The Museum Is Open: Towards a Transnational History of Museums 1750-1940 9783110298826, 9783110298802

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The Museum is Open

Contact Zones

Editors Lars Blunck, Bénédicte Savoy, Avinoam Shalem

Volume 1

The Museum is Open

Towards a Transnational History of Museums 1750–1940 Editors Andrea Meyer, Bénédicte Savoy

Die Drucklegung wurde gefördert durch die Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung.

ISBN 978-3-11-029880-2 e-ISBN 978-3-11-029882-6 ISSN 2196-3746 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de © 2014 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Photo on the title page: Sébastien Charles Giraud, Musée Napoléon III, salle des terres cuites au Louvre, Salon de 1866, Paris, Musée du Louvre bpk/RMN – Grand Palais/Paris, Musée du Louvre/Jacques L’Hoir/Jean Popovitch Copyediting and proofreading: Catherine Framm, Berlin Typesetter: Werksatz Schmidt & Schulz GmbH, Gräfenhainichen Printer: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Content Andrea Meyer, Bénédicte Savoy Towards a Transnational History of Museums. An Introduction  Museums and the Transnational Circuits of Artefacts 

 1

 17

Mirjam Brusius The Ancient Near East in Storage. Assyrian Museum Objects as a Cultural Challenge in Victorian England   19 Charlotte Schreiter Competition, Exchange, Comparison. Nineteenth-Century Cast Museums in Transnational Perspective   31 Dorothea Peters Reproduced Art. Early Photographic Campaigns in European Collections  Cross-border Transfers of Architectural Models and Display Principles 

 45

 59

Stefanie Heraeus Top Lighting from Paris in 1750. The Picture Gallery in Kassel and Its Significance for the Emergence of the Modern Museum of Art 

 61

Bénédicte Savoy, Sabine Skott A European Museum-Cocktail around 1900. The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow   77 Alessandra Galizzi Kroegel The Journal Mouseion as Means of Transnational Culture. Guglielmo Pacchioni and the Dawn of the “Modern Museum” in Italy   89 Close Inspections of the “Other.” Commissions and Experts on Tour 

 101

Thomas Adam Cultural Excursions. The Transnational Transfer of Museums in the Transatlantic World   103 Arnaud Bertinet From Model Museum to the Fear of the Uhlan. Museum Relations between France and Germany during the Second Empire   117

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Lieske Tibbe Admiration and Fear. The Reports of Marius Vachon on Museums of Industrial Arts in Europe   131 Roland Cvetkovski Cosmopolitan Scholar, Servant of Art. Transnational Contexts of Igor Grabar in Early Twentieth-Century Russia   147 Reforming the Museum – A Supranational Project 

 163

Susanna Avery-Quash, Alan Crookham Art Beyond the Nation. A European Vision for the National Gallery 

 165

Andrea Meyer The Journal Museumskunde – “Another Link between the Museums of the World”   179 Xavier-Pol Tilliette Between Museumsinsel and Manhattan. Wilhelm R. Valentiner, Ambassador and Agent of Wilhelm von Bode at the Metropolitan Museum, 1908–1914   191 Christina Kott The German Museum Curators and the International Museums Office, 1926–1937   205 Museums as Transnational Sites for National Identities 

 219

Emília Ferreira Building on the London 1881 Pretext. The Birth of the Portuguese National Fine Arts Museum    221 Ayse H. Koksal Museum as a Transnational Space for National Identities. A Case Study on the Turkish Experience   233 Bärbel Küster French Art for All! Museum Projects in Africa 1912–1931 between Avant-garde and Colonialism   245 Illustration credits  Index   261 Acknowledgements 

