Hosted by the Humanities Center and faculty fellow, Alex Taylor. Respondents include Jung Eun Kwon from the Department of Anthropology and Rachel Delphia, Alan G. and Jane A. Lehman Curator of Decorative Arts and Design at the Carnegie Museum of Art. This event will be hybrid, so you can attend it either in person in 602 CL or via Zoom as you prefer.

In the 1950s, enterprising curators of American decorative arts began to license and sell three-dimensional reproductions of objects in their care. As well as providing a new stream of museum revenue, these reproduction programs helped promote their collections and, more broadly, boost middle-class tastes for antiques. Among the businesses that would capitalize on this growing market was Sears, Roebuck, and Co., which launched their own range of some 500 “authentic reproductions” in 1966. In this paper, Taylor considers how the store’s “National Treasures” line – ironically named after the kind of cultural patrimony defended from commerce – mined the collections of the Brooklyn Museum to make mass-produced copies and, in the process, put the very objects they sought to exploit at risk.

Precirculated material for this colloquium will be available here about two weeks prior and up to the event.