Universal Objects and Universal Museums
Objects, Museums and Universalities
This exhibition has explored how the development of the South Kensington Museum and the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro is closely linked with temporary international exhibitions. The exhibition draws on archival material and collections studied in the ‘Universal Histories and Universal Museums’ research project, and the ways in which histories are accumulated and transformed through objects in museums.
By looking at the history of museum objects and their organisation in institutions both in France and the UK, and beyond, the exhibition has examined how history is made, displayed and disseminated through the uses of interdisciplinary collections.
Today, objects remain gateways to multiple universalities, and museums continue to debate object selection and display in the context of broader ideas of history and society. The recent opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi underlines the currency of questioning ideas of universalities in museums.
This Mughal rock crystal bowl was originally made in the late seventeenth century. In 1867, in London, the jeweller Robert Phillips added the gold mounts as seen by the inscription on the base. Robert Phillips won a medal at the 1867 Universal Exhibition in Paris, where he may also have displayed this bowl. Afterwards, the bowl ended up in the collection of Colonel Charles Seton Guthrie and was sold at auction at Christie’s in 1875. Then, it was bought by Mr Alfred Simson who lent it to the India museum in 1913 and 1919. After his death, his son, Captain Rupert Simson, sold it to the museum in 1920. The bowl then reached the V&A in the 1950s, with the rest of its collection. It is an example of an object shaped by successive reworking (in Mughal India and nineteenth century London), which travelled across exhibitions and collections, an example of craftsmanship with rare and precious materials, an example of Indian art, and an example of new designs. The choices concerning its displays are inextricably linked to the approaches to its history.