What types of art museum are there? Why do we keep art?

1. What do we do with art?
• How do you use art?
• Why do we keep art?

2. Museums & Private Collections
• Art collections
• Museum: ancient Greek mouseion
(university), 15th
century Europe referring to
collections of interesting objects

3. Who owns collections and why?
• Nobility, Heads of State, Countries
• Private Art Collectors
• Private become public…
– Donated or sold:
• personal gain
• Fame
• preservation for posterity

4. How are collections built?
• European History:
– Enlightenment
– Romantic period
• Capitalism: ownership, control, possession
• Colonialism: colonized countries’ art &
artifacts filled European museums through
conquest and colonization

5. National Museum
• London’s British Museum, France’s Louvre in
Paris, Vatican Museum, Smithsonian Institute
in Washington, D. C.
• Donated or purchased private collections
• Large institution with several types of
collections:
– Cultural items, artifacts, different countries
– Fine and ancient art

6. Art Museums
• Exhibits art to maximize formal and aesthetic
qualities
• Private institutions, public museums
supported by tax money, university run
museums
• Modern art museums:
– Most current art
– Unusual, challenging to public audience

7. Regional Museums
• Interest of local and regional cultural area
• Variety in collections, missions and programs
Latino Cultural Center, Dallas

8. Preserving art
• Weather
• Time
• People
– War
– Pollution
– Vandals
– Tourists
– Ignorance
Altamira Caves

9. Restoration
Michelangelo. Pieta. 1499. Marble. St. Peter's, Vatican.

10. Mona at the Louvre

11. Controversy of Restoration
Michelangelo, Detail of Sistine Chapel, 1508-1512,Vatican, Rome, Italy

12. Saving Art
• Art is endangered by…
– Climate
– War
– People
• World War II, Nazi and their preoccupation with
art in Europe during the Holocaust
• Rape of Europa, documentary film
• “The Monument Men”, soldiers who saved
European art during war

13. When art is not saved…
• Afghanistan
• Iconoclast
• Art destroyed as strategy of war

14. Conquest
• Aztecs and Spaniards

18. Recall
• What are the major differences between
these three museums?
• National museums
• Art museums
• Regional museums