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Towards a Transnational History of Museums An Introduction The time has come to call into question a historiographic construct. According to a widely-held opinion, museums since the nineteenth century have been loci for the construction of identity, mirrors of competing national cultures, products of national affirmation – to name just a few of the recent museum-historical research themes. No one would deny that at least since the French Revolution the museum per se has been in the grips of a powerful tide of national pathos.1 The future museum should contain the development of the whole wealth of drawings, paintings, sculptures, and other monuments of art. […] This will be a national monument. […] France will extend its glory over all times and all the peoples of the world; the national museum will comprise a total of the most wonderful knowledge and will command the admiration of the whole universe […]. It will have such an influence on the mind, it will so elevate the soul, it will so excite the heart that it will be one of the most powerful ways of proclaiming the illustriousness of the French Republic,

wrote the French minister of the interior Jean-Marie Roland in his frequently cited, programmatic letter of 1792 to the painter Jacques-Louis David.2 Museum rhetoric such as this was to have far-reaching consequences for the development of European museums in the nineteenth century. But yet, thorough studies of correspondence, administrative records, travel activity, statements by museum experts and visitors, and even the architectonic and drama­turgical language of the museums all suggest that European museal reality includes the existence of another, more complex, multi-facetted level – one that is marked by transnational cross-fertilizations. If these sources are given credence, then

1 Édouard Pommier (ed.), Les musées en Europe à la veille de l’ouverture du Louvre, Actes du colloque organisé par le Service Culturel de Musée du Louvre les 3, 4 et 5 juin 1993, Paris: Klincksieck, 1995; Pommier, Le problème du musée à la veille de la révolution, Montargis: Musée Girodet, 1989; Dominique Poulot, Musée, nation, patrimoine, 1789–1815, Paris: Gallimard, 1997. 2 Roland to David: “Le Muséum doit être le développement des grandes richesses que possède la nation en dessin, peintures, sculptures et autres monuments de l’art […] Ce monument sera national […]. La France doit étendre sa gloire sur tous les temps et sur tous les peuples; le Museum national sera l’élément des plus belles connaissances, et fera l’admiration de l’univers. […] Il élèvera tellement les âmes, il réchauffera tellement les cœurs, qu’il sera un des plus puissants moyens d’illustrer la République française,” cited in: Auguste-Théodore Girardot, Les ministres de la République française, Paris: Guillaumin, 1860, I, pièce N° 54, pp. 255–56. Roland’s letter was partly translated into English, see Carol Duncan, Alan Wallach, The Universal Survey Museum, in: Bettina Messias Carbonell (ed.), Museum Studies. An Anthology of Contexts, Malden et al.: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., pp. 51–70, p. 56.

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the one-sidedness of the national perspective becomes obvious: complex connections come to light, interrelations that linked museums to one another for centuries, sparked museal trends, shaped the expectations of visitors, and so on. In the present volume, we do not mean to give national clamor and pathos a renewed hearing. On the contrary, we will listen carefully to the stillness, in which various forms of museum work and museum perception took shape in the European arena far removed from any national boundaries and free of functionalization.

The Current State of Research In recent museum studies, hardly any function of the institution museum has been left untouched: protector of cultural heritage, temple of art, seat of learning and memory, storehouse of knowledge, shrine for the transmission of taste, showplace for imposing discipline and creating spectacle. But far beyond the limits of the traditional history of collection – primarily concerned with the path taken by objects on their way to the museum – and in the course of the continuous broadening of the fields of research, historians, social scientists, cultural and art historians have discovered a further object: the museum itself.3 This investigation of museums as central “staging grounds of culture,” – a phenomenon which can also be understood as a reaction to the tremendous expansion of the museum landscape after the Second World War and especially since the 1970s – was accompanied by the development of more differentiated theoretical underpinnings and by a geographical reorientation as well.4 Apart from the interest in the reciprocal effects of museum culture and colonialism, which brought the founding of museums in places like India or Algeria into focus, in recent years studies have been done of museums in countries like Turkey, Taiwan, or Korea – to mention just a few – which from the Eurocentric point-of-view are located on the periphery of the classical birthplace of the museum, the Italian, English, and German-speaking regions of the European world.5

3 See Joachim Baur, Museumsanalyse: Zur Einführung, in: Baur (ed.), Museumsanalyse. Methoden und Konturen eines neuen Forschungsfeldes, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2010, pp. 7–14. 4 See Daniel J.  Sherman, Irit Rogoff (eds.), Museum Culture: Histories, Discourses, Spectacles, London: Routledge, 1994; Sharon MacDonald, Museen erforschen. Für eine Museumswissenschaft in der Erweiterung, in: Baur 2010 (as fn. 3), pp. 49–69. 5 See e.g. Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004; Kavita Singh, Material Fantasy. The Museum in Colonial India, in: Gayatri Sinha (ed.), Art and Visual Culture in India, 1857–2007, Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2009, pp. 40–57; Nabila Oulebsir, Les usages du patrimoine. Monuments, musées et politique coloniale en Algérie (1830–1930), Paris: Ed. de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 2004; Wendy Shaw, Possessors and Possessed. Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003; Chi-Jung Chu, Political Change





