The Cult

of the a ii'ipiiiiitf/iffir" Museum L Joseph Rykwert r i gs& s$g

• a "The Met," drawing by Red Grooms, 1978,

' 'The Cult of the Museum'' is s I looked, not long ago, through acceptable, because if every object that housed in temples and bath buildings, adapted from a presentation made the usual series of books on one dealt with required a personal although there were rare special museums and exhibitions, il response - if every knife and fork, every buildings, of which we know little, called as part of the 14th Ruth Short I e occurred to me that museums piece of jewelry, every bit of clothing pittakoihekae. for which special paintings Symposium, ' 'Vie Museum: Art did not. until very recently, have claimed an emotional response from the were sometimes commissioned. That and Architecture,'' held at the anAy recognizable exteriors - a phenomenon viewer - it could reduce the viewer to a kind of collecting lapsed at the end of that Pontus Hultcn even seeks to extend in nervous breakdown within a look or two. antiquity, and the whole notion of Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, remarking on the relative unimportance collecting works of art as works of art 25-26 March 1988. of the museum exterior. I further recalled In fact, a visit to any museum is also a lapsed with it. The best known of the a book I had chanced on in my late teens, visit to a series of objects displayed so as great collectors of antiquity was probably and which had shocked the assiduous to demand emotional and individual Gaius Verres. whose misgovernment and museum visitor in me at the time I read it responses. However friendly the spoiliation of Sicily was so effectively - Wliy Exhibit Works of An? by Ananda environment, however bland and denounced by Cicero. Coomaraswamy. He never gave a conclusive refreshing it may be. that experience answer to his conundrum and I think that always must be exhausting. It is therefore Greed for works of art revived with the he was never quite convinced that works useful to consider first what seems to me Holy Roman Empire. For many centuries of art should be exhibited, nor am I. the archetypic image of the viewer's collecting concentrated on curiosities. However, he ended his life as curator of response to a work of art: suggested by Mammoth bones, for instance, were Oriental Art at the Boston Museum so the portrait of the collector Andrea Odoni thought to be the bones of a human giant that inevitably he, like me. was very by Lorenzo Lotto, now at Hampton and were admired in St. Stephen's ambiguous about it all. Indeed, I think Court. He is holding a statuette, probably Cathedral in Vienna. Paintings and everyone must be more or less ambiguous Hellenistic, of Ephesian Diana in one sculptures returned to everyday use: to about museums. For despite whatever hand while the other is on his breast in a devotion or propaganda. At the same time goodwill and ingenuity can be brought to gesture signifying reflection. All around relics, particularly the members and bear, I am resigned, regretfully, to the him fragments of antique sculpture litter bones of saints, were collected and trudge which a visit to a museum will the room pell-mell: it is an image from displayed in elaborate jeweled holders. So always involve. The best-designed museum, the beginning of modern collecting and were the bones of great men, especially the most user-friendly museum, inevitably dated 1527. the period when surrounding of kings. In the chapel of the Escorial the makes for a trudge. And that is because yourself with fragments of antiquity bodies of the Spanish kings are coffined of the very nature of works of art. became the practice of a social and on shelves, one above the other. One intellectual elite. But their collections etagcre. for instance, houses those of At the beginning of the century, a were still not museums. Charles V. Philip II, Philip III. and German thinker, Georg Simmel, writing Philip IV. The whole underground chapel at the height of the art nouveau The word "museum" is itself antique. Its is surrounded by these shelves. It is not a movement, when hairpins and doorknobs true meaning comes out in James Joyce's collection or museum in our sense, even were being made into "works of art," deformation of it into "museyroom:" the if each coffin is itself a splendid object or pointed to an essential distinction room of the muses, the room in which even a work of art. between works of art (Kunstwerke) and you can receive or confront inspiration, what I propose to call "works of style" the room into which the muses descend All sorts of curiosities and exotica of non- {KtmstgewerbUche Gegenstttade: literally, to take hold of the victim or minion they human provenance were also collected: "products of art-craftwork;" my rather have chosen as their vehicle. That is a ostrich eggs, nautilus shells, outsize free translation is justified by his later very exalted idea of course, and indeed horns. They were mounted in gold or essay, "On the Picture Frame"). Works of the first