Museum studies Flashcards
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
The metropolitan fair
- the precursor of the foundation of the metropolitan museum
- salone style
- upper class
- 174 works were displayed (about 64 are still at the MET)
- nice catalogue
- dutch paintings - copies
South kensington museum i london
- Ruskinian Gothic
- designed for artisans to learn about good design.
- to develop the contemporary art and industrial design.
Metropolitan
Buildings
- Moves then temporarily to the 14th St.
-
1871/72 - one bought the location in central park.
- plan a larger institution/building - start with a part
-
1880 the first section was finished Ruskinian gothicsouth
- kensington museum i london
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1888 - Extension of the building on 5ave
- the Louvre
- deisgned by Richard Morris Hunt
- Opens the museum on sundays
- idea was to be free at least 4 days a week
The role of American Art in the MET?
- before 1900 - all American artwork were gifts
- 32painting by american artist born before 1850 (=dead)
- 81 by living artists
George Herd - 1906 donation/money to be used on american art.
Metropolitan
Foundign board members
dr Forest
Kensett
Boston Atheneaum
founded 1807
first building 1827
Boston MFA 1876
Starts out with collecting books
Intellectual philospphical organisation
membership
James Perkins –
gives his house to the organisation 1827
adds gallery and lecture hall
venues
artist studios
First Exhibition -
300 paintings. Washington Allston, Gilbert Stuart
Charles Perkins
art I civilizing/elevation and should eb open to more classes.
exposure to art = enlightinment = good desgin = industrialism
Boston MFA (museum of fine arts) 1870
Building Copley Squre 1876
Back bay 1909
- 6 instead of 3 years to build
- land from city
- 1876 - deal - open to public 4 days a week
- 1877 - open on sundays
- 1909 (1903) - new bilding in Back Bay
- some thinks its too far away - create high class area
- shifts to high style
- no copies
Boston MFA
collection
- Evolution/ Encyclopedic museum
- Egyptioan art
- Classica antiques
- The Lawrence room
- no money = reproductions
1880-90s
- Morse (scientist) japanese pottery. book. selftaught
- Fenollosa First curator japanese and asian art
- Biglow - japsnese/oriental collector
- Robinson - classical antuquity
- Lowell - egyptian
Brimmer
there are trends in taste and judgemetns change over time
Evans wing 1915
Boston
European art
William Morris Hunt
Boston
A collector of French contemorary art/Barbason school painting
Martha Codman
Boston
American colonial.
MET vs MFA
- Met
- no need of financial help
- MFA Boston
- good reputation
Charles Grey Loring
Goes to Egypt
first curator at MFA
Colonel Timothy Bigelow Lawrence
Arma and Armor collection MET
READING W6
Burt
Gilman
Wendorf
Burt
- Boston MFA vs MET
Gilman
- How to organize
- And the building
Wendorf
- Boston Atheneaum
Corcoran Museum Washington
1869
- 1850 - banker who started collecting
- Contmpory art with classica subjects
- no one els showed contemporary
- greek slave
- 1855 - opens gallery - 2 days a week
- 1/3 american
- 1859 - buys land close to white house
- inspired by louvre
- want to inspire american artists - American genious
- 1891 - lrger building - neoclassical - serious - mood through architecture
- groundfloor sculpture. doric columns
Today his collection is part of the Smithsonian
Corcoran exhibition 1907
first exhibition of contemporary American paintings
The sentanial exhibition in Philladelphia/
International Exhibition
1876
showing the advanceness of American industrialism
Pensylvanian Museum and school of industrial design
- Housed in the building that housed the international exhibition
- .
Philladelphia Museum of Fine Art
1877
- collection of colonial objects
- the collection needed a building
- 1903 - alot of things in the same room
- Memorial hall
- not a good place to display art
- 1919-28 new building - part of greater development/plan city
- stern, imperial, fereral control
- Greece - height of inellectual achievement - pediment is colored
Art institute of Chicago
Building
- The museum starts witha building
- 1887 opening. Romanesque revival architecture
- 1891-93, expansion/new building.
- 1893 – Columbian exhibition/the world’s fair
- Surrounded by space and can expand very easily
- Neoclassical architecture
- Regimented, grand, imposing/signaling importance. Monumental staircase, skylight
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Art institute of Chicago
collection
Hutchinson (collector and president of the board)
high style works
1894 sale in Florence. Aquires works
Museum organizing / arranging
- By type
- Learning from looking at objects – Frank Hamilton Cushing
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Evolutionary progress.