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But whether the research is carried out within or beyond the usual geographic and disciplinary borders, one thing is noticeable: the opinion persists that the institutions – developed out of the erstwhile art and curiosity cabinets of the Renaissance and, since the eighteenth century, through the gradual opening of the princely picture galleries to the non-nobility – were a tool for nations to position and differentiate themselves in relation to others.6 The frame of reference for many museums-related investigations continues to be a more or less clearly delineated state entity or a community defined by a common language, culture, and value system, or better yet: an imagined community. Even in studies that forego the term “nation” or “nationality” in their title, the methodical approach – often just for pragmatic reasons – remains similar, as for example when the intent is to make a museum landscape accessible and to provide an overview of the German, French, English, or American museums.7 This is even true for studies that seem to emphasize a larger geographic context or take a comparative approach, since frequently here, too, the observations on the museum culture of individual countries will follow directly upon one another without any connection.8 And since the nineteenth century – the “century of museums” – is also the epoch in which the modern nation state developed, this approach seems quite justifiable. But, as Thomas W. Gaehtgens has ascertained, even for the cosmopolitical eighteenth century, for the European “république des lettres et des arts,” there has been no study carried out on the establishment of the museum per se that argues from a perspective transcending national or cultural borders.9

and the National Museum in Taiwan, in: Simon J. Knell, Peter Aronsson, Arne Amundsen et al. (eds.), National Museums. New Studies from around the World, London/New York: Routledge, pp. 180–92. 6 See e.g. Poulot 1997 (as fn. 1); Andrew McClellan, Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Modern Museum in Eighteenth-Century Paris, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; McClellan, Nationalism and the Origins of the Museum in France, in: Gwendolyn Wright (ed.), The Formation of National Collections of Art and Archaeology, Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1996, pp. 28–39; Marlies Raffler, Museum – Spiegel der Nation? Zugänge zur Historischen Museologie am Beispiel der Genese von Landes- und Nationalmuseen in der Habsburgermonarchie, Vienna [et al.]: Böhlau, 2007. 7 James Sheehan, Museums in the German Art World: From the End of the Old Regime to the Rise of Modernism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000; Dominique Poulot, Une histoire des musées de France. XVIIIe–XXe siècle, Paris: La Découverte; Chantal, Georgel (ed.), La jeunesse des musées. Les musées de France aux XIXe siècle, exh.cat., Paris: Editions de la réunion des musées nationaux, 1994; Marjorie Schwarzer, Riches, Rivals & Radicals. 100 Years of Museums in America, Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums, 2006; Christopher Whitehead, The Public Art Museum in Nineteenth Century Britain. The Development of the National Gallery, Aldershot [et al.]: Ashgate, 2005. 8 See e.g. Dominique Poulot, Catherine Ballé (eds.,), Musées en Europe: une mutation inachevée, Paris: La Documentation française, 2004; Knell/Aronsson/Amundsen et al. 2011 (as fn. 5). 9 See Thomas W. Gaehtgens, Das Museum um 1800. Bildungsideal und Bauaufgabe, in: Pascal Griener, Kornelia Imesch (eds.), Klassizismen und Kosmopolitismus. Programm oder Problem? Austausch in Kunst und Kunsttheorie im 18. Jahrhundert, Zürich: Schweizerisches Institut für Kunstwissenschaft, 2004, pp. 137–62.



