Travel, collecting, and museums of Asian art in nineteenth-century Paris

Abstract

"Travel, Collecting, and Museums of Asian Art in Nineteenth-Century Paris examines transnational relations and intercultural exchange between modern Europe and Asia. At the core of the study are three major collectors, Enrico (Henri) Cernuschi, Emile Guimet, and Edmond de Goncourt, whose practices are analyzed to illuminate a larger history of East-West contact. The book takes an original approach that includes such overlooked issues as the impact of monetary histories and theories on European collections of Asian objects; the somatics of travel; collecting, writing, and display as polymorphous narratives of identity. Travel is a framing argument. By examining European reports of journeys through Asia and also diaries of Japanese and Chinese visitors to Europe in the nineteenth century the book highlights the social relations and foreign labors that are constitutive of museums but typically left out of analysis."--

Contents

The historical terms of Euro-Asian object acquisition -- Gold, silver, and bronze: Cernuschi's collection and reappraisals of Europe and Asia -- The labor of travel: Guimet and Régamey in Asia -- Equivalence and inversion: France, Japan, and China in Goncourt's Cabinet.