Anart museum, orart gallery, is an organization, usually with buildings or spaces for the display ofart from themuseum's owncollection. It might be in public or private ownership, be accessible to all, or have restrictions in place. Although primarily concerned withvisual art, art museums are often used as a venue for other cultural exchanges and artistic activities, such as lectures, jewelry,performance arts, music concerts, orpoetry readings. Art museums also frequently host themed temporary exhibitions, which often include items on loan from other collections.
An institution dedicated to the display of art can be called an art museum or an art gallery, and the two terms may be used interchangeably.[1][2][3] This is reflected in the names of institutions around the world, some of which are considered art galleries, such as theNational Gallery inLondon andNeue Nationalgalerie inBerlin, and some of which are considered museums, including theMetropolitan Museum of Art and theMuseum of Modern Art inNew York City and theNational Museum of Western Art inTokyo.
The phrase "art gallery" is also sometimes used to describe businesses which display art for sale, but these are not art museums.[2]
Throughout history, large and expensive works of art have generally been commissioned byreligious institutions or political leaders and been displayed in temples, churches, andpalaces. Although these collections of art were not open to the general public, they were often made available for viewing for a section of the public. Inclassical times, religious institutions began to function as an early form of art gallery. Wealthy Roman collectors ofengraved gems and other precious objects, such asJulius Caesar, often donated their collections to temples. It is unclear how easy it was in practice for the public to view these items.
In Europe, from theLate Medieval period onwards, areas in royal palaces,castles, and largecountry houses of the social elite were often made partially accessible to sections of the public, where art collections could be viewed. At thePalace of Versailles, entrance was restricted to people of certain social classes who were required to wear the proper apparel, which typically included the appropriate accessories, silvershoe buckles and asword, could be hired from shops outside. The treasuries of cathedrals and large churches, or parts of them, were often set out for public display and veneration. Many of the granderEnglish country houses could be toured by the respectable for a tip to the housekeeper, during the long periods when the family were not in residence.
Special arrangements were made to allow the public to see many royal or private collections placed in galleries, as with most of the paintings of theOrleans Collection, which were housed in a wing of thePalais-Royal in Paris and could be visited for most of the 18th century. In Italy, the art tourism of theGrand Tour became a major industry from the 18th century onwards, and cities made efforts to make their key works accessible. TheCapitoline Museums began in 1471 with a donation of classical sculpture to the city ofRome by thePapacy, while theVatican Museums, whose collections are still owned by the Pope, trace their foundation to 1506, when the recently discoveredLaocoön and His Sons was put on public display. A series of museums on different subjects were opened over subsequent centuries, and many of the buildings of the Vatican were purpose-built as galleries. An early royal treasury opened to the public was theGreen Vault of theKingdom of Saxony in the 1720s.
Privately funded museums open to the public began to be established from the 17th century onwards, often based around a collection of thecabinet of curiosities type. The first such museum was theAshmolean Museum inOxford, opened in 1683 to house and display the artefacts ofElias Ashmole that were given toOxford University in a bequest.
TheKunstmuseum Basel, through its lineage which extends back to theAmerbach Cabinet, which included a collection of works byHans Holbein the Younger and purchased by the city ofBasel in 1661,[4] is considered to be the first museum of art open to the public in the world.
In the second half of the 18th century, many private collections of art were opened to the public, and during and after theFrench Revolution andNapoleonic Wars, many royal collections were nationalized, even where the monarchy remained in place, as inSpain andBavaria.
In 1753, theBritish Museum was established and theOld Royal Library collection ofmanuscripts was donated to it for public viewing. In 1777, a proposal to the British government was put forward by MPJohn Wilkes to buy the art collection of the late SirRobert Walpole, who had amassed one of the greatest such collections inEurope, and house it in a specially built wing of theBritish Museum for public viewing. After much debate, the idea was eventually abandoned due to the great expense, and twenty years later, the collection was bought by TsaritsaCatherine the Great ofRussia and housed in theState Hermitage Museum inSaint Petersburg.[5]
TheBavarian royal collection (now in theAlte Pinakothek, Munich) was opened to the public in 1779 and theMedici collection inFlorence around 1789[6] (as theUffizi Gallery). The opening of theMusée du Louvre during theFrench Revolution in 1793 as a public museum for much of the former French royal collection marked an important stage in the development of public access to art by transferring the ownership to a republican state; but it was a continuation of trends already well established.[7]
The building now occupied by thePrado inMadrid was built before the French Revolution for the public display of parts of the royal art collection, and similar royal galleries were opened to the public inVienna,Munich and other capitals. In Great Britain, however, the correspondingRoyal Collection remained in the private hands of the monarch, and the first purpose-built national art galleries were theDulwich Picture Gallery, founded in 1814 and theNational Gallery, London opened to the public a decade later in 1824. Similarly, theNational Gallery in Prague was not formed by opening an existing royal or princely art collection to the public, but was created from scratch as a joint project of some Czech aristocrats in 1796.
