The New Museum: The gloom of the museumElm tree Press, 1917 |
Common terms and phrases
Advertising American art American museums archaeology architects architectural arrangement art museum Assoc Atlantic Monthly B. I. Gilman beautiful Benjamin Ives Gilman catalogue ceedings Amer city's center classification conquest COPIES THE OLD costly curator department store development of museums display Docent service Edward K erected Europe European exhibits functions of museums galleries Greek temple housed illustrate impor industrial ings Amer installation interest JOHN COTTON DANA kinds of museums labels large number libraries located method museum building museum idea museum management museum material Museum of Natural Museums Journal museums of art Natural History necklace objects of art oil paint patrons photographs pleasure Popular Science Monthly priceless originals Principles of museum Proceedings Amer public museums rare remote rich and powerful seums small museum South Kensington Museum specimens suggestion taste teachers things tion trustees U. C. BERKELEY U.C. BERKELEY W. H. Flower
Popular passages
Page 25 - ... museums, spending many thousands per year on administration and many other thousands on acquisition, are now pluming themselves on the fact that they employ one — only one — person to make their collections more interesting to the thousands who visit them; that they have a hall in which during the winter a few lectures are given, and that they publish a bulletin recording their progress in piling up treasures, and catalogs which are as devoid of human interest as a perfect catalog can be.
Page 15 - The objects in them are very largely second rate original art works, usually with large additions of things historical or archaeological of little art value. Many of the buildings are so expensive to administer and to light and to heat that the managers can keep them open to the public a small part only of the hours when the public can best visit them. They are visited by few, that few being made up largely of strangers passing through the city; and the objects displayed are used for practical, every-day...
Page 21 - This fact will in time be recognized and acted upon: that the oil painting has no such close relation to the development of good taste and refinement as have countless objects of daily use. The genius and skill which have gone into the adornment and perfecting of familiar household objects will then receive the same recognition as do now the genius and skill of the painter in oils. Paintings will no longer be given an undue share of space, and on them will be expended no undue share of the museum's...
Page 23 - A great city department store of the first class is perhaps more like a good museum of art than are any of the museums we have yet established.
Page 25 - Museums of the future will not only teach at home, they will travel abroad through their photographs, their text-books and their periodicals. Books, leaflets and journals...
Page 30 - I have ventured to name as the good things which art museums exist to promote — these refinements may be attained by any, save the very young, who will attend thereto and will diligently use, to that end, the materials always at hand in dress, architecture, shop window, nature and the ever-present picture and printed page. But in spite of the infinity of ever-present opportunity for...
Page 45 - The museums of the future in this democratic land should be adapted / to the needs of the mechanic, the factory operator, the day laborer, the salesman, and the clerk, as much as to those of the professional man and the man of leisure.
Page 21 - ... or its branches, and make use of its collections. One need not be specific; the museum will show by originals or replicas what has been done by other people to make more convenient and attractive all the things that we use and wear and see day by day, from shoes...
Page 23 - ... their specialties and forget their museum. They become lost in their idea of a museum and forget its purpose. They become lost in working out their idea of a museum and forget their public. And soon, not being brought constantly in touch with the life of their community through handling and displaying that community's output in one or scores of lines, they become entirely separated from it and go on making beautifully complete and very expensive collections, but never construct a living, active...
Page 19 - ... the fine, open spaces of a public park. But, if it wants an institution of the newer museum type, something from which can be derived pleasure, surely, and profit if the gods permit, then let that be built where it can be easily made use of, in the city's center.