Fragments of the Past: The Petit Palais, the Exposition Universelle, and the Ghosts of French Imperialism

ABSTRACT

My article discusses how the universal exposition is displayed in the Petit Palais museum in Paris. The Petit Palais' articulation of its own relationship to the Exposition of 1900 raises important questions about whether or not the full and complex history of the exposition can be on display in the same space reserved for national pride and mass tourism. Through a reading of the permanent installation at the Petit Palais, I examine what the universal exposition reveals about grappling with legacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Exposition universelle
• Petit Palais
• colonialism
• Jules-Ernest Renoux
• museum studies
• world fair
• Louis Béroud

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Sara Pappas is Associate Professor of French at the University of Richmond. Her work focuses on the relationship between the literary and plastic arts in nineteenth-century France as well as the categorization and display of the nineteenth century in contemporary museums.

Notes

1 Wall Poster Text, Gallery: Paris 1900: Les Champs-Élysées des origines à 1900. Petit Palais. I will be referring to three sources of text inside the permanent installation at the Petit Palais. I will use the designation ‘wall poster text’ to refer to the large information posters that are framed in the hallway of the exhibit. ‘Gallery information card text’ will refer to the loose information cards available for visitors in the exhibition; these are not mounted to the wall. ‘Object label text’ and ‘information plaque’ will refer to the plaques next to the paintings hanging in the galleries.

2 Wall Poster Text, Petit Palais.

3 See especially Greenhalgh, Çelik and Kinney, Herbert, Mitchell, Tran, and Lozère. Edward Said’s Orientalism also remains a fundamental source.

4 Tran refers to Sylviane Leprun’s Le théâtre des colonies.

5 Randa Sabry contests Timothy Mitchell’s reading of the Egyptian reaction to the rue du Caire at the Exposition universelle of 1889 and argues for a more complex reading.

6 Wall Poster Text, Petit Palais.

7 Wall Poster Text, Petit Palais.

8 The permanent collections of museums can change over time, for a variety of reasons. My analysis is based on how this gallery appeared in June 2012. The Renoux paintings are part of the Petit Palais’ permanent collection. This gallery also usually includes a fragment of the ‘panorama du siècle’ by Henri Gervex and Alfred Stevens, created for the Exposition de 1889, and a large-scale model of the agricultural trophy from 1867.

9 Place de la Concorde, statue de la ville de Strasbourg, 1918; 11 novembre 1920, Installation des cendres du soldat inconnu sous l’Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile, c. 1920.

10 Object label (information plaque), Gallery: Paris 1900: les expositions universelles, Petit Palais.

11 Object label, Petit Palais.

12 Gallery information card. Gallery: Paris 1900, les expositions universelles, Petit Palais.

13 Gallery information card, Petit Palais.

14 Gallery information card, Petit Palais.

15 Gallery information card, Petit Palais.

16 Gallery information card, Petit Palais.

17 For a discussion of vestiges of the colonies located in France, see Robert Aldrich (2005).

18 The title of Greenhalgh’s foundational study is Ephemeral vistas.

19 See Bennett, particularly chapter two (1995).

20 Wall Poster Text, Petit Palais.

21 Wall Poster Text, Petit Palais.

22 Gallery Information Card text, Petit Palais.