History of Museums

Jeffrey Abt

PLEASE NOTE: The following is an extract from a syllabus I no longer use. So the publications listed below may have either been superceded with more recent books and articles or might be supplemented with newer works.

HISTORY OF MUSEUMS

Course Schedule and Bibliography

NOTE: All texts in Purdy/Kresge Library unless otherwise noted.

Session 1 -- Introduction to Course: a) organization; b) requirements; Visit to the Detroit Institute of Arts

General sources and references:

Abt, Jeffrey. "Museum, History" in The Dictionary of Art (London: Macmillan, 1996).

Art Museums of the World Ed. by Virginia Jackson, et al. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987). 2 vols.

Bazin, Germain. The Museum Age trans. Jane van Nuis Cahill (New York: Universe Books, 1967).

Von Holst, Neils. Creators, Collectors, and Connoisseurs (New York: Putnam, 1967).

Wittlin, Alma S. Museums: In Search of A Usable Future (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1970).

General texts on history of museum architecture:

Brawne, Michael. The New Museum: Architecture and Display (New York: Praeger, 1965).

Davis, Douglas. The Museum Transformed: Design and Culture in the Post-Pompideau Age (New York: Abbeville Press, 1990). [In Detroit Public Library]

Pevsner, Nikolaus. A History of Building Types (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1976). (See "Museums" pp. 111-138).

Session 2 -- Mouseion of Alexandria: Empiricism, recuperation, preservation.

Bergman, Bettina. "The Roman House as Memory Theater: The House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii" Art Bulletin 76 (June 1994): 225-56.

Fraser, Peter M. Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). (See "Ptolemaic Patronage: The Mouseion and Library" pp. 305-335.) [Also in Detroit Public Library]

Pomian, Krzyoztof. "The Collection: between the Visible and the Invisible," in Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500-1800 trans. by Elizabeth Wiles-Portier (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 7-44.

Strong, Donald. "Roman Museums," in Roman Museums: Selected Papers on Roman Art and Architecture (London: Pindar Press, 1994), 13-30.

Yates, Frances A. The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966).

Session 3 -- The Renaissance: Retrieval of classical learning, "museum" as frame and microcosm, curiosities and inquiry.

Balsiger, Barbara Jeanne. "The Kunst- und wunderkammern: A Catalogue Raisonné of Collecting in Germany, France and England, 1565-1750." PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1970. [Available from University Microfilms International ("UMI").]

Findlen, Paula. "The Museum: Its Classical Etymology and Renaissance Genealogy" Journal of the History of Collections 1,1 (1989): 59-78.

Findlen, Paula. Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

Mullaney, Steven. The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). (See Chapter 3, "The Rehearsal of Cultures".)

The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe, ed. by Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).

Shelton, Anthony Alan, "Cabinets of Transgression: Renaissance Collections and the Incorporation of the New World" in The Cultures of Collecting ed. by John Elsner and Roger Cardinal (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1994): 177-203.

Session 4 -- The Renaissance, cont.: Beginning art’s history; Presentation of paper proposals.

Gutfleisch, Barbara and Joachim Menzhausen, "`How a Kunstkammer should be formed.' Gabriel Kaltemarckts's advice to Christian I . . .on the formation of an art collection, 1587" Journal of the History of Collections 1, 1 (1989): 3-32.

Haskell, Francis and Nicholas Penny. Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500-1900 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1981). (See pp. 7-61.)

Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta, "From Treasury to Museum: The Collections of the Austrian Habsburgs" in The Cultures of Collecting ed. by John Elsner and Roger Cardinal (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1994): 137-154.

Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta, "Remarks on the Collections of Rudolf II: the Kunstkammer as a Form of Representatio" Art Journal XXXVIII, 1 (Fall 1978): 22-28.

Klinger, Linda Susan. "The Portrait Collection of Paolo Giovio." PhD diss., Princeton Univ., 1991. [Available from UMI.]

Rubin, Patricia Lee. Giorgio Vasari: Art and History (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1995).

Session 5 -- The Enlightenment: Notions of public, system, instruction.

Gould, Cecil. Trophy of Conquest: The Musée Napoleon (London: Faber, 1965). [Detroit Public Library]

Kristeller, Paul Oskar, "The Modern System of the Arts: A Study in the History of Aesthetics" Journal of the History of Ideas 12 (1951): 496-527; 13 (1952): 17-46.

McClellan, Andrew. Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Modern Museum in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994): 1-12 "Introduction"; 91-123 "Chapter 3."

Miller, Edward. That Noble Cabinet: A History of the British Museum (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1974).

Session 6 -- The Nineteenth Century: National ends and means in Europe.

Lorente, J. Pedro. Cathedrals of Urban Modernity: The First Museums of Contemporary Art, 1800-1930 (Aldershot, Great Britain: Ashgate, 1998).

Moyano, Steven, "Quality vs. History: Schinkel's Altes Museum and Prussian Arts Policy" Art Bulletin LXXII, 4 (December 1990): 585-608.