public, institutional "museum," silver, sometimes very elaborately, to be art, he suggested, arc objects which the Muscion at Alexandria, was not like used as church ornaments, reliquaries, or demand a unique, emotional response at that at all. Il was an institution which, for objects of domestic display. Many every confrontation with one of them; its day, was exceptionally well equipped. treasuries were filled with them, even if that is why they have to be withdrawn But its collections and grants served a the one in Vienna has remained among from everyday life - and the withdrawal is rather menial purpose - to house the the most curious and perhaps the most represented by the frame of the picture. main propaganda or public-relations interesting since the edifying catalogue of "Style objects," on the other hand, are machine for the Ptolomaic kings of relics proper (or supposed), the part of a scries which are shaped by their Egypt. Its scholars, poets, and painters Heiltumsbuch (the special gate where the user's physical needs, require a user's were there as pensioners to glorify the relics were exhibited being popularly habit-formed, nonchalant response and Dynasty. known as the He'thumsiuhl), was actually the viewer's neglect. They demand that published in 1502! All such curia were lapse in attention which makes the fact The great private collections were built, collected much as people nowadays gather that they indeed may be valuable and have as they are now. by greed. robbery, and grand manuscripts, celebrated paintings, intrinsic merit beyond their price sometimes generous purchase. They were or sculptures. And indeed, old pictures Cite Fall 1988 17

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were already a matter for collectors in the museums in the ancient sense. possessed what may have been the coins and miniatures. 16th century. Nor were they simply greatest collection of drawings since amassed, but closeted in special cases In the middle of the 18th century it Vasari's. When the daughter of one of his Appropriately, about the most elaborate and ireasuries. even displayed on grand became increasingly common to give very particular lady friends was to marry, Kun.stschmnk ever made was for the occasions. One such display, organized antiquities the sort of framing which they he provided her dowry by selling the bulk Emperor Rudolph II, who even surpassed by Queen Mary of Hungary, widow of were thought to inspire, a "classical" of them to George III, in a transaction for his father Maximilian II as the most King Louis II and sister of the Emperor setting. The original Belvedere courtyard which James Adam acted as intermediary refined collector of his time. Not only did Charles V. comprised a whole buffet-altar built to an enigmatic design by the and which form the basis of the Windsor it house shells and rocks, but it also was of a feast, entirely arranged to display enigmatic Jacopo (or Giacomo) da collections. It is not quite clear how some crowned with a composition made up of precious and elaborate objects, recorded Pietrasanta was done over in 1773 by of them found their way into the Adam such "natural" specimens, The emperor's by an anonymous painting. This mania, Michelangelo Simonctti. A few years brothers' own collection. uncle, the Archduke Ferdinand II, put which Andrea Odoni's portrait succinctly later he also designed the Sala dellc together a vast number of such objects in represents, led to the formation of Muse, where the nine muses (Roman A nephew of the Pope who befriended his castle at Ambras outside Innsbruck. collections so large they required special copies of Hellenistic sculptures from Queen Christina of Sweden, Cardinal But he was also a great collector of buildings to house them. Hadrian's villa) and a modern Apollo Albani was one of the greatest, if not the pictures and of armor, as well as a great Musagctes (specially commissioned to most admirable, men of his time. His horse fancier: stables, antiquities, and In the Belvedere on the Vatican Hill a complete the group) constitute a true librarian was Johann Joachim pictures were housed in similar quarters succession of popes so housed their "museyroom." Simonetti's octagon was Winckelmann, the father of art history. at the foot of the castle. The Emperor collection of antiquities, first merely designed to enshrine the best-known The cardinal and his librarian both Rudolph spent vast sums of money on those picked up in Rome and the Roman antique statues - the Apollo Belvedere, believed that they had found the most both works of art and antiquities with countryside. But growing greedy and the Laocoon. the Praxitelean Hermes - to fruitful, elegant, and faithful way of which he surrounded himself. Although ambitious, they then absorbed the which was added Canova's"modern" housing and exhibiting works of art. In a he had been properly crowned as collections not only of their vassals (such Perseus. sense the villa was also a building whose emperor with Charlemagne's crown as as the Dukes of Urbino) but of