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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 *

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

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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