is often used as away of packaging a visitor experience which is otherwise difficult to classify or sell. This paper critically examines some of the interrelations and differences between these two institutions - cemetery and museum - as spaces for the exhibition of figurative sculpture in Spain, focusing on the powerful fact that cemeteries are repositories not only of sculpted bodies, but of dead ones. I discuss how funerary sculpture was adapted and re-worked for exhibition in conventional art spaces, and consider the corresponding shifts in meaning. I also examine examples of highly 'mobile' works of funerary sculpture, which have been repeatedly de-contextualised and re-contextualised as they have moved between cemeteries, museums and art exhibitions, gaining or losing real bodies in the process.