their exterior was irrelevant to its well as those of Bohemia and Hungary, enemies. The most notorious incident was In a sense, the Vatican Galleries still conservatorial function. It was very much he followed some of his predecessors and the sacking of the Elector Palatine's remain the model, a point of reference. a Barocchetlo villa of the grandest kind. had a "private" crown made for himself library in Heidelberg in 1620. which was But Simonetti's sober and respectful In the splendid gardens, the aged, blind by the Flemish goldsmith Jan Vermeyen, given to Pope Gregory XV by Archduke setting for major antiquities was cardinal would go round the collection of which was so sumptuous that it was later Maximilian of Bavaria two years later. sometimes drastically exceeded in the statues displayed there, "seeing" them adopted as the crown of the Austrian Empire. The Belvedere courtyard, now called the setting of less grandiose ones. Carlo with his hands. He was, quite Octagon, where the antiquities were first Marchionni, a contemporary of incidentally, possessed of some very Maximilian's and Rudolph's collecting displayed, is shown in a drawing by Simonetti's, is chiefly remembered as (he strange ideas about Americans. When the mania, and that of their successors, Martin van Heemskerk at the beginning designer of the sacristy of St. Peter's. But young Benjamin West was taken to see stimulated the developing art market. The of the 16th century. The original he also designed the extravagant suburban him and the cardinal was told that he was emperor lived in the Hradcany Castle Belvedere was linked to the old Vatican villa for Cardinal Alessandro Albani. a young American, he asked permission overlooking the city of Prague, and its palace by the vast new courtyard and When one examines his drawings, as well to stroke his face, and then asked one of great Wladislaw Hall was regularly gardens by Bramante. and filled with as the architectural members of the villa the bystanders: "Is he black?" opened to an art-and-antiques fair where more antiquities. It was subdivided by itself- the door frames, the marble wall print sellers set up their stalls. Hradcany Pope Sixtus V about 1590 with further paneling - one sees that the whole Although Cardinal Albani's collection was both the greatest collection and the buildings to house the growing library decorative scheme is an elaborate was outstandingly housed, it was in fact greatest art market of the time, but its and collections. framing of antique fragments. In them the merely a magnificent enlargement of two exterior was that of a castle. cardinal's name and his arms often disparate things: the sort of Roman house But as yet the collection had no outwardly enclosed venerable antique reliefs. In which had bits of inscription and statue After Ferdinand's collection at Ambras recognizable home. Moreover, the fact, the whole villa and its gardens were fragments walled into the plaster, and and Rudolph's in Prague, the greatest experience of the collector, as of the filled with antiquities: real and imitated also the kind of cupboard found in the collection of the late 16th century was the visitor, was a one-to-one experience. The ruins, the walls lined with colored marble Vienna sacristy which the Germans Aniiquarium in the Electoral Residence gardens of the Vatican, like those of the incrustations, here and there some called Kunsischrank. an art cupboard. in Munich, which was looted by King Medici Palace in Florence, or those of genuine antique columns. It made an Such objects were specially made for Gustav Adolph of Sweden and never other princes, were not "public" in the opulent environment. princes and magnates. They housed reconstituted. Maximilian I of Bavaria sense of today - not the place where the artifacts - coins, small antiquities, jewels lost heart as a collector when practically generality went to refresh themselves on A suburban villa of this kind had no - but also natural curios, metal the whole of his collection became the a Sunday afternoon (although quite often bedrooms since it was close enough to specimens, rocks, shells, and enigmatic booty of the invading army. Yet although they were that as well). On the other the city to be used only during the day; it bone pieces, like most in Vienna. Many he was anxious to display it, it was hand, artists were expected, even invited was a suite of rooms enhanced by what people, not necessarily princes, collected housed in the palace courtyard which to inspect, the great exemplars of was then the greatest private collection of shells and coral and dried or stuffed remained intact after the looting. But antiquity so to receive the inspiration of antiques. That was in the country: in animals, regarding them as objects of collections also provoked great cupidity: the muses. They were, therefore, town. Cardinal Alessandro Albani also virtu in the same way as they regarded 20 years after Gustav Adolph looted the IS Cite Fall 1988

