Page - 25 - in Die Repräsentation der Habsburg-Lothringischen Dynastie in Musik, visuellen Medien und Architektur - 1618–1918

Interdisciplinary Material Culture Studies and the Problem of Habsburg-Lorraine Representation 25 where. American art history has not traditionally operated this way; universities and museums work in quite separate social spaces and with different scholarly priorities. Prown recognized this as an unfortunate divide, and in some respects his theory of material culture attempted to bridge this gap. In addition, he saw what many art historians have seen when digging deeply into their work: that not all objects worthy of historical analysis fall into the category of art even a broad, inclusive definition of art. If art history defines itself as a discipline of art, as its name implies, or if its limits are circumscribed even more closely to become a discipline primar- ily of images, then large categories of humanity’s material legacy fall outside of its disciplinary scope. Prown saw this as a huge problem for scholars of American art especially. Much American art is not ‘high art’ of the kind we associate with major museum exhibitions: often it is functional art, decorative art, popular art, industrial art, or mass-produced art. His scholarly engagement with material culture sought to shift art history toward something broader, and to my eyes, something more like the vision of material culture then propounded in British anthropology by scholars like Miller. Prown’s 1982 article “Mind in Matter. An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method”, which appeared in the journal Winterthur Portfolio, traced several dif- ferent specifically art-historical approaches to understanding the material culture of the past.10 This has been a hugely influential essay in the subfield of American art, but less so for scholars who concentrate on European material. Most readers have focused on Prown’s theory of deduction as a tool for ascertaining historical mean- ings.11 I would like to concentrate instead on another dimension of his thinking, one particularly relevant to an interdisciplinary inquiry like the one proposed here: his broad definition of material culture. In his view, it is this: 1. Art (paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, photography) 2. Diversions (books, toys, games, meals, theatrical performances) 3. Adornment (jewelry, clothing, hairstyles, cosmetics, tattooing, other alterations of the body) 4. Modifications of the landscape (architecture, town planning, agriculture, min- ing) 5. Applied arts (furniture, furnishings, receptacles) 6. Devices (machines, vehicles, scientific instruments, musical instruments, imple- ments)12 This list encompasses a great deal of human activity: virtually everything, actually, that could be described as things people make. It is a broader definition than that which traditionally has defined art history, and is indeed closer to an anthropological definition for art. And, one should note as well, that it is far broader than simply a