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dc.contributor.authorFerng, Jennifer H.
dc.date.accessioned2010-07-23T15:37:25Z
dc.date.available2010-07-23T15:37:25Z
dc.date.issued2009-04
dc.identifier.issn0024-094X
dc.identifier.issn1530-9282
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/57451
dc.description.abstractThe spectacular display of industrial products showcased at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in the Crystal Palace is familiar to most enthusiasts of 19thcentury Victorian culture. Using the Great Exhibition as a backdrop to her historical narrative about design reform in Britain, Lara Kriegel restores the significance of labor to the field of cultural history, highlighting how quotidian tradesmen assisted in shaping the ideological missions of once humble institutions such as the modern-day Victoria & Albert Museum in London’s South Kensington. While these educational and political battles raged within studio classrooms and the halls of Parliament, activist teachers of the fine arts such as Benjamin Robert Haydon and Charles Heath Wilson deliberated over the merits of drawing the human figure and Etruscan vases, jockeying for the hearts, minds and pocketbooks of their students in training. The pursuit of genius, as perceived by one of the protagonists, William Dyce of the Government School of Design, was frowned upon, not for its elevation of the individual ego in artistic creation, but for its lack of modesty (and perhaps morality) on the part of the artist in pursuing the “useless” occupation of being a painter. Torn between remaining common men with ordinary tastes and becoming savants who could be assimilated into the proper world of art, these British artisans serve as reminders of those who brought some of the most important Victorian issues of class, economics, education and gender to the attention of their middle-class peers, as well as to contemporary consumers of decorative ornament.en_US
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.publisherMIT Pressen_US
dc.relation.isversionofhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1162/leon.2009.42.2.169en_US
dc.rightsArticle is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.en_US
dc.sourceMIT Pressen_US
dc.titleGrand Designs: Labor, Empire, and the Museum in Victorian Cultureen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US
dc.identifier.citationFerng, Jennifer. “Grand Designs: Labor, Empire, and the Museum in Victorian Culture by Lara Kriegel. Duke University Press, Durham, NC, U.S.A., 2007. 328 pp., illus. Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8223-4051-5. Paper ISBN: 978-0-8223-4072-0.” Leonardo 42.2 (2009): 169-170.en_US
dc.contributor.departmentMassachusetts Institute of Technology. School of Architecture and Planningen_US
dc.contributor.approverFerng, Jennifer H.
dc.relation.journalLeonardoen_US
dc.eprint.versionFinal published versionen_US
dc.type.urihttp://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticleen_US
eprint.statushttp://purl.org/eprint/status/PeerRevieweden_US
dspace.orderedauthorsFerng, Jenniferen
mit.licensePUBLISHER_POLICYen_US
mit.metadata.statusComplete


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