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National Museums and Nation-Building in Europe 1750-2010

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National Museums and Nation-Building in Europe 1750-2010 4 THE CHANGING ROLES OF ART MUSEUMS Dominique Poulot In this chapter we put the history of the art museums in Europe, from the eight- eenth century to the present day, in the broader context of the nation-building process, the political representations of heritage, and the consumption and pleasures of art. Our point of view is one of a cultural history of the nationalization and consummation of high culture, of its icons and values. The category of museum of art is a historical one, which is closely linked to the split, during the nineteenth century, of the category of the encyclopedic museum of the Enlightenment into separate realms and disciplines. Since the eighteenth century, the art system has established itself as a complex system with normative rules and structures (such as academies, art literature, criticism) to guarantee a ‘disinterested’ perception of the works (Kristeller 1951). The art world would not be imaginable in its modern form without the museum, that is to say an institution devoted to the history of its objects and to their catalogue (Waterfield 2000). But national museums of art were also founded to achieve political and social objectives – to influence the taste of the subjects or citizens, to mould their conduct and to provide assertions of the superiority and identity of national art. Art museums were ideal sites for the insti- tutional politics of nationalism (Pointon 1994; Poulot 1997; Gaehtgens 1992; Wright 1996), and museum-going was a kind of civic ritual. The relative importance of each national museum of art during the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries was linked to the success or failure of each national academic system to emulate a common ideal of beauty, mostly based on the most beautiful antique statues of the museums of Rome. An inter- national and more or less immutable canon determined the quality of each national production and its consequent celebration in the national museums. This state of things changed during the second part of the nineteenth century and canons became more diverse and related to Romantic ideals of popular culture and history. 90 Dominique Poulot In any case, the full quality of each nation, manifesting itself in time with increasing plenitude, is connected with the existence and the qualities of its national spirit and national school, of artists, especially as the national museum collects and displays them, confronting their peculiar talents to other ones, putting in evidence their aesthetic strength and independence. The importance of the curator or director cannot be underestimated, even after the heroic period of foundation of the big museums when Dominique-Vivant Denon was able to mould the heritage of the biggest part of Europe as that of a single nation. The first model for a curator’scareer throughout the nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth century was that of the artist. Sometimes, this situation exemplified the continuity of a family such as the family of painters and curators of the Prado, who began to be in charge in 1838 when painter José de Madrazo (1781–1859) was appointed its director, and after him two of his sons played a crucial role in the development of the museum. A more professional training and a more formal employment were suggested to those seeking to work in the museum world as curators or conservators at the end of the nine- teenth century, be it the École du Louvre (1882) or the universities. Nevertheless, some painters had played a prominent role in the evolution of national museums: after the revolution of 1848 the French painter Philippe-Auguste Jeanron (1809–77) imagined a very modern organization of the Louvre, which was followed by the 2nd Empire and the 3rd Republic. In the twentieth century, the curators under totalitarian rule had to choose to be dismissed, to emigrate or to fully adopt the agenda of their masters. This, definitely, applies to Germany: ‘Museum directors, while possessing considerable erudition and even international renown, comprised one of the most nazified professions’ (Petro- poulos 2000: 14). In the museums under the rule of ‘socialist realism’, exhibitions served as a form of propaganda. In the Tallinn State Art Museum ‘the emphasis of museum display was laid on Estonian art preceding the October Revolution (for example, limited to a few artists who had studied in St. Petersburg), and the works of art in the so-called Socialist Realist style’ (Kuutma 2011). This moment is a mon- strous illustration of the fact that art museums are always part of cultural policy, bringing into the public sphere a certain idea about aesthetics, and contributing clearly to the agency of art in the community. In the second half of the twentieth century, the concept of avant-garde gave a new impetus to the national model of an art museum, inventing what has been coined as ‘the tradition of the new’ (Rosenberg 1994), each nation seemingly having a special position in the new history of art according to the ability of its artists to make innovations and to have a recognized influence in the field, in the context of a perpetual reinvention of the subjects, forms and attitudes. Depending on time and country, this definition of art has oscillated between cosmopolitism and universalistic affirmations and strong community-bounded and even ethnic assertions. The dispute among social scientists about the different types of nation- alism and nationality elaborated on in Europe during the past two centuries is too well-known to be repeated here, but it is clear that the judgement upon the national quality of art works in each nation-state depends on such choices. Beyond The changing roles of art museums 91 the philosophical and aesthetic problems that such considerations involve, the question is linked to the protection of artworks, to their ownership and to the liberal exchange they may participate in within European culture, or within the landscape of blockbuster exhibitions and virtual museums. This chapter considers first the identity of the national museum of art in the simple terms of ownership, related to the political issues of politics, policy and funding, and to the social context of private collecting and philanthropy. After that, the national collections are studied according to their aesthetic and cultural contents, from universally considered museum pieces to timely works. The architectural set- tings as well as the curatorial work of the catalogues and display constitute the third part of this chapter to explain the successive and sometimes conflictual interpretations of works of art during the process of their institutionalization and democratization. Finally, the uses of the national museums are dealt with by visitors as sites of appro- priations, but they may also be seen as a means of disseminating art through mechanical reproductions for commercial purposes more or less related to the museums themselves. We will study their agency, between the apprenticeship of the artists, teaching the persuasiveness of high art to visitors, and celebrating the national spirit of their curatorship. Ownership The museum appears as the ‘home’ of art and knowledge, a place devoted to democratic access to pleasure and knowledge. However, the European museums have been anything but still. Beyond the permanent character of museum owner- ship, the national art museums can be seen during three centuries among the ‘tem- porary stabilizers’ (Hall 2001) of heritages related to different national communities. The entering of objects into the museum must be considered as the intertwined result of institutional history and the biographies of various actors – curators, donors, merchants (Hill 2005; Poulot 2012a). The museum world has always been domi- nated by heated debates on the issues of heritage and the ownership of culture: who can legitimately claim to own a great work of art – an individual proprietor, a cul- ture, the nation or humanity? Another fundamental question is the entering of objects into museums, which more or less explicitly involves a rupture or specific phase in the long life of images and objects. The history of the museum was for a long time understood according to the glorifying logics of the collectors or, in con- trast, as a narrative of reparation in relation to objects unduly seized and assembled. The conquest of treasures in times of war is hardly something new, but is timeless and pandemic (Greenfield 2007). The contradictions between the meaning of an object in its environment and in its new location in a museum, which becomes the ideal depository and shelter of all artistic industries, became apparent in the first third of the nineteenth century – even if its premises were visible earlier, as in the case of the collections of the antiquities of the Italian peninsula, heavily bought up by foreigners, especially British collectors, since the early modern period. Discussions related to property and legitimacy were central in the 92 Dominique Poulot formation of a collective culture of art, considered as a heritage of useful models for national schools of art, as much as for the progress of knowledge. The question of whether artworks are the property of princes, royal families or the state was crucial during periods of dynastic crises or revolutions and in any case at the moment of the elaboration of new nation-state structures. Such is the case of the Uffizi, recognized as the collective property of the Tuscan state during the succession crisis of the dukedom of Tuscany. In Sweden, the collection of Gustav III, bought in Italy during his journey in 1783–4 with state money, was after his assassination considered state property and was used for the royal museum opened in 1794. The British Museum, founded by the Parliament, is singular in this context because it was from the beginning a public institution, not related to the royal collections or to a dynasty’s property.
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