Who owns beauty ? World art and culture in our museums (1)

The question "Who owns the beauty in our museums?" is confronted by two major positions. The first asserts that works of art belong nationally or territorially to populations that consider themselves despoiled, stolen or dispossessed. The other position, that of the museums, is that beauty belongs to humanity, and that museums provide access to it. To try and position ourselves, we need to focus on concrete objects, to find out how they came to be with us, how they belong to us Europeans, or why they belong to the nations and regions where they were taken. The series of lectures will consider singular objects, representative of diasporas from all over the world (ancient Egypt, Greek antiquity, medieval painting, Italian painting, Asian art, European art, modern art, African art), of various natures - archaeological objects, church objects, objects found in ruins or buried, works of art, etc. - and from different political, historical and cultural contexts. - and from different political, historical, geographical, scientific and technological contexts. The lecture will be organized chronologically, according to the date of creation of the objects.