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This lacuna in the research is especially surprising in view of the fact that the courtly and intellectual bourgeois elite of enlightened Europe around 1800 carried on a lively exchange, which was nurtured among other things by pronounced travel activity.10 However, Carole Paul recently took a step “Toward a Collective History” of the early public museums, as she tellingly has titled the introduction to her volume The First Modern Museums of Art.11 In highlighting transregional parallels, for example in reference to the focuses of the princely collections and to their installation, architectural settings, or also educational function, Paul points to the “larger international development,” in which the emergence of public art museums was embedded in the transition between the early modern and the modern periods.12 Similarly to Gaehtgens and to Krzysztof Pomian, who even construes the museum to be the “quintessence of Europe,” she emphasizes the pan-European roots of this institution.13 What these positions have in common is a methodical approach that extends beyond individual nations in its investigation of the museum as an object of research. They are an indication for the present tendency towards taking a transnational perspective in researching museum history. Such a perspective has so far been more characteristic of studies undertaken on contemporary art and the current art scene.14

10 See e.g. Carole Paul, Introduction: The Grand Tour and Princely Collections in Rome, in: Paul (ed.), The First Modern Museums of Art. The Birth of an Institution in 18th- and Early 19th-Century Europe, Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2012, pp. 21–47, with further bibliographical references to the Grand Tour as travel practice. 11 Carole Paul, Preface. Toward a Collective History, in: Paul 2012 (as fn.  10), pp. vii–xxi. Further studies of aspects of early museum culture that are based on a comparative approach are e.g. Virginie Spenlé, Die Dresdner Gemäldegalerie und Frankreich. Der „bon goût“ im Sachsen des 18. Jahrhunderts, Beucha: Sax-Verlag, 2008; Christina Strunck, Elisabeth Kieven (eds.), Europäische Galeriebauten. Akten des Internationalen Symposions der Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome, 23.–26. February 2005, Munich: Hirmer, 2010. 12 Paul 2012 (as fn. 11), pp. vii–viii. 13 Paul 2012 (as fn.  11); Krzysztof Pomian, Das Museum: die Quintessenz Europas, in: Annesofie Becker, Michael C. Jensen (eds.), Wunderkammer des Abendlandes. Museum und Sammlung im Spiegel der Zeit, exh.cat., Bonn: Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 1994, pp.  112–18, p. 114. With regard to the internationality of museums in nineteenth century Europe, see also Hanno Möbius, Konturen des Museums im 19. Jahrhundert, in: Bernhard Graf, Hanno Möbius (eds.), Zur Geschichte der Museen im 19. Jahrhundert 1789–1918, Berlin: G + H Verlag, 2006, pp. 11–22. The re-ordering of the European museum landscape after the restitution of objects looted under the Directoire and Napoleon has been addressed more frequently as well, see e.g. Deborah Meijers, Ellinoor Bergvelt, Lieske Tibbe, Elsa van Wezel (eds.), Napoleon’s Legacy. The Rise of National Museums in Europe, Berlin: G + H Verlag, 2009. 14 Roland Cvetkovski, Unabdingbare Transnationalität, Konferenzbericht zu: Transnationale Museumsgeschichte 1750–1940. Internationale Tagung der Technischen Universität Berlin, Institut für Kunstwissenschaft und Historische Urbanistik, Fachgebiet Kunstgeschichte. Februar 17/18, 2012, in: Kunstchronik 65 (2012), pp. 406–10, p. 406. For an example of a transnational approach to a certain museum type, see Glenn H. Penny, Objects of Culture: Ethnology and Ethnographic Museums in Imperial Germany, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.





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History’s Turn towards Transnationalism In disciplines like anthropology, law, economics, and the political sciences, the term transnational has long been in use, for example to describe the cross-border activities of commercial enterprises or the formation of migrant networks of a specific culture.15 In the humanities, transnational historiography did not become prevalent until the end of the twentieth century, but it is counted among the most rapidly expanding domains, whereby it cannot always be unequivocally differentiated from related approaches like connected history, entangled history, histoire croisée, or global history.16 Decisive for this increasing turn toward research approaches that attempt to transcend national borders both empirically and methodically is on the one hand the idea in today’s writing of history that nations are not naturally occurring givens, but rather results of social processes and practices, and hence projections.17 On the other hand, the experience of globalization has led to the realization that actions taken on the supposed other side of the world have an influence on our immediate surroundings. Important impulses have also come from the social and cultural sciences as well as from post-colonial studies, with the consequence that categories like the “foreign” (das Fremde), the “other,” and the “self” (das Eigene) which scholars have for a long time attempted to neatly place in juxtaposition, have been recognized as constructs.18 Consequently, the younger generation of historians has dissociated itself from the idea that the nation or nation state is a kind of “container” without contacts or networks between nations or other social spaces.19 Transnational history pays attention to the dependencies and the transferrals that cross territorial and political boundaries – the reciprocal perceptions and transmissions.20 It is interested in the “links and