Munich Antiquarium, his daughter The very way in which works were trickle back into Paris, thereby often The museum is predicated on a notion Queen Christina extended the reviewed is very alien to us, as evident in escaping the attention of the sonorously announced by Sir William negotiations for the Peace of Westphalia an image of the varnishing day at the commissioners who were reclaiming Flower in the 1870s: that the museum's to last until her commander, Count Louvre in the 1670s. The pictures were Napoleon's conquests. Napoleon therefore first duty is to instruct: the second, to Konigsmarck, had taken Prague, and she hung opposite the windows, but also with can be regarded as the father of the great entertain. Most of the world's museums was sure of getting most of the Emperor their backs to the windows. They were national museum: the great teaching and were therefore conceived primarily as Rudolph's collection as her share of the exhibited partly for acquisition by the conserving institution. But what he did places of instruction. For that works of booty. state, partly for private purchasers. was typical enough of his age. The Prado art had to be presented in classified Accordingly, they are inspected with collection was first settled in Charles Ill's gatherings, as historical evidence. The When she became a convert to great passion and discernment by disused Academy of Science in 1800. emotional response which Andrea Odoni Catholicism and moved to Rome, she potential buyers in what amounted to a However, there was still no museum was showing in his Lotto portrait would took with her a choice of Gustav Adolph's semi-public setting. Into the 19th century 'type' and collections were housed in presumably have counted as booty from Munich, and Konigsmarck s artists actually did varnish their pictures adapted buildings. The formal museum "entertainment." What was important from Prague. Many pieces were later sold on varnishing day, the last day before the type was not devised until the 19th century. was that one realized how each picture and exchanged. After her death, and that public opening, but in the presence of an belonged to a school or a style, and that of her sole heir soon after, the collection elite audience. However, the idea of An early attempt to formulate it is one acquired some notion about how all was dispersed. But in the Palazzo Riario arranging them to make a coherent exemplified by the Dulwich Art Gallery of them related to one another, like so (now Palazzo Corsini) in which she lived. ensemble - as one might do with antique designed in 1811 by Sir John Soane. The many separate pieces of evidence. she had a specially constructed muses' fragments - was entirely alien to the Dulwich collection was put together by a room occupied by her Hellenistic muses, people who arranged such exhibitions. French emigre art dealer, Noel But the truth is that the instruction which which eventually ended up in the Prado. Desenfans, who had married well and the museum founders were most One of the salons of which an excellent made a small fortune in buying and concerned about was the formation of In fact, the great collecting mania of the representation has survived is that of selling the effects of French refugees, as taste. In the case of the Victoria and 16th and 17lh centuries became the object 1787, two years before the fall of the well as by acquiring pictures for the King Albert Museum, it was founded explicitly of diplomatic and warlike exchanges and Bastille. Yet from the middle of the 18th of Poland who was to lose his own throne as a teaching resource for a design looting on a scale that makes the 20th century to the middle of the 19th, there before he had paid his debts. Desenfans school, the Royal College of Art, which it century seem moderate by comparison. was little change in the format of these wanted to establish a national British art in fact outgrew. The opening of the Of that time, apart from the Vatican, one shows. Even when they did not include gallery as a pendant to the British museums with their gatherings of gallery has remained intact: the Uffizi in any recognized masterpieces, the salons Museum and saw his collection as the masterpieces was intended not only to Florence. Duke Francesco decided to were something of an occasion for both nucleus of such an institution. The train artists, as the galleries had always store and display some of the treasures the critic and the amateur. All the artists government refused to take any interest in done, but also to raise the declining level gathered by the Medici on the lop floor of in Paris, and many working elsewhere in the business, and Desenfans, of public taste. the huge palace designed by Giorgio France, wanted to show their pictures in disillusioned, left his collection to a close Vasari, which it shared with the a review of the year's achievement. The friend, Sir Peter Francis Bourgeois, who In this they have spectacularly failed. administration of the Medici lands in critics discussed the work and the state was a painter of some note. Even as museums rose in our cities, the