Worthy Monuments

Daniel J. Sherman

Published by Harvard University Press 1989

Worthy Monuments

Art Museums and the Politics of Culture in Nineteenth-Century France

Daniel J. Sherman

https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674433342

Overview
Contents

About this book

Attracting controversy as readily as they do crowds, art museums--the Grand Louvre project and the new Orsay in Paris, or the proposed Whitney and Guggenheim additions in New York, for example--occupy a curious but central position in world culture. Choosing the art museums of provincial France in the previous century as a paradigm, Daniel Sherman reaches toward an understanding of the museum's place in modern society by exploring its past. He uses an array of previously unstudied archival sources as evidence that the museum's emergence as an institution involved not only the intricacies of national policy but also the political dynamics and social fabric of the nineteenth-century city.

The author ascertains that while the French state played an important role in the creation of provincial museums during the Revolutionary era, for much of the next century it was content simply to send works of art to the provinces. When in the 1880s the new Republican regime began to devote more attention to the real purposes and functions of provincial museums, officials were surprised to learn that the initiative had already passed into the hands of local elites who had nurtured their own museums from their inception.

Sherman devotes particular attention to the museums of Bordeaux, Dijon, Marseilles, and Rouen. From their origins as repositories for objects confiscated during the Revolution, they began to attract the attention of local governments, which started to add objects purchased at regional art exhibitions. In the period 1860-1890, monumental buildings were constructed, and these museums became identified with the cities' bourgeois leaders. This central connection with local elites has continued to our own day, and leads into the author's stimulating reflections on the art museum's past, present, and future.

This original and highly readable account should attract those with an interest in cultural institutions and art history in general as well as those who study the history and sociology of modern France.

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Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Illustrations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART I. THE MUSEUM AND THE STATE
CHAPTER I. The State and the Uses of Patronage: The Envoi System Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	16
CHAPTER 2. Inspectors, Inspections, and Norms Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	55
PART II. THE MUSEUM AND THE CITY
CHAPTER 3. Museums in Formation, 1791-1850 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
CHAPTER 4. Museums in Transition, 1850–1870 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
CHAPTER 5. Museums in Construction, 1860-1890 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	154
CHAPTER 6. The Museum and the Institution of Culture, 1870-1914 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	192
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	239
Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	251
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	264
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	331

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Edition: Reprint 2014
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Front matter: 13
- Main content: 337
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 20
- Other: illustrations
Keywords: Art museums -- France -- History -- 19th century.; Art and state -- France.; HISTORY / Modern / 19th Century; ART / General; HISTORY / Europe / France

eBook

Published: October 1, 2013
ISBN: 9780674433342

Hardcover

Published: February 5, 1989
ISBN: 9780674433335