- From simple to complex, savage to civilized, ancient to modern
- Before civil war – not order to how the objects were arranged
- Industrialisation/ ”the Victorian rage of order” –
- Peale museum
- order makes you understand
- Museums vs. universities as the primary production of knowledge
- The display of the object gives it value
- 1920s classification
- Philladelphia Museum & Boston museum of Fine art 1870s –
- designed to be both display of and school for industrial design
- Looked at South Kensington, London
- Met
- Fine arts treasures
- Looked at Louvre
MET ideaology
- Metropolitan (1920s celebrated 50 years)
- Louvre - Collection of objects illustrating the history of art
- Social magnet, make money of the visitors – NYC as the social metropolis
- Classification through evolution and hierarchy of high style
- Met tried to have an industrial art school. Lasted 15 years. Until 1894
Philladelphia Museum of Fine Arts
ideology
- Philladelphia Museum
- Kensington – illustrating the application of art to manufacutrers/industrial
- Educational purpose
- Scientific and geographical classifcation
THE NEW ERA
- Warner: “Nothing less than a masterpiece should in my opinion be shown here…”
- The new building in Fairmount Park, 1928
- Memorial Hall remained focused on objects & industrial design
Charles Elliot Northon
First art history professor 1870s
Burr
The advantage of the University museum
A teaching institution = doesn’t have to have the most important works/masters
University museums before 1900
Bowdoin College
- the very first university museum.
- Wealthy family founded the school.
Yale
- Trumbull Gallery Late 1820-early 1830s
- donating his works the university
Vassar (a womens college) Museum
- founded at the same time as the school, 1864
- Hudson river school collection
Harvard
- important in the establishment of art history as a study
- Fogg Museum of Art
Bowdoin college museums
- James Bowdoin.
- Goes to Harvard, then grand tour in Europe
- Trumbull, a feature figure in Bowdain’s collecting
- Entire collection to Bowdoin college (only the Peale museum existed by then)
- The first building
Yale museum
- Trumbull Gallery Late 1820-early 1830s
- donating his works the university
- 1864 - Agusta street hall
- gothic architecture
- lecture halls, studios, galleries
- 1887/90Jarves collection - renaissance
- 1930 Francis Garvan collection - collonial art & objects
- 1950s with the Louis Kahn expansion
Vassar (womens college) Museums
- founded at the same time as the school, 1864
- Hudson river school collection
Harvard
- important in the establishment of art history as a study
- Fogg Museum of Art
Art History teaching
- Charles Elliot Northon - 1870s first AH professor
- 1920s Forbes professor – makes the students do work in the techniques to appreciate art.
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The House Museum
American collecting vs. European
- In family only 1 or 2 generations
- give his/her collection to the public in a short time
- Memorialization of the collector
- Museums grans - Houses Intimate
House museums
Inspiration
- Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan, 1879
- Hertford House, London - most influentioal
- 5 generations – collected to show off
- french rococo
- sky lit central grand gallery
- Frick
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Isabella Stuart Gardner
- Money from East india trade
- INSP: Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan
- replacement to the loss of her son
- 1891 - inherits money - starts collecting
- 1896 - back bay house
- spanish court
- 1903 - opens to publec 4 weeks per year
The Walters collection
- money from railways
- starts with American art - Asher Duran (Husdon River school)
- 1870s opens to friends & public (secretive)
- outgrows family home - display as Victorian clutter
Henry Clay Frick
- Carnegie steel
- French contemporary, Barbizon school
- 1899 – retires – buys his first Rembrandt.
- Shifts from contemporary to old masters
- Vanderbuildt art gallery – salon style
- Knodler the major dear
- 1919 Frick dies - 1915, in his will: house = museum
- 1930 the renovation and extention
- 30% of the works were acquired after his death – these works are allowed to travel
Huntington collection in California
- Henry and Arabella
- railways
- 1903 - Duveen does interior and art - British paintings
- 1933, sky lit grand gallery
The Phillips memorial collection
- Late 19 early 20th century art
- intimate attractive atmosphere
- patronising artists - more than one work
- 1923 – Renoir, luncheon at the boating party
MoMa
Modern Museum of Art
1921
- Abby Aldrich Roeckefeller / Lillie P Bliss / Mary Quin Sullivan
- 1921 get together and decides that it needs to be a museum for contemporary works of art
- Barr - head burator. Hardvard art professor
- 1921 First exhibition is in : cezzane, gaugain, Seurat
Architectural style -
- international style – European style
- part of urbn landscape
- Up until the 1950s – work more than 50 years= should be sold.
- Today MoMa is not at the cutting edge - Modern
The Whitney Museum
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
- sculptor – very wealthy
- 1907 moves studio to MacDougal Alley (Washington square)
- Focused on American Art
- The Whitney studio club
- Juliana Force - idea behind Whiney Museum
- 1950s located on 54th street – were negotiating with the MET
- 1960s Marcel Breuer building
Guggenheim
1959 - 89st building
New way of displaying art - Frank Lloyd Wright
