Julia Snape
Education
PhD Museology, University of Manchester
Thesis title: Medieval Art on Display 1750-2010
MA Museum Studies, University of Manchester
BA (Hons) History of Art, University of East Anglia
Employment
2015 - 2018 Curatorial Assistant, The Queens’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries, Westminster Abbey
2014-2015 Heritage Assistant Kingston Museum
My principal academic interests are re interpretations of the medieval, specifically the ways in which interpretive strategies, deployed in museum and exhibition settings affect and condition perception and understanding of medieval objects. I am particularly interested in the ways collectors and curators from different historical periods have invited audiences,both private and public, to experience medieval objects in different ways.
I am also passionately interested in objects and the layers of meaning that accrue or diminish when they move from the realms of practical usage to one of supposed inactivity as they enter the collection and the realms of spectacle and display.
PhD Museology, University of Manchester
Thesis title: Medieval Art on Display 1750-2010
MA Museum Studies, University of Manchester
BA (Hons) History of Art, University of East Anglia
Employment
2015 - 2018 Curatorial Assistant, The Queens’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries, Westminster Abbey
2014-2015 Heritage Assistant Kingston Museum
My principal academic interests are re interpretations of the medieval, specifically the ways in which interpretive strategies, deployed in museum and exhibition settings affect and condition perception and understanding of medieval objects. I am particularly interested in the ways collectors and curators from different historical periods have invited audiences,both private and public, to experience medieval objects in different ways.
I am also passionately interested in objects and the layers of meaning that accrue or diminish when they move from the realms of practical usage to one of supposed inactivity as they enter the collection and the realms of spectacle and display.
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The thesis examines sixteen chronologically presented case studies, beginning in the mid eighteenth century and concluding in the early twenty-first century, that represent important or influential episodes in the history of the display of medieval art. It traces a selective history of the various ways medieval objects have been culturally positioned at particular points in time to reveal how curatorial techniques have worked to reinforce or undermine the perception of medieval objects as carriers of specific meanings. Through the examination of historical approaches to the display of medieval objects I reveal how familiar tropes of display, such as the use of specific lighting techniques and stained glass have characterized the museological staging of medieval objects and how these have endured into the twenty-first century. Drawing on performance theory, material culture theory and sensory theory I identify how the biographical histories, material characteristics and sensory properties of medieval objects have been re-activated or suppressed by curators to encourage audiences to engage with them in specific ways. This theoretical approach reveals a previously unacknowledged sensory cultural history of engagement with the medieval object and highlights how historical approaches that have privileged embodied engagement with objects continue to inform contemporary museological practice. I also draw on Actor-Network theory to illuminate how medieval objects may be understood as active agents within the chain of correspondences that links people, objects and exhibitions at particular points throughout this history. In this way I delineate an exhibitionary landscape through which we can understand medieval objects as multi-authored and polysemic entities but principally as the products of exhibitionary practice.
The thesis examines sixteen chronologically presented case studies, beginning in the mid eighteenth century and concluding in the early twenty-first century, that represent important or influential episodes in the history of the display of medieval art. It traces a selective history of the various ways medieval objects have been culturally positioned at particular points in time to reveal how curatorial techniques have worked to reinforce or undermine the perception of medieval objects as carriers of specific meanings. Through the examination of historical approaches to the display of medieval objects I reveal how familiar tropes of display, such as the use of specific lighting techniques and stained glass have characterized the museological staging of medieval objects and how these have endured into the twenty-first century. Drawing on performance theory, material culture theory and sensory theory I identify how the biographical histories, material characteristics and sensory properties of medieval objects have been re-activated or suppressed by curators to encourage audiences to engage with them in specific ways. This theoretical approach reveals a previously unacknowledged sensory cultural history of engagement with the medieval object and highlights how historical approaches that have privileged embodied engagement with objects continue to inform contemporary museological practice. I also draw on Actor-Network theory to illuminate how medieval objects may be understood as active agents within the chain of correspondences that links people, objects and exhibitions at particular points throughout this history. In this way I delineate an exhibitionary landscape through which we can understand medieval objects as multi-authored and polysemic entities but principally as the products of exhibitionary practice.