15 Kiran Klaus Patel, Transnationale Geschichte, in: Europäische Geschichte Online (EGO), ed. by the Institut für Europäische Geschichte (IEG), Mainz 2010-12-03, http://www.ieg-ego.eu/patelk-2010-de, 1 (accessed January 31, 2012), 1; Matthias Middell, Review of: Budde, Gunilla; Conrad, Sebastian; Janz, Oliver (eds.), Transnationale Geschichte. Themen, Tendenz und Theorien, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006, in: H-Soz-u-Kult, 2006-10-10, http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/rezensionen/ id_8152 (accessed June 10, 2011). 16 Margrit Pernau, Transnationale Geschichte, Göttingen: Vandenoeck & Ruprecht, 2011, p. 7; Patel 2010 (as fn. 15), 4. 17 See e.g. Pernau 2012 (as fn.  17), pp. 9–10, who particularly refers to the following publications: Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso Books, 1991; Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983; Erich Hobsbawm, Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 18 Patel, Überlegungen zu einer transnationalen Geschichte, in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 52 (2004), pp. 626–45, p. 631. 19 Ibid., p. 627. 20 Ibid., p. 631, p. 635; Patel, Transnationale Geschichte. Ein neues Paragdigma?, in: H-Soz-u-Kult, 2005-02-02, http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/forum/2005-02-001 (accessed April 17, 2013);



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flows” – as formative factors – between “people, ideas, products, processes, and patterns,” while also acknowledging the continued relevance of the nation-state paradigms and the varying intensity of cross-boundary transfers over time.21 Along the lines of the transnational approach briefly outlined above, the present volume comprises lectures from an international conference which was held at the Technische Universität Berlin in February 2012,22 as well as further contributions, in which aspects and various events of museum history are taken out of their usual national framework and thus are shown in a new light. This publication is intended to sharpen the sensitivity for the potential in a discourse that goes beyond the national specifics of museums in critically reflecting upon customary patterns of perception and explanation. The contributions not only cover the European museum landscape but extend outwards over the Atlantic and parts of Northern Africa, and all the way to La Réunion. In the foreground are museums of art and the applied arts, and the socalled universal museums, as well as plaster cast and archaeological collections. Point of departure is the mid-eighteenth century, when the modern (art) museums’ decisive characteristics such as public accessibility, autonomous exhibition spaces, and the utilization of scientific principles of organization began to prevail. The volume ends with the outbreak of World War II, but gives a few glimpses of the revival of museum operation in the years shortly after the war and the new conceptions regarding colonial museum design. The individual chapters are devoted to the various themes that together make up a museum: 1. the objects and collections, 2. the architectonic design of the museums along with the staging of the exhibits, 3. the actors – museum founders, heads of collections, curators or commissions – and their networks. Furthermore, attention is given to the international reform efforts, which attempted to change the above components. The last chapter focuses decidedly on the museum as a space in which national, imperialist interests and transnational entanglements compete or coexist. It thus signals that national boundaries – as implied in the term “transnational” – do continue to exist as points of reference for analysis, but likewise that such boundaries are also crossed.

Patel’s article is but one of a series of contributions published by the online forum geschichte. transnational, see http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/index.asp?id=584pn=texte (accessed April 17, 2013) 21 Akira Iriye, Pierre-Yves Saunier (eds.), The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History, New York: Palgrave, 2009, pp. xvii–xx, cited in Patel 2010 (as fn. 15), 6. 22 Cvetkovski 2012 (as fn.  14). Regretfully the papers presented at the conference by Waltraud Bayer on the imperial Hermitage under revolutionary rule, Miklós Skelely on leitmotifs of European museum architecture, and Nikolaus Bernau on museum politics in the British-Indian Empire could not be included in this volume due to conflicting time schedules.





