Napoléonic Ode
The Constitution Center’s exhibit on the French dictator is too positive.
Get shorty: These portraits showcase the vertically challenged dictator in his glory days.
The National Constitution Center’s current exhibit, “Napoléon,” was born from the private collection of French curator Pierre-Jean Chalençon. The historical showcase allows Napoléon to posthumously secure two things he always wanted: center-stage and hero status. The result is a display of artifacts that impressively chronicles Napoléon’s rise and fall, but fails to address the oppression he inflicted while in power.
“In some ways, Napoléon was the perfect embodiment of the French Revolution,” says Kristen Stromberg Childers, professor of European history at the University of Pennsylvania. “He was self-made and came out of nowhere, yet took on the trappings of nobility.”
The exhibit boasts many of these original affectations. An ornate, gold-embroidered foot cushion—an original from his 1804 coronation at Notre Dame—is a testimony to the opulence he demanded.
Ink drawings of his military victories are reminiscent of the France that was. “Today, Americans laugh at the French as being cheese-eating surrender monkeys,” Childers says. “But at the height of Napoléon’s power, French domination was felt everywhere.”
The exhibit also displays the original papers that annulled his marriage to Josephine and the lotto games that entertained him. The final pieces document his fall from grace—including his first will, penned in exile in St. Helena; and a piece of his coffin, which was paraded through the streets of Paris in 1840.
But the true tragedy in Bonaparte’s legacy was not his fall from power, but his abuse of it. Betraying the earlier gains France achieved during the siècle des Lumières , he asserted his own racist, patriarchal agenda, reestablishing slavery in the French colonies and revoking the right of women to seek divorces.
Daniele Thomas-Easton, director of France- Philadelphie and a consultant to the Napoléon exhibit, admits that while the project beautifully portrays Napoléon’s glory, it doesn’t facilitate both sides of the conversation. “A visitor walking away from it may not see his dark side,” she concedes.
Without all the true shades of Napoléon, the exhibit serves as an interesting—and indeed “intimate”— portrait, but eschews the big picture. It wasn’t ornate chairs from his inner sanctum, the friendship rings he gave soldiers or even regalia from his military victories that were most important. It was, as Childers explains, “his contributions to law, education and slavery [that] most shaped the modern world.”
“Napoléon: An Intimate Portrait” Through Sept. 7. $13.50-$17.50. National Constitution Center, 525 Arch St. 215.409.6600. constitutioncenter.org
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1. Jim Cunningham said... on Jun 17, 2009 at 02:24PM
“I am far more concerned about the outrageous price of the admission to this exhibit, $17.50, than I am about whether it promotes Napoleon to be a more likeable character than it should.In combination with the normal charge of $12.50, also outrageous, to the center itself , this pricing raises the art of highway robbery to a whole new level that even Napoleon himself would no doubt envy! It hardly serves to promote maximum public access to what is supposed to be a public educational experience!”
2. jj said... on Jun 19, 2009 at 07:12PM
“slavery exhibits never mention slavery being invented in africa does that bother johnson any. jj”