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The Aesthetics and Politics of Colonial Collecting: India at World Fairs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Carol A. Breckenridge
Carol A. Breckenridge
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

In the second half of the nineteenth century, objects from India were repeatedly assembled for display at international exhibitions, known then and now as world fairs. Their transience and ephemerality set world fairs apart as extraordinary phenomena in the world of collecting. They are special because, despite the permanence they imply, they do not last; they come and they go. Their buildings are constructed, and then, by international charter, they are deconstructed. They are also special because they place objects in the service of commerce and in the service of the modern nation—state, with the inevitable imperial encounters that these two forces promote. In doing so, they yoke cultural material with aesthetics, politics and pragmatics.

Type
The World on Exhibition
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , April 1989 , pp. 195 - 216
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1989

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