Description
Book SynopsisTraces the birth, evolution, and decline of the public art museum as an institution meant to spark democratic debate and discussion.
Trade Review“
Museum Skepticism is a fascinating study, original, brilliant, and erudite. I absolutely loved reading this book.”—
Ellen Handler Spitz, author of
The Brightening Glance: Imagination and Childhood“David Carrier is one of only a handful of scholars who inhabit with ease the diverse worlds of philosophy, art history, art criticism, and now museology. His philosophical acuity probes the responsibilities, shortcomings, and achievements of art museums, and the responses of their academic critics. Carrier’s provocative reflections on the successive metamorphoses of these irreplaceable yet infuriating institutions are sure to be a stimulus to the democratic conversation about their future that he so warmly advocates. Reading Carrier is like reading Montaigne: no one could be a more thoughtful, witty, or erudite imaginary interlocutor for the fortunate reader of this impassionedly personal yet highly disciplined book.”—
Ivan Gaskell, Harvard University
“
Museum Skepticism certainly delivers, what it promises-a valid and convincing theory that answers the question: "What is it to lead the life of a work of art?" It offers a glimpse into the lives of several iconic public art museums and the personalities that contributed to the development of these institutions and their collections. . . . With its passionate tone and accessible language, it should be part of any art student’s library.” -- Alise Piebalga * Leonardo Reviews *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Overture 1
1. “Beauty and Art, History and Fame and Power”: On Entering the Louvre 17
2. Art and Power: Time Travel in the Museum 39
3. Museum Skeptics 51
4. Picturing Museum Skepticism 74
5. Art Museum Narratives 91
6. Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Museum 110
7. Ernest Fenollosa’s History of Asian Art 126
8. Albert Barnes’s Foundation and the Place of Modernist Art within the Art Museum 146
9. The Display of Absolutely Contemporary Art in the J. Paul Getty Museum 165
10. The End of the Modern Public Art Museum: A Tale of Two Cities 181
Conclusion: What the Public Art Museum Might Become 208
Notes 225
Bibliography 269
Index 305
