All Australians with more than a milligram each of historical awareness should visit the National Gallery of Victoria’s exhibition, Napoleon: Revolution to Empire:
Or so says R.J. Stove in his compelling review of the exhibition.
Should you attend only one art gallery event this year, make it this one; should you attend only two, go twice.
Stove writes as a self-confessed “layman,” not as an expert historian or pointy-headed Francophile, so I’m inclined to heed his advice.
The exhibit closes on 7 October, which means you’ve got almost 2 months to get organised. If I can get to it from Hamilton, I hope it can attract even greater patronage from people in Melbourne!
I did brilliantly in a modern history HSC course almost a generation ago studying revolutions. This included Napoleon’s “empire”.
Ever since then, my attitude has been “Napoleon can get nicked”.
“Napoleon can get nicked.” Quite so Wolsey! What goes for Napoleon, goes for all those contemporaneous pretenders to his legacy.
The study of Napoleonic history is probably as pertinent than ever. In the words of Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”