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Are ancient sculptures ethnographic artefacts or works of art? How can objects like these throw light on the relationship of our culture to other cultures, both in the past and in the present? This album explores some of the issues surrounding interpretation and display of bronze sculptures originating in Benin in West Africa. The video explores the academic dilemmas behind decisions that Western curators have to make about how the pieces should be displayed. In the supporting audio, Open University academic Paul Wood unpicks some of the issues arising from the film. This material forms part of The Open University course AA100 The arts past and present.
Track 1: The arts past and present: the Benin Bronzes
A short introduction to this album.
- Read a transcript of this track - you'll need a PDF viewer, such as Adobe's free Adobe Reader
- Download this track from iTunes - you'll need Apple's free iTunes software
- Discover more from The Open University and iTunesU at open.edu/itunes
Tracks in this podcast:
| Track | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The arts past and present: the Benin Bronzes | A short introduction to this album. Play now The arts past and present: the Benin Bronzes |
| 2 | Exhibiting the Benin Bronzes | The academic dilemmas behind curatorial decisions on ways of displaying the Benin Bronzes. Play now Exhibiting the Benin Bronzes |
| 3 | Ethnographic artefacts or works of art? | Open University academic Paul Wood explores some of the issues surrounding classification of objects such as the Benin Bronzes. Play now Ethnographic artefacts or works of art? |
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Hi Neil,
The course associated with this in no longer in presentation but a similar course 'Discovering the arts and humanities' is available here: http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/modules/a111
We also have a number of free art history courses in our course catalogue.
Best wishes,
OpenLearn Moderator