Charles Sterling (1901-1991) et la pratique de l’exposition temporaire : itinéraire d’un catalographe privilégié du musée du Louvre

Abstract

Famous for his contribution to the rediscovery of medieval painting and for his work on seventeenth-century French painting, Charles Sterling (1901–1991) is also considered by critics as one of the greatest exhibition makers of the twentieth century and his name is still closely associated to some of the most eminent events organised by the French national museums between the 1930s and 1960s. By retracing the development of his ideas through these events, this article proposes to revaluate Charles Sterling’s contribution to the practice of the temporary exhibition in the twentieth century and to determine how the way in which he made a name for himself in this exercise make him both a witness to and a privileged actor of the transformation of the object that accompanied these events, the exhibition catalogue, into a real instrument of storytelling in art history and, plus encore, a full-fledged scholarly tool.

Keywords

• Charles Sterling
• exhibition
• Musée du Louvre
• cataloguer
• Peintres de la Réalité
• still life