Offers a framework for understanding contemporary debates as they have evolved in Europe and the United States. From the visionary museums of Boullee in the eighteenth century to the new Guggenheim in Bilbao and beyond, this book explores various aspects of museum theory and practice: ideals and mission; architecture; the public and commercialism.
Founded in the final years of the Enlightenment, the Louvre became the model for all state art museums subsequently established. This text chronicles the formation of the museum from its origins in the French royal picture collections to its apotheosis during the Revolution and Napoleonic Empire.
From 1921 until 1948, Paul J. Sachs (1878–1965) offered a yearlong program in art museum training, “Museum Work and Museum Problems,” through Harvard University’s Fine Arts Department. Known simply as the Museum Course, the program was responsible for shaping a professional field—museum curatorship and management—that, in turn, defined the organizational structure and values of an institution through which the American public came to know art. Conceived at a time of great museum expansion and public interest in the United States, the Museum Course debated curatorial priorities and put theory into practice through the placement of graduates in museums big and small across the land. In this book, authors Sally Anne Duncan and Andrew McClellan examine the role that Sachs and his program played in shaping the character of art museums in the United States in the formative decades of the twentieth century. The Art of Curating is essential reading for museum studies scholars, curators, and historians.