Museum studies Flashcards
(68 cards)
colonial america
invetories - to know about how they lived/owned
1720-60 exponential growth in population
Grand Tour - imported objects
Thomas Jefferson
President & colonial collector
List of what he wants
collects copies
50 paintings - thinkers & philosophers
International Exhibition Philadelphia Centennial 1876
The breakthrough exhibition of American Art
The Hudson Fulton Exhibition at the MET - 1909
- important to American object and art. First time the subject is shown in a museum
- celebrating 100 years since Fulton steamships going up Hudson river 1807. and discovered hudson River 1609.
- the exhibit started questioning of these objects deserved to be shown in a museum
- was shown as cluttered grouped objects
- huge success – 180 000 visitors - sets the scene to open an American wing
The American Wing, 1924
Display
Period rooms – high style fictions
They bought the actual rooms/architecture
Eugine Bolles collection 1838-1910
He lent his collection to the Hudson Fulton exhibition
range of objects showing the complete history – simple and high style
Gave later to MET American Wing
George Palmer collection 1844-1934
Cousin with Eugine Bolles - Complimentary collection
Focused on Philadelphia – high style
Styles of Collecting
A broad range
Only of historical significance - high style
READINGS W2
Bushman – The refinement of America
Cummings – Rural household inventories
Museum Studies/ opening of the American wing 1924
Trask – Things American
Bushman – The refinement of America
- The evolvement of the home/house
Cummings – Rural household inventories
- Inventories, prints and the early development of photography tell us about people lived
Museum Studies/ opening of the American wing 1924
- de Forest – president of American Wing
- Atterbury – architect
- Halsey – American Wing curator – The art/beauty of living – high style show off
- Halsey flattened regional difference - ideal
Trask – Things American
- Using objects to tell stories
- MET created new meanings for American things that stepped away from the educational values that progressive connoisseurs like Robert de Forest and Henry Kent had promoted. Instead of serving as models for industrial manufacturers and civic taste…
- Period rooms influenced the way other art museums presented American decorative arts, and it introduced the practice of using material culture to tell social history.
19th C museums
sience and art
organize art in scientific way
relationship between artist and collector/museum in founding
Charles Willson Peale and Americas First museum
- Studies in England 1767-69
- Commission portrait of General Washington 1779
- He is the painter, the excavator, the dealer, important people in the portrait, art to record historical event,
1784-1794. Gallery/museum in his home, Philadelphia.
- skylight as architectural feature
- Admission, 25cent - Only the privileged
- Collecting, preserving, education the public
- showing things from the “new” country
- Collecting, preserving, education the public
1794 - the museum moves to Philosophical hall
1804 - moves museum to State House
- Opens to public in 1810
1806-08 - Exhumation of the Mastodon - displayed at Philosophical hall
His sons, Rubens & Rembrant, establish more museums thought the country
1814 - Peale Museum Baltimore
- First building built to be a museum in America
- The museum focused more on the spectacular than education about nature
Peale - The Long room
The Long Room
- Organized as a visual catalogue
- Drawn upon the tradition of the “cabinet of curiosity”
- Portraits placed above birds, Man is above nature
- Linne´s studies/system
- gaslight to have events at night (very innovative for the time) the night events was a social
- Stuffed animals - invent new methodes of preserving
1821 - achieves official status by the state. Still no founding
- self portrait - his achievements
John Trumbull
- First American painter to have his own museum
- A building is built for his art on Yale campus.
- Neoclassical inspired, engaged columns, skylight,
- He wanted to be burried under the gallery, because he was so close to his art
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Wadsworth Atheneum 1842-44
- Atheneum - Devoted to the goddess Athena - the goddesss of wisdom
- first civil/public museum
- museum only for art - comes in 1840s
Museum - taste
- creating taste
- the museums has made a selection
- refinement of taste
- education of the public -the faith that culture contribute to the importance of a country
1804 New York Historical Society
- Founded to hold books, manuscripts.
- Fist building 1857
- 1908 on 77th St.
- permanent = people then starts to be intersted in giving to the collection
- luman reed collection
Luman Reed
- Gallery in his own house in New York
- Mostly American paintings
- Buys directly from the artist
- dies 1836 - son tries to makes collection public -> New York Historical Society
READINGS W3
Brigham -Peale’s Museum and its Audience
Museum Origins - Peale
“To collect and preserve all the variety of animals and fossils that could be acquired”
The Founding of the Metropolitan Museum
1870
Theory
- Has no collection upon founding - starts with collecting money
- Dependent on gifts vs buying art themselves
- 1850s that collectors give art to the institutions for educational purpose
- Blodget/Dodworth. goes to Europe 1817 (the year of the Fronco-Prussian war) which makes it a perfect tim to buy european art.
- 1872 - exhibitions at dance academy
- showing the history of art - to educate
- JP Morgan, the president of the MET, 1905
- become more selective in curating
- he collected paintings an antiquity
American Academy of the Fine Arts,
1802
NYC
- Educational purpose
- Founded as a place for artist to congregate
- Connection between the industry and the art
- Casts from the Louvre
- originals vs copies
- used to educate artist in school to study from
- Modelled on the academy in London
- venue setting
New York Academy of Fine Arts - Trumbull
Trumbull president of the Academy in 1817
most important person
the academy buys his paintings
The National Academy
- Rival to American Academy
- artist were dissatisfied
- no permanent home for many years
- First space, Chambers st. 1827 (financial district)
Building 1865
Venetion inspired - looking towards european model
READING W4
Baratt
Duncan Wallach
Tomkins
Baratt
- NYC exhibitions
- displayed at home
- the competition between the national and the american academy
Duncan & Wallach - the universal survey museum
- museum architecture
- visual, spatial, social experience
- ceramonial, temples and churches - to enlighten
- classical architecture, grand hall
- Louvre - 1793
- show the power/greatness of the city, nationalism
- Glyptothek Munch - neoclassical
- enlightingment of the people - make museums public
- organizing chronologically vs. by type
- phanteon rotunda - centrl space
- Metropolitan - 1880s Gothic revival
Tomkins
1864 - the sanitary fair
Philadelphia
First worlds fair in US
“salone style”
hanging of the art floor to ceiling