Tuscany. So the gallery was never a acquired select exhibits. Private general level of building fell in quality. physical presence in the city, however rich individuals bought the majority. In fact, Desenfans had one rooted obsession - The process has been almost inverse to and famous it may have been. the placing of the work on the walls was he did not want his body buried that desired by the museum founders. governed partly by the size of the picture underground. With his collection he left However, the museum has changed A notable exception to all this is the kind but also by the salon jury's opinion of its Bourgeois not only his fortune and his function very rapidly in the last half of house which Ponlus Hulten has offered merit. Although it looks all pell-mell, in wife, but also his corpse; the condition of century. It is no longer a place of as a model for the museum: the house fact the display was hierarchical: the the legacy was that his body was to be instruction in either of the two senses I and studio of Peter Paul Rubens in higher the piece was hung, the less likely kept above ground. have described. And if it is a place of Antwerp, who was - in an age of looting, it was to be bought. entertainment, it is so to very few. It has strife, and banditry - the great When Mrs. Desenfans died in 1807, become a place of cult. Museums are the peacemaker as well as the great painter of Therefore there were two extremes in Soanc designed a Doric funerary chapel nearest thing we have to the temple in our Europe. It is only fitting that his major looking at works of art: the permanently in Bourgeois's house, and Bourgeois lime. They are now quasi-, if not wholly, patrons both as diplomat and as painter, framed and polished ensemble that made disposed that on his death the collection, religious institutions. It is that, their the Archduke Albert, governor of the a continuous narrative, a continuous his body, together with those of Mr. and pilgrimage quality, which ultimately Netherlands, and his wife the Infanta experience out of the vision of the Mrs. Desenfans. would be laid in a justifies the crowded trudge, the Isabel, should have been painted by a antique; and, on the other hand, the halls chapel off the main exhibition space charabanc excursion. It is not the one-to- lesser master on a visit to Rubens's stuffed with pictures assembled expressly where the collection was displayed, and one "aesthetic" which the crowds (surely studio. In this portrait of visitation, the so that they might be dispersed. In that Soane would design the building. It the thing is a contradiction in terms?) paintings on the walls are mostly those of between came a whole gamut of was done, and the sarcophagi round the seek, but a cultural experience. The Rubens while those above the heads of collections. But as yet there was no lantern of the chapel arc cenotaphs that change is a complex one. and I certainly the Archducal pair are obviously by other specific type of building which might show the nature of this part of the do not wish to make light of it. It has painters. Rubens was very much the house all those things which were thought building, which provides it with a caesura become a very important part of our artist-collector. The light streams in to have special artistic value. That arose for melancholy meditation. The Dulwich culture. I think those of us who have to through the vast windows: although one in the middle of the 18th century, almost collection is, in a sense, a failed national do with museums, whether as architects is conscious of the windows on the by accident. In London, a number of collection. But it is also a shrine to its or curators, or even (like myself) merely exterior, what Rubens in fact built private libraries and collections - originator and brings to mind the nature as interested visitors, must take account himself was an extension, an exalted including those of Sir Hans Sloane, Sir of the first museums. It stands in a of this very important development, version of the prosperous Antwerp Robert Cotton, and the Earl of Oxford - curious relation to the new national whose future is not easy to forecast. But I burgher's house. were to be deposited in one place to make museums of the 19th century, but also has think we have to ask ourselves what the a national British museum and library. the character of a reliquary chapel - the nature of this cult is - for surely, it is not a cult of beauty - and how we are to Well into the 18th century collections Purchase and housing was to be financed monumental institution - in the sense that come to terms with it. Whatever it has went on being heterogenous - curios, by a lottery. Later in the century a it commemorates a particular person. become, it will be with us for some time stuffed animals, puzzling bones, shells, movement started in Germany, Austria, yet and we will have to reckon with it. • and ethnographic items of the kind which and the Scandinavian countries to put In fact, the first proper building of the 18th-century connoisseurs would not have together national antiquities into type is probably the Altes Museum in called "fine art." The great coherent, even monumental, collections. Berlin designed by Karl Friedrich Sll(;gl'St4.