Florence 1st October 2019 Institut français de Florence/ Museo Stibbert
Conference organized by Sabine du Crest, Maître de conférences en Histoire de l’art, Bordeaux Montaigne University, Centre Pariset, FF The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (Villa I Tatti).
Border spaces. The residence as a work of art
In partnership with the Institut français of Florence, Bordeaux Montaigne University (Centre Pariset) and the Museo Stibbert, this meeting aims to focus on one of the exhibition’s axes, Si loin si proche. The Esotismo negli interni europei tra Ottocento e Novecento scheduled at the Museo Stibbert from April to September 2021 and curated by Sabine of Crest. We will be particularly interested here in the most extreme case, that of the residence as a work of art, following Walter Benjamin’s idea of a transfiguration of the objects introduced into his interior by the collector (Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century, Passages (1939), 1993).
This approach will contribute to the study of collections and collectors by providing an original point of view, that of the “border spaces” –these private European places inhabited by objects from elsewhere- and composing an in-between particularly revealing of the relationship to Otherness in Europe during this period. The reasons which push some people, even on the Grand Tour way, to want the other close to them and to make it the lifetime work must be explored particularly considering the family situation and the fashion of the time, in order to define them in terms of gap or agreement. After the art history material turn, this topic will be addressed in the light of today crucial issues of transfer or displacement, of interaction between local and global, between container and content.
Indeed, although many and often spectacular border spaces have been formed by their owners who have created living places where objects from the antipodes coexist, confront with the house or fill it obsessively (S. du Crest ( Ed.), Si loin si proche. Objets d’ailleurs dans les intérieurs européens, 1870-2015 Photographies, Bordeaux, Musée d’Ethnographie, 18 November 2015-27 May 2016, Rome, Gangemi, 2015), some of them, rarer, compose a whole entirely devoted to the reception, display and staging of the most foreign and strangers objects, making their entire residence a work of art. This was the case of Frédérick Stibbert (1838-1906) in his villa in Montughi, and Pierre Loti (1850-1923) in Rochefort, Victor Hugo (1802-1885) in Guernsey or Edmond de Goncourt (1822-1896) and d’Ennery (1823-1898) in Paris.
To better situate this lifetime achievement and the specificities of the Florentine approach, we will focus on two major French examples recently redesigned. For the Goncourt case, the speaker will be Geneviève Lacambre, curator of the famous exhibition Japonisme (Paris, 1988) and author of “La Maison d’un artiste” by Edmond de Goncourt. La collection d’art japonais et chinois (Paris, 2018). The Hugo case will be analyzed, following the exhibition Portrait d’une maison. Chez Victor Hugo. Hauteville House (February 7-April 14, 2019, Paris, Maison de Victor Hugo), by Gérard Audinet. To broaden the scope of the discussion, will also participate in the round table Giuseppe Scaraffia (University Roma La Sapienza), author of Torri d’Avorio. Interni di scrittori francesi del XIX secolo (1994) and Cristina Cassina (University of Pisa), founder and editor-in-chief of Suite française, online magazine of French-speaking culture (number 2- 2019 “Maison Balzac“).
Program
9.30-12.00 : Museo Stibbert
Le cas Stibbert : la constitution d’une maison-musée florentine
-9.30 Présentation par Enrico Colle, Soprintendente del Museo Stibbert
-10.00 Gli ambienti di villa Stibbert e i loro arredi extraeuropei par Martina
Becattini, Conservateur des arts décoratifs et des peintures, Museo Stibbert
-10.45 L’armeria Stibbert tra medio ed estremo Oriente par Riccardo Franci, Conservateur de l’armurerie, Museo Stibbert
14.-18.00 : Palazzo Lenzi, Institut français de Florence
De Paris à Guernesey et Florence : intérieurs frontière européens
-14.00 Accueil par Manon Hanseman, Consule honoraire de France et directrice de l’IFF
-14.15 Le cas Goncourt : La maison du collectionneur par Geneviève Lacambre, Conservateur général h du patrimoine
-15.00 Le cas Hugo : Portrait d’une maison par Gérard Audinet, Conservateur général du patrimoine, directeur des Maisons Victor Hugo
-15.45 Evasioni d’Oriente negli interni fiorentini della seconda metà dell’Ottocento par Enrico Colle, Soprintendente del Museo Stibbert
-16.30 Interni frontiera europei tra Ottocento e Novecento par Sabine du Crest, Université Bordeaux Montaigne
-17.15 Table ronde avec Giuseppe Scaraffia, Université Roma La Sapienza et Cristina Cassina, Université de Pisa
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