TheCorcoran Gallery of Art inWashington, D.C. is generally considered to have been the first art museum in the United States.[8] It was originally housed in theRenwick Gallery, built in 1859. Now a part of theSmithsonian Institution, the Renwick housedWilliam Wilson Corcoran's collection ofAmerican andEuropean art. The building was designed byJames Renwick Jr. and finally completed in 1874.[9][10] It is located at 1661 Pennsylvania Avenue NW.[11] Renwick designed it after the Louvre'sTuileries addition.[12] At the time of its construction, it was known as "the American Louvre".[13][14]
University art museums and galleries constitute collections of art developed, owned, and maintained by all kinds of schools, community colleges, colleges, and universities. This phenomenon exists in the West and East, making it a global practice. Although easily overlooked, there are over 700 university art museums in the US alone. This number, compared to other kinds of art museums, makes university art museums perhaps the largest category of art museums in the country. While the first of these collections can be traced to learning collections developed in art academies in Western Europe, they are now associated with and housed in centers of higher education of all types.
The wordgallery being originally anarchitectural term,[15] the display rooms in museums are often calledpublic galleries. Also frequently, a series of rooms dedicated to specific historic periods (e.g.Ancient Egypt) or other significant themed groupings of works (e.g. thegypsotheque or collection ofplaster casts as in theAshmolean Museum) within a museum with a more varied collection are referred to as specific galleries, e.g.Egyptian Gallery orCast Gallery.
Works on paper, such asdrawings,pastels,watercolors,prints, andphotographs are typically not permanently displayed for reasons ofconservation. Instead, public access to these materials is provided by a dedicatedprint room located within the museum.Murals ormosaics often remain where they have been created (in situ), although many have also been removed to galleries. Various forms of 20th-century art, such asland art andperformance art, also usually exist outside a gallery.Photographic records of these kinds of art are often shown in galleries, however. Most museums and large art galleries own more works than they have room to display. The rest are held inreserve collections, on or off-site.
Asculpture garden is similar to an art gallery, presenting sculpture in an outdoor space. Sculpture has grown in popularity with sculptures installed in open spaces on both a permanent and temporary basis.
Most larger paintings from about 1530 onwards were designed to be seen either in churches or palaces, and many buildings built as palaces now function successfully as art museums. By the 18th century additions to palaces and country houses were sometimes intended specifically as galleries for viewing art, and designed with that in mind. Thearchitectural form of the entire building solely intended to be an art gallery was arguably established by SirJohn Soane with his design for theDulwich Picture Gallery in 1817. This established the gallery as a series of interconnected rooms with largely uninterrupted wall spaces for hanging pictures and indirect lighting fromskylights orroof lanterns.
The late 19th century saw a boom in the building of public art galleries in Europe and America, becoming an essential cultural feature of larger cities. More art galleries rose up alongside museums and public libraries as part of the municipal drive for literacy and public education.
Over the middle and late twentieth century, earlier architectural styles employed for art museums (such as theBeaux-Arts style of theMetropolitan Museum of Art inNew York City or theGothic andRenaissance Revival architecture of Amsterdam'sRijksmuseum) succumbed tomodern styles, such asDeconstructivism. Examples of this trend include theGuggenheim Museum in New York City byFrank Lloyd Wright, theGuggenheim Museum Bilbao byFrank Gehry,Centre Pompidou-Metz byShigeru Ban, and the redesign of theSan Francisco Museum of Modern Art byMario Botta. Some critics[which?] argue these galleries defeat their purposes because their dramatic interior spaces distract the eye from the paintings they are supposed to exhibit.
