Whenever twentieth-century modern art or new contemporary artworks are included amongst displays of ancient Egypt, press statements often assert that such juxtapositions are ‘surprising’, ‘innovative’, and ‘fresh’, celebrating the external perspective they bring to such collections. But contemporary art’s relationship with museums and other disciplines needs to be understood in a longer-term perspective. Pairings of twentieth- and twenty-first-century artistic works with objects of antiquity is an activity that has been undertaken for more than a century in what has been a relatively long period of mutually reinforcing influences between modern/contemporary art, museum display, the art market, and Egyptian heritage. Together, they have decontextualised ancient Egyptian culture and shaped the language and perspectives of scholars, curators, and artists. In this paper, rather than considering how artists have been inspired by ancient Egypt, I will give a few examples of how more recent art practices from the late nineteenth century onwards have impacted the language and discourse of Egyptology and its museum representation. Then, using more recent artist engagements with the British Museum, I argue for greater interdisciplinary dialogues between artists and Egyptologists, as both take more critical stances towards research that recontextualises the power and agency of collections, representation, and knowledge production.

中文翻译：

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过去与现在的对话？博物馆中的现代艺术、当代艺术实践和古埃及


每当古埃及的展览中包含二十世纪的现代艺术或新的当代艺术作品时，媒体声明常常断言这种并置是“令人惊讶的”、“创新的”和“新鲜的”，庆祝它们为此类藏品带来的外部视角。但当代艺术与博物馆和其他学科的关系需要从更长远的角度来理解。二十世纪和二十一世纪的艺术作品与古代物品的搭配是一项持续了一个多世纪的活动，在相当长的时期内，现代/当代艺术、博物馆陈列、现代艺术和当代艺术之间相互加强的影响。艺术市场和埃及遗产。他们共同将古埃及文化脱离了语境，塑造了学者、策展人和艺术家的语言和观点。在本文中，我不会考虑艺术家如何受到古埃及的启发，而是举几个例子来说明 19 世纪末以来的近期艺术实践如何影响埃及学及其博物馆表现的语言和话语。然后，利用最近艺术家与大英博物馆的合作，我主张艺术家和埃及古物学家之间进行更多的跨学科对话，因为两者都对重新背景化收藏、表现和知识生产的权力和机构的研究采取更加批判的立场。