Universal Histories and Universal Museums: A Transnational Comparison

‌Arts and Humanities Research Council and LABEX, Research Grants

Project Leads: Professor Sandra Kemp (AHRC) and Professor Hervé Inglebert (LABEX)

Image: Interior of The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations in Hyde Park, London, England, 1851 (Alamy Stock Photo ID BYEATN).

This research project and digital exhibition (Universal Histories website), was funded by the AHRC and Labex “past in the present’, with co-investigator Professor Hervé Inglebert, Professor of Roman History at the University Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense: .

The project commenced at the V&A (V&A Research Project Universal Histories) and continues at Lancaster University, ('Universal Histories and Universal Museums' research project).

Through transnational perspectives on museum collections, the project examined how history is made, displayed and disseminated through the uses, legacies and representations of the past. It explored the role of the museum in building knowledge about the future through collections, display and relations with publics.

Blog: https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/universalhistories/blog/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/universalmuseum

The first phase of the project combined critical investigation through four workshops and two historical case studies, based in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Musée du quai Branly. The second phase considered the influence of social knowledge practices on the structuring of universal knowledge and how thinking about the past helps us to prepare for a global future that incorporates more diverse universalities. What kinds of history do we want or need today? The project’s second phase consolidated the research through an international conference, publications and digitisation of key archival resources timed to align with the opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi - a contemporary universal museum.

In its current phase the project is continuing the research on temporality, interdisciplinarity and the museum through examination of proleptic objects.

For more information, see the Universal Histories project website.