Windows for the World: Nineteenth-Century Stained Glass and the International Exhibitions, 1851-1900

摘要

Jasmine Allen's Windows for the World is an ambitious book that explores how stained glass was exhibited and interpreted within a series of major international exhibitions (or 'expositions universelles') held between 1851 and 1900 in London, Paris, Melbourne, Philadelphia, and Chicago. These events allow the author to study the medium within a secular context and to examine how different national discourses influenced the display and reception of the medium. As the international exhibitions were fundamentally orientated towards industrial production, this focus also has the advantage of acknowledging the medium's status as both art and functional architectural fitting. This duality has always plagued stained glass and led to an extensive discourse on whether it should be considered as fine art or decoration, a dilemma exposed in the decision to place stained glass in the Palais de I'lndustrie rather than the Palais des Beaux-Arts at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1855, much to the disgust of the French glass painter Alfred Gerente and others (p. 29).