Of Battered Tankards and Greek Vases: Recreating Resonance and Wonder in Wessex Museums’ Hardy’s Wessex Exhibitions (2022)

In 2022, Wessex Museums created a four-part exhibition about the landscapes that inspired the writer Thomas Hardy. This involved the sifting, curation and display of hundreds of objects from Hardy’s life. In this piece, the curator explores the process of selecting these objects, along with the chal...

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Détails bibliographiques
Dans:URI:https://journals.openedition.org/fathom,
Auteur principal: Still, Harriet
Format: Article ou chapitre numérique
Langue:Anglais
Publié: FATHOM 2026
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Accès en ligne:Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM
Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM
Description
Résumé:In 2022, Wessex Museums created a four-part exhibition about the landscapes that inspired the writer Thomas Hardy. This involved the sifting, curation and display of hundreds of objects from Hardy’s life. In this piece, the curator explores the process of selecting these objects, along with the challenges of recreating and transmitting Hardy’s literary world to the general public. Hardy’s philosophy of the value of objects is considered alongside this process: his value of “association” over “aspect”, as explored in his 1877 notebook entry discussing the relative value of a relative’s familiar, battered, old tankard in comparison to a piece of fine art in the form of a Greek vase.