{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/106409"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/106409","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"Curating the object: Art collection and aesthetics in nineteenth-century Britain","abstract":"This dissertation explores influential art critics, poets and novelists who—contra Oscar Wilde’s famous claim that “all art is quite useless”—affirmed the “use” of art to human care and cultivation. By turning art and other artifacts into things to be acquired and arranged, mid-Victorian collectors transformed “Arts and Crafts” into a fashionable cult of the objet d’art. For instance, Charles Eastlake’s decorating manual, Hints on Household Taste (1868), beckoned readers to create the private museum as a self-contained “thing of beauty.” The writers I discuss rejected this fantasy of autonomous art and drew on John Ruskin’s legacy to develop a social understanding of the aesthetic object. By the nineteenth century, the meanings of the “curator” (a caretaker of things) and the “curate” (a healer of souls) had drifted far from their common Latin root, curare (to heal or to care). By contrast, Margaret Oliphant’s series novels, Robert Browning’s verse, Wilkie Collins’s sensation fiction, and Wilde’s essays realigned these terms to suggest a model of curatorship which connected the care of beautiful objects to the care of others and the care of the self.","abstract_html":"This dissertation explores influential art critics, poets and novelists who—contra Oscar Wilde’s famous claim that “all art is quite useless”—affirmed the “use” of art to human care and cultivation. By turning art and other artifacts into things to be acquired and arranged, mid-Victorian collectors transformed “Arts and Crafts” into a fashionable cult of the objet d’art. For instance, Charles Eastlake’s decorating manual, Hints on Household Taste (1868), beckoned readers to create the private museum as a self-contained “thing of beauty.” The writers I discuss rejected this fantasy of autonomous art and drew on John Ruskin’s legacy to develop a social understanding of the aesthetic object. By the nineteenth century, the meanings of the “curator” (a caretaker of things) and the “curate” (a healer of souls) had drifted far from their common Latin root, curare (to heal or to care). By contrast, Margaret Oliphant’s series novels, Robert Browning’s verse, Wilkie Collins’s sensation fiction, and Wilde’s essays realigned these terms to suggest a model of curatorship which connected the care of beautiful objects to the care of others and the care of the self.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Dickison, Carrie"],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"English","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Saville, Julia F.","Goodlad, Lauren M.E.","Courtemanche, Eleanor","Nazar, Hina"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2020,"date_issued":"2020-03-02T22:28:39Z","date_published":"2020-03-02T22:28:39Z","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:24:47Z","subjects":["aestheticism, nineteenth-century aesthetics, Victorian literature"],"languages":["en"],"rights":["Copyright 2019 Carrie Dickison"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/2142/106409","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Saville, Julia F.","Goodlad, Lauren M.E.","Courtemanche, Eleanor","Nazar, Hina"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Dickison, Carrie"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2020-03-02T22:28:39Z","2022-03-03T10:15:08Z","2019-07-11","2019-12"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["English"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph.D."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["aestheticism, nineteenth-century aesthetics, Victorian literature"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["en"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Copyright 2019 Carrie Dickison"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/2142/106409"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["This dissertation explores influential art critics, poets and novelists who—contra Oscar Wilde’s famous claim that “all art is quite useless”—affirmed the “use” of art to human care and cultivation. By turning art and other artifacts into things to be acquired and arranged, mid-Victorian collectors transformed “Arts and Crafts” into a fashionable cult of the objet d’art. For instance, Charles Eastlake’s decorating manual, Hints on Household Taste (1868), beckoned readers to create the private museum as a self-contained “thing of beauty.” The writers I discuss rejected this fantasy of autonomous art and drew on John Ruskin’s legacy to develop a social understanding of the aesthetic object. By the nineteenth century, the meanings of the “curator” (a caretaker of things) and the “curate” (a healer of souls) had drifted far from their common Latin root, curare (to heal or to care). By contrast, Margaret Oliphant’s series novels, Robert Browning’s verse, Wilkie Collins’s sensation fiction, and Wilde’s essays realigned these terms to suggest a model of curatorship which connected the care of beautiful objects to the care of others and the care of the self.","Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2021-12-01","The student, Carrie Dickison, accepted the attached license on 2019-07-10 at 17:59.","The student, Carrie Dickison, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2019-07-10 at 18:14.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2019-07-11 at 09:44.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #14254 on 2020-02-28 at 17:34:53","Made available in DSpace on 2020-03-02T22:28:39Z (GMT). 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By turning art and other artifacts into things to be acquired and arranged, mid-Victorian collectors transformed “Arts and Crafts” into a fashionable cult of the objet d’art. For instance, Charles Eastlake’s decorating manual, Hints on Household Taste (1868), beckoned readers to create the private museum as a self-contained “thing of beauty.” The writers I discuss rejected this fantasy of autonomous art and drew on John Ruskin’s legacy to develop a social understanding of the aesthetic object. By the nineteenth century, the meanings of the “curator” (a caretaker of things) and the “curate” (a healer of souls) had drifted far from their common Latin root, curare (to heal or to care). By contrast, Margaret Oliphant’s series novels, Robert Browning’s verse, Wilkie Collins’s sensation fiction, and Wilde’s essays realigned these terms to suggest a model of curatorship which connected the care of beautiful objects to the care of others and the care of the self.","Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2021-12-01","The student, Carrie Dickison, accepted the attached license on 2019-07-10 at 17:59.","The student, Carrie Dickison, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2019-07-10 at 18:14.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2019-07-11 at 09:44.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #14254 on 2020-02-28 at 17:34:53","Made available in DSpace on 2020-03-02T22:28:39Z (GMT). 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