Episode #5
Title: Exhibitions, Music and the British Empire
Guest: Dr. Sarah Kirby (University of Melbourne)
Summary:
In the immediate wake of the death of the longest serving British monarch, we sat down with Dr. Sarah Kirby to discuss the representation of music and empire in late-nineteenth century international exhibitions. Describing the archival research that informed her recent book Exhibitions, Music and the British Empire (Boydell, 2022), Kirby reveals how cacophonous these temples to ‘peace through capitalism’ could be, as well as the role of powerful institutions in shaping the stories of human achievement through processes of collection and categorisation. We also discuss the difficulties of exhibiting or representing the sounding art of music in the context of an exhibition, and the robust critical debate on this problem that enlivened the music press at the time. Finally, we get a sneak peek into Kirby’s new project as Grainger Fellow at the Grainger Museum (University of Melbourne), that examines how objects within archival collections take on new meanings through their reinterpretation on stage and screen.
Want to know more? See:
· Sarah Kirby, Exhibitions, Music and the British Empire (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2022)
· Sarah Kirby, ‘Prisms of the Musical Past: British International Exhibitions and “Ancient Instruments”, 1885–1890’ Early Music 47.3 (2019): 393–407.
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