Sheehan, James J. Museums in the German Art World: From the End of the Old Regime to the Rise of Modernism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

Sherman, Daniel J. Worthy Monuments: Art Museums and the Politics of Culture in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1989): 154-191 "Museums in Construction, 1860-1890."

Session 7 -- The Nineteenth Century: Acquiring culture, education, and civic amenities in America.

Burt, Nathaniel. Palaces for the People: A Social History of the American Art Museum (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1977).

Conn, Steven. Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

Fox, Daniel M. Engines of Culture: Philanthropy and Art Museums (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1995).

McCarthy, Kathleen D. Women's Culture: American Philanthropy and Art, 1830-1930 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991).

Orosz, Joel J. Curators and Culture: The Museum Movement in America, 1740-1870 (Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1990).

Steffensen-Bruce, Ingrid A. Marble Palaces, Temples of Art: Art Museums, Architecture, and American Culture, 1890-1930 (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1998).

Session 8 -- Displaying Art: The poetics of history.

Bailey, Colin B., "Conventions of the Eighteenth-Century Cabinet de tableaux: Blondel d' Azincourt's La première idée de la curiosité" Art Bulletin 69, 3 (September 1987): 431-447.

Bann, Stephen, The Clothing of Clio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984): 77-92 "Poetics of the Museum: Lenoir and Du Sommerard." [Also in Detroit Public Library]

Haskell, Francis. The Ephemeral Museum: Old Master Paintings and the Rise of the Art Exhibition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).

Past Imperfect: A Museum Looks at Itself, ed. by Donna de Salvo (New York: The New Press, 1993).

Ward, Martha. "Impressionist Installations and Private Exhibitions" Art Bulletin 73 (December 1991): 599-622.

Session 9 -- Presentations on research in progress.

Session 10 -- Displaying Art: The poetics of commerce and culture.

Altshuler, Bruce. The Avant-Garde in Exhibition: New Art in the 20th Century (New York: Abrams, 1994).

Baudrillard, Jean, "The System of Collecting" in The Cultures of Collecting ed. by John Elsner and Roger Cardinal (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1994): 7-24.

Bronner, Simon J., "Object Lessons: The Work of Ethnological Museums and Collections" Consuming Visions: Accumulation and Display of Goods in America, 1880-1920, ed. by Simon J. Bronner (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1989): 217-254.

Coombes, Annie E. Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).

Harris, Neil, "Museums, Merchandizing and Popular Taste" in Material Culture and the Study of American Life ed. by Ian M. G. Quimby (New York, Norton, 1978): 140-174.

Jacknis, Ira, "Franz Boas and Exhibits: On the Limitations of the Museum Method of Anthropology" in Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture ed. by George W. Stocking, Jr. (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1985): 75-111.

Staniszewski, Mary Anne. The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998).

Session 11 -- The twentieth century: cultures in conflict.

Bourdieu, Pierre et al. The Love of Art: European Art Museums and Their Public trans. by Caroline Beattie and Nick Merriman (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1990): 14-mid. 27, 37-70.

Clifford, James, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature and Art (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1988): 215-251 "On Collecting Art and Culture."

Culture Wars: Documents from the Recent Controversies in the Arts, ed. by Richard Bolton (New York: New Press, 1992).

Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display Ed. by Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991).

Price, Sally. Primitive Art in Civilized Places (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

Session 11 -- The twentieth century: Artists and museums.

Corrin, Lisa G., "Mining the Museum: Artists Look at Museums, Museums Look at Themselves" Mining the Museum: An Installation by Fred Wilson ed. by Lisa G. Corrin (New York: New Press, 1994):1-18.

Fisher, Philip. Making and Effacing Art: Modern American Art in a Culture of Museums (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1991). (See pp. 3-47, 90-117.)

Fraser, Andrea, "Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk" October 57 (Summer 1991): 104-122.

McShine, Kynaston. The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1999).

James Putnam, Art and Artifact: The Museum as Medium (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2001).

O'Doherty, Brian. Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (San Francisco, Ca.: Lapis Press, 1986). [Also in Detroit Public Library]

Session 12 -- The twentieth century: Performing and watching art history.

Duncan, Carol and Alan Wallach, "The Universal Survey Museum" Art History III, 4 (Dec. 1980): 448-469.

Duncan, Carol. Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums (London: Routledge, 1995).

Malraux, Andre. Museum Without Walls (London: Secker & Warburg, 1967).

Museum Culture: Histories, Discourses, Spectacles ed. by Daniel J. Sherman and Irit Rogoff (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1994).

Museums in Crisis, ed. by Brian O'Doherty (New York: Braziller, 1972).

Crimp, Douglas. On the Museum’s Ruins (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993).

Session 13 -- Case study: The Detroit Institute of Arts.

Abt, Jeffrey. A Museum on the Verge: A Socioeconomic History of the Detroit Institute of Arts, 1882-2000 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001).

Peck, William H. The Detroit Institute of Arts: A Brief History (Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts, 1991).

Session 14 -- The museum revisted: The Detroit Institute of Arts (class meets at the Woodward Ave. entrance)

Session 15 -- Presentation and discussion of papers (completed versions of papers due following week)