>d Readings anthropological collections were not put Schinkel in 1822-1823. The plan reveals 1 Edward P. Alexander. Museums in Motion: An together until the end of the 18th century. The man who welded all this into an the cunning way in which Schinkel Introduction to the History and Functions of Dresden, so important for the king- instrument of policy was Napoleon. He operated its elements: the long frontal Museums. Nashville: American Association for elector of Saxony's collection of paintings was determined to make Paris even more colonnade, the exterior stairways, the Slate and Local History. 1979. and jewelry, became a center also of a center of the arts than had Louis XIV. enfilades of galleries, and the circular, 2 Ananda Coomaraswamy. Why Exhibit Works of ethnographical collecting. It was not until And he believed that the way to go about domed, central space. From that time Art?. London: Luzac. 1943. (The title essay originally appeared in the Journal of Aesthetics the 19th century, however, that people achieving this was to gather as much of onwards, Schinkel's scheme became a and Art Criticism. Fall 1941. pp, 27-41.) began to consider ethnographical objects the antiquities of the world as he could model of how a national museum should 3 Douglas Crimp, "The End of Art and the Origin as having a proper artistic value which and bring them to Paris. From Italy the look and how it was to be recognized. He of the Museum." Art Journal, vol. 46.4. Winter was analogous, and in some cases works of art were brought in a triumphant did not devise the type; it had originated 1987. pp. 261-266. perhaps even superior, to those produced procession over the Alps. They included earlier in the century in Paris, at the 5 James Mordaunt Crook. Tlte British Museum: A Case Study in Architectural Politics, in the western world. the four bronze horses from St. Mark's in Ecole Polytechnique. Schinkel, however, Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1972. Venice. Napoleon had first intended to made it into a built form. Any number of 6 Sir William Henry Flower. Essays on Museums Perhaps the first person to realize clearly put all these works of art in the Invalidcs, museums (including the British Museum and Other Subjects Connected with Natural what was involved in such collecting was as if they were a display of trophies. His in London, whose portico was begun in History, London: 1898. architects. Charles Percicr and Louis 1823, though the rotunda was not added 7 Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the German Jesuit Athanasius Kircher. the Antique. New Haven: Yale. 19HI. who made an enormous collection of Fontaine, persuaded him that the Louvre until the 1850s) show the same 8 Jasia Reichard). "Museum Tomorrow," American-Indian, Oriental, and Egyptian - which had been voted into a museum relationship between the domed rotunda Architectural Re\iew, vol. CLXVIII, 1065, antiquities. He also had devised a system by the Convention in 1791 - was much and the frontal portico or some November 1985. pp, 35-37. for reading Egyptian hieroglyphs, a more suitable. And this decision made modification of it. The "hall of Roman 9 Joseph Rykwerl, "The Architecture of the Dulwich Picture Gallery." The Listener, vol. 71. rather improbable one as it now seems, the Louvre into one of the world's great baths" type sometimes overlays Schinkel's scheme (as at the Metropolitan 1. 1964, pp. 158-159. which involved parallels between Chinese museums. 10 Sir Roy Strong. "The Museum As and Egyptian picture-writing. But his Museum of Art in New York) since it is a Communicator." Museum, no. 138 (XXXV. no. collection also included western-type After the fall of Napoleon, many things form which the architects of the time 2), UNESCO, 1982. works of art as well as musical and loved, and which also was used for 11 Alma S. Wittlin, 77i<> Museum: Its History and had to go back: the bronze horses which Its Tasks in Education. London: Rout ledge and scientific instruments. The way in which Napoleon had harnessed to the quadriga railway stations and factories. But Schinkel's portico-dome formula KeganPaul. 1949. collectors diversified, and did so of his own triumphal arch went back to 12 Alma S. Wittlin, Museums: In Search of a deliberately to achieve a complete Venice, which had become an Austrian remained a point of reference. Wherever Usable Future, Cambridge. Massachusetts: MIT. representation of the intellectual compass possession. But a lot of the works museums were built in the 19th century, 1970. of the time, seems very remote from the Napoleon had looted were distributed to these elements seem to be invoked, museum- or collection-making of the late French provincial collections by prudent however remotely; and the type has been 20lh century. curators, and only some were allowed to bequeathed to our own times.