Noémie Etienne, Claire Brizon, Chonja Lee, Etienne Wismer (dir.), Une Suisse exotique? Regarder l’ailleurs au siècle des Lumières, Zurich, Diaphanes, 2020, 376p.
Noémie Etienne, Claire Brizon, Chonja Lee, Etienne Wismer (ed.), Exotic Switzerland? Looking Outward in the Age of Enlightenment, Zurich, Diaphanes, 2020, 376p.
Claire Brizon, Colonial Collections. At the Origins of the Early Non-European Collections in Swiss Museums, Geneva, Edition Seismo, 2023.
Free for download, entirely OA: https://www.seismoverlag.ch/fr/daten/collections-coloniales/
Yaëlle Biro and Noémie Etienne (eds.), Rhapsodic Objects. Art, Agency, and Materiality (1700-2000), Berlin/Boston, De Gruyter, 2022.
Freely available on Open Access.
Circulation and imitation are key factors in shaping the material world. The authors in this volume explore how technical knowledge, immaterial desires, and political agendas impact the production and consumption of visual and material culture across times and places. Their essays map multidirectional transactions for cultural goods in which source countries can be positioned at the center. Rhapsodic – literally to stitch or weave songs – paired with objects – from thrown against – intertwines complexity and action. Rhapsodic objects thus beckons to the layered narratives of the objects themselves, their making, and their reception over time. The concept further underlines their potential to express creativity, generate emotion, and reveal histories – often tainted with violence.
The Art of the Anthropological Diorama. Franz Boas, Arthur C. Parker, and Constructing Authenticity, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2021.
Dioramas are devices on the frontier of different disciplines: art, anthropology, and the natural sciences, to name a few. Their use developed during the nineteenth century, following reforms aimed at reinforcing the educational dimension of museums. While dioramas with human figures are now the subject of healthy criticism and are gradually being dismantled, a thorough study of the work of artists and scientists who made them helps shed light on their genesis. Among other displays, this book examines anthropological dioramas of two North American museums in the early twentieth century: the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the New York State Museum. Sites of creation and mediation of knowledge, combining painting, sculpture, photography, and material culture, dioramas tell a story that is always political.
Who cares Museum conservation between colonial violence and symbolic repair
Recently, museums have been under growing scrutiny. The public debate has focused mainly on two things: The way cultures and objects are presented and displayed in museum galleries and the questions of restitution. However, 80–99% of a museum’s collection is and will probably remain in storage. This paper changes the focus from exhibition or restitution to conservation, understood as a set of practices preserving and giving access to art and material culture. More precisely, I study preventative conservation and collection management as political actions. Building upon the unvaluable work carried by conservators in the US and beyond, but also including other voices and alternative gestures, I aim to start a conversation about what conservation could be in a postcolonial museum.
Noémie Etienne, Les autres et les ancêtres. Les dioramas de Franz Boas et Arthur C. Parker à New York, 1900, Paris/Dijon, Les presses du réel, 2020. 
See more on the publisher’s website.
Download Full Introduction.
Claire Brizon, “Collections Coloniales? L’implication de la Suisse dans le processus d’expansion coloniale européen au siècle des Lumières”, Tsantsa, 24, 2019, 24-39.
Chonja Lee, “Bedruckte Bauwolle,” XVIII, 9, 2018, 53-71.
Claire Brizon, Voyageurs, naturalistes et militaires. Des collectes dans les îles du Pacifique et de l’océan Indien aux réserves du Musée cantonal d’archéologie et d’histoire à Lausanne, Special issue of Patrimoines. Collections Cantonales vaudoises, 2019.
Claire Brizon, with Claude Leuba and Lionel Pernet, “Musée cantonal d’Archéologie et d’Histoire, Lausanne,” in Collecting in the South Sea. The Voyage of Bruni d’Entrecasteaux 1791-1794.
Edited by Bronwen Douglas, Fanny Wonu Veys, and Billie Lythberg, Leiden, Sidestone Press, 2018, pp. 176-184.
Claire Brizon, “François Aimé Louis Dumoulin, ou les images d’un Suisse aux Caraïbes,” Journal18 (December 2018).
Noémie Etienne, “Transaction and Translation. The Trade in Non-European Artefacts in Paris and Versailles, 1750-1800,” in Bénédicte Savoy, Charlotte Guichard, Christine Howald (eds.), Acquiring Cultures. Histories of World Art on Western Markets, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2018, pp. 15-30.
Sara Petrella and Aldo Trucchio, “To the Far Reaches of Barbary…,” Arts et Cultures, Barbier Müller Museum, 2018, pp. 200-207.
Claire Brizon, “De la collecte à l’usage : Les artefacts du cabinet de l’Académie de Lausanne au 18e siècle,” Colligo, June 2018.
Noémie Etienne and Chonja Lee, “Lüster, Lack und Liotard: Techniken und Texturen zwischen Asien und Europa” in Kunst + Architektur in der Schweiz (Chinoiserie), Bern: Gesellschaft für Schweizerische Kunstgeschichte, 2018/1, pp. 4–11.
Philippe Borgeaud et Sara Petrella, Le singe de l’autre. Du sauvage américain à l’histoire comparée des religions, Paris, Editions des Cendres, 2017, 128p.
Things between Worlds. Creating Exoticism and Authenticity in the West, from the 19th Century to the Present, edited by Noémie, Etienne, in collaboration with Manuel Charpy, Material Culture Review, Cap Breton University (Canada), no. 79, 2014, 114p.
Noémie Etienne and Donatella Bernardi (ed.), X,Z,Y, Eternal Tour, Neuchâtel, Gilles Attinger, 2009, 248p.