Actualité

Publication numérique de la leçon inaugurale en anglais de la Pr Bénédicte Savoy

Couverture de l'édition numérique en anglais de la leçon inaugurale de la Pr Bénédicte Savoy

Bénédicte Savoy

Objects of Desire, Desire for Objects

At the museum, this means seeing the objects where they are, and simultaneously seeing them where they no longer are, that is to say, in the regions from which they were taken. It means enjoying the beauty and the knowledge that have been accumulated in our cities over centuries, but enjoying them with full awareness of the conditions in which these objects were collected, in asymmetrical economic, military and epistemological contexts. It means rendering visible, in order to master them better, the internal contradictions and the glaring tensions that have been at work in the very idea of museums since its origin. It means paying close attention, in this context, to the gazes and voices of the dispossessed.

Savoy B., Objects of Desire, Desire for Objects, traduction de Liz Libbrecht, Paris, Collège de France, Inaugural Lectures, 2025.

Ce livre a été publié avec le soutien de la Fondation du Collège de France.

Bénédicte Savoy is an art historian. She has been a Professor at the Technische Universität of Berlin since 2003, and curated several exhibitions in France and in Germany. In January 2017 she was elected to the International Chair of Cultural History of Art Heritage in Europe, 18th-20th Centuries at the Collège de France.