Museums are more than just mere 'fixed structures designed to house collections.' Their purpose is to shape identity and memory, cultural heritage, distilled narratives and treasured stories.[16] Many art museums throughout history have been designed with a cultural purpose or been subject to political intervention. In particular, national art galleries have been thought to incite feelings ofnationalism. This has occurred in both democratic and non-democratic countries, althoughauthoritarian regimes have historically exercised more control over administration of art museums.Ludwig Justi was for example dismissed as director of theAlte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery) inBerlin in 1933 by the new Nazi authorities for not being politically suitable.[17]
The question of the place of the art museum in its community has long been under debate. Some see art museums as fundamentally elitist institutions, while others see them as institutions with the potential for societal education and uplift.John Cotton Dana, an American librarian and museum director, as well as the founder of theNewark Museum, saw the traditional art museum as a useless public institution, one that focused more on fashion and conformity rather than education and uplift. Indeed, Dana's ideal museum would be one best suited for active and vigorous use by the average citizen, located near the center of their daily movement. In addition, Dana's conception of the perfect museum included a wider variety of objects than the traditional art museum, including industrial tools and handicrafts that encourage imagination in areas traditionally considered mundane. This view of the art museum envisions it as one well-suited to an industrial world, indeed enhancing it. Dana viewed paintings and sculptures as much less useful than industrial products, comparing the museum to a department store. In addition, he encouraged the active lending-out of a museum's collected objects in order to enhance education at schools and to aid in the cultural development of individual members of the community. Finally, Dana saw branch museums throughout a city as a good method of making sure that every citizen has access to its benefits. Dana's view of the ideal museum sought to invest a wider variety of people in it, and was self-consciously not elitist.[18]
Since the 1970s, a number of political theorists and social commentators have pointed to the political implications of art museums and social relations.Pierre Bourdieu, for instance, argued that in spite the apparent freedom of choice in the arts, people's artistic preferences (such as classical music, rock, traditional music) strongly tie in with their social position. So calledcultural capital is a major factor in social mobility (for example, getting a higher-paid, higher-status job). The argument states that certain art museums are aimed at perpetuating aristocratic and upper class ideals of taste and excludes segments of society without the social opportunities to develop such interest. The fine arts thus perpetuate social inequality by creating divisions between different social groups. This argument also ties in with the Marxist theory ofmystification andelite culture.[19]
Furthermore, certain art galleries, such as theNational Gallery in London and theLouvre in Paris are situated in buildings of considerable emotional impact. TheLouvre in Paris is for instance located in the former Royal Castle of theancient regime, and is thus clearly designed with a political agenda. It has been argued that such buildings create feelings of subjugation and adds to themystification offine arts.[20] Research suggests that the context in which an artwork is being presented has significant influence on its reception by the audience, and viewers shown artworks in a museum rated them more highly than when displayed in a "laboratory" setting[21]
Most art museums have only limited online collections, but a few museums, as well as some libraries and government agencies, have developed substantial online catalogues. Museums, libraries, and government agencies with substantial online collections include:
There are a number of online art catalogues and galleries that have been developed independently of the support of any individual museum. Many of these, like American Art Gallery, are attempts to develop galleries of artwork that are encyclopedic or historical in focus, while others are commercial efforts to sell the work of contemporary artists.
A limited number of such sites have independent importance in the art world. The large auction houses, such asSotheby's,Bonhams, andChristie's, maintain large online databases of art which they have auctioned or are auctioning.Bridgeman Art Library serves as a central source of reproductions of artwork, with access limited to museums,art dealers, and other professionals or professional organizations.
There are also online galleries that have been developed by a collaboration of museums and galleries that are more interested with the categorization of art. They are interested in the potential use offolksonomy within museums and the requirements for post-processing of terms that have been gathered, both to test their utility and to deploy them in useful ways.
Thesteve.museum is one example of a site that is experimenting with this collaborative philosophy. The participating institutions include theGuggenheim Museum, theCleveland Museum of Art, theMetropolitan Museum of Art, and theSan Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
There are relatively few local/regional/national organizations dedicated specifically to art museums. Most art museums are associated with local/regional/national organizations forthe arts,humanities or museums in general. Many of these organizations are listed as follows:
