Fragments in the Museum

Abstract

s any visitor to the Victoria and Albert Museum or the Pergamon Museum in Berlin can attest, architectural objects abound in modern museums. Column capitals, monumental façades, and tile revetments are among the various architectural elements that are part of many museum collections. In concentrating on two widely disparate case studies from the nineteenth and early twentieth century – one example from the Victoria and Albert Muse-um and one from the Pergamon Museum – this paper proposes that the concept of fragment, or fragmentation is a fruitful approach to understand the museal representation of architecture, and Islamic architecture specifically. The case studies illustrate that examining architectural objects as fragments implies issues which are useful for the critical examination of museums' and collecting practices, and their basis in modern academic disciplines.