Overview

Once the home of Catherine the Great's private art collection, Russia's State Hermitage Museum became the largest museum in the Soviet Union and, since the collapse of the USSR, one of the most active museums in the world. The Hermitage is a global model for the collection and preservation of fine art, deeply shaped by its need to protect itself and its holdings from the world beyond its gates. In Art of Memories, Vincent Antonin Lépinay documents the Hermitage's curatorial practices in an innovative consideration of the museum as a cultural laboratory. Lépinay analyzes the tensions between the museum as a space of exploration of the collections and as a culture heavily invested in self-protection from the outside world. During a time when traveling abroad was rare, a generation of art historians produced a culture of confined scholarship premised on their proximity to the holdings of a museum enclave. As the Hermitage has become increasingly present on the world museum scene, its culture of secrecy and orality has endured. Lépinay analyzes the ethos of Hermitage curators and scholars over the transition from Soviet to post-Soviet museum cultures, considering the mobility of art, documentation of the collection, and the transformation of expertise. Based on Lépinay's extraordinary access to the Hermitage and the scholars who work there, Art of Memories opens the door of one of the world's great museums to reveal how art history is made. It is an essential study for readers interested in the role that outside forces play in culture, organizations, and the production of knowledge.

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Reviews

This multiperspectival study-directing its analytic arsenal on the sociological, anthropological, and historical components of the Hermitage-is admirable in its refreshing examination of a museum's infrastructure. Art of Memories is full of wit and intellectual surprises. -- Hans-Joerg Rheinberger, author of <i>The Hand of the Engraver: Albert Flocon Meets Gaston Bachelard</i>

In this beautifully written, superbly researched, and theoretically rich book, Lepinay changes the way you will see museums in general and the Hermitage in particular. His account of the worlds of the museum--knit together through objects, people, and documents--illumines the set of complex trajectories and careers which characterize the museum.--Geoffrey C. Bowker, Donald Bren Professor of Information and Computer Sciences, University of California, Irvine This multiperspectival study--directing its analytic arsenal on the sociological, anthropological, and historical components of the Hermitage--is admirable in its refreshing examination of a museum's infrastructure. Art of Memories is full of wit and intellectual surprises.--Hans-J rg Rheinberger, author of The Hand of the Engraver: Albert Flocon Meets Gaston Bachelard

This multiperspectival study--directing its analytic arsenal on the sociological, anthropological, and historical components of the Hermitage--is admirable in its refreshing examination of a museum's infrastructure. Art of Memories is full of wit and intellectual surprises.--Hans-J rg Rheinberger, author of The Hand of the Engraver: Albert Flocon Meets Gaston Bachelard

In this beautifully written, superbly researched, and theoretically rich book, L pinay changes the way you will see museums in general and the Hermitage in particular. His account of the worlds of the museum--knit together through objects, people, and documents--illumines the set of complex trajectories and careers that characterize the museum.--Geoffrey C. Bowker, Donald Bren Professor in Information and Computer Sciences, University of California, Irvine As he did so brilliantly for the back office of a bank in Codes of Finance, here Vincent L pinay goes behind the galleries of one of the world's greatest museums to discover its infrastructures of knowledge. He shows how, across the tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet eras and with various technologies of memory, the Hermitage collected and protected persons and things, curators and collections. In Art of Memories, the museum is a place of exploration, a space of science, and a cultural laboratory.--David Stark, author of The Sense of Dissonance: Accounts of Worth in Economic Life This multiperspectival study--directing its analytic arsenal at the sociological, anthropological, and historical components of the Hermitage--is admirable in its refreshing examination of a museum's infrastructure. Art of Memories is full of wit and intellectual surprises.--Hans-J rg Rheinberger, author of The Hand of the Engraver: Albert Flocon Meets Gaston Bachelard L pinay's ethnographic knowledge of how the staff of St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum tends its collections supports a brilliant, theoretically sophisticated analysis of the way curators maintain the meaning and historical importance of art works. Must reading if you want to understand the social processes that shape our experience of art.--Howard S. Becker, author of Art Worlds

Lepinay's ethnographic knowledge of how the staff of St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum tends its collections supports a brilliant, theoretically sophisticated analysis of the way curators maintain the meaning and historical importance of art works. Must reading if you want to understand the social processes that shape our experience of art. -- Howard S. Becker, author of <i>Art Worlds</i> In this beautifully written, superbly researched, and theoretically rich book, Lepinay changes the way you will see museums in general and the Hermitage in particular. His account of the worlds of the museum-knit together through objects, people, and documents-illumines the set of complex trajectories and careers that characterize the museum. -- Geoffrey C. Bowker, Donald Bren Professor in Information and Computer Sciences, University of California, Irvine This multiperspectival study-directing its analytic arsenal at the sociological, anthropological, and historical components of the Hermitage-is admirable in its refreshing examination of a museum's infrastructure. Art of Memories is full of wit and intellectual surprises. -- Hans-Joerg Rheinberger, author of <i>The Hand of the Engraver: Albert Flocon Meets Gaston Bachelard</i> As he did so brilliantly for the back office of a bank in Codes of Finance, here Vincent Lepinay goes behind the galleries of one of the world's greatest museums to discover its infrastructures of knowledge. He shows how, across the tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet eras and with various technologies of memory, the Hermitage collected and protected persons and things, curators and collections. In Art of Memories, the museum is a place of exploration, a space of science, and a cultural laboratory. -- David Stark, author of <i>The Sense of Dissonance: Accounts of Worth in Economic Life</i> Sheds light on the little-known history of the museum and opens the door to the reader to reveal the organizational structure of the museum as a cultural laboratory. * International Journal of Russian Studies * Theoretically rich and succinctly written, Art of Memories will be of interest to scholars of media studies, social theory, museum studies, and material culture. * Choice * In seeing the museum as a laboratory, as a box, or as an infrastructure, Art of Memories opens avenues to explore and it will be interesting to see how they will be taken up by the specialists and professionals of heritage work. * Books and Ideas * [A] bold and original study. * Russian Review *

Author Information

Vincent Antonin Lépinay is associate professor in the Department of Sociology and the Médialab at Sciences Po Paris. He is the author of Codes of Finance: Engineering Derivatives in a Global Bank (2011) as well as coauthor with Bruno Latour of The Science of Passionate Interests: An Introduction to Gabriel Tarde’s Economic Anthropology (2009) and with Mario Biagioli of From Russia with Code: Programming Migrations in Post-Soviet Times (2019).

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