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Museums and the Transnational Circuits of Artefacts The focus of the first chapter, Museums and the Transnational Circuits of Artefacts, is the mobility and circulation of objects before, or even after, their arrival at the museums. The opening contributions by Mirjam Brusius, Charlotte Schreiter, and Dorothea Peters investigate individual original objects, unique specimens, which found their way into European museums as a result of their interest for scholars but which, because of their radical uniqueness, defied categorization within the conventional museum classification systems; another issue discussed is the reproduction of artworks in the form of plaster casts which repeatedly narrated one and the same story of classical antiquity in thousands of copies distributed throughout the capitals of Europe; furthermore, photography is focused upon as the privileged medium for the dissemination of museum pictures. Using the example of Assyrian archaeological finds, Brusius sheds light on the gestures and reflexes of material and intellectual acquisition associated with objects discovered in the region of ancient Mesopotamia, their transport to London, and their arrival at the British Museum. The expansion of museum holdings to include antiquities from excavations in the Near East, from the 1840s onwards, was to a large degree serendipitous. And, as Brusius ascertains, the objects – within the museum itself, either as exhibits or in storage – were continually subjected to new assignments of origin and meaning that not only shook the canon of antiquities already integrated in the museum, but also the concept of the museum as a “disciplined” space. In her investigation of the plaster cast collections popular in the mid-nineteenth century, Schreiter focuses not so much on the pathways the objects took as on the entanglements of the British Museum and the South Kensington Museum in London, the Louvre and the Musée de Sculpture Comparée in Paris, and the Neues Museum in Berlin. These institutions were all dependent on just a few, increasingly professional, plaster cast workshops like the Parisian Atelier de Moulage or the Berlin Royal Plaster Cast Manufactory for delivering an unbroken overview of the development of sculpture and architecture from antiquity to the Renaissance. But not only the ambition to provide encyclopedic completeness linked the competing museums. As Schreiter also explains, the chronological display of the casts that had prevailed since the end of the nineteenth century had common roots in the showplace of the Great Exhibition of 1851, the Crystal Palace – which had been relocated from Hyde Park to Sydenham  – where this organizational principle had been realized for the first time and from where it spread out all over Europe. The London World Fair also was the catalyst for photographic campaigns, which are the theme of Peters’ contribution. The world exhibition had increased the awareness of photography and had publicized important innovations, most notably the wet-plate process. This invention delighted Prince Albert, who is known to have had a key role in the planning and organization of the World Fair, and sparked his enthusiasm for the new medium. In an endeavor to create a visual history of painting 

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through photography, Albert first commissioned the photography of all the Raphael works in his collection, later those in museums, private collections, and churches all over Europe. From this initiative, Peters traces the expansion of the campaigns, which were sometimes repudiated sharply by art historians and museum personnel, sometimes greeted with enthusiasm, and which in final measure led to the Europewide reproduction and publication of a substantial number of museum holdings. The distribution of the reproduced works of art, which were included in catalogues or became part of picture archives, went hand in hand, according to Peters, with the increasing mobility of the photographers involved in the campaigns. In a time when cultural tourism in Europe was booming, the images generated certain expectations on the part of the public, which increasingly had already seen what was to be seen, albeit small and in black-and-white, before it even set foot in the museum – an effect not to be underestimated.

Cross-border Transfers of Architectural Models and Display Principles In the second chapter, Cross-border Transfers of Architectural Models and Display Principles, the focus is no longer on museum objects but rather whole museum stagings and architectures. Here, Stefanie Heraeus, Bénédicte Savoy, Sabine Skott, and Alessandra Galizzi Kroegel direct their attention to the actual framework within which objects are viewed; here, aspects such as the import or export of lighting systems, gallery installation, museographic tricks, and principles of presentation are investigated. Heraeus devotes her study to the short-lived, unfinished Picture Gallery in Kassel, which was opened to the public in 1775. As she explains, the innovative installation of a skylight, a feature which had not originally been planned, was the fruit of an international exchange in which the builder, Landgrave Wilhelm VIII of HesseKassel and the Parisian collector Marquis Marc-René de Voyer d’Argenson were very active participants. The connections with Paris led to the suspension of the construction of the Kassel gallery. After this interruption, the decision was made to install the skylight, which took the form of a band of windows on the long walls just beneath the ceiling, allowing paintings to be hung on both sides. According to Heraeus, since the visitors were invited to compare the paintings surrounding them, an important step had been made in Kassel towards the appreciation of works of art for their own sake. Museum lighting as an import item: the largely homogeneous architectonics of many museums in and outside of Europe cannot be understood without the precise observation of such and similar transfers of technology. About 150 years later, similar international connections and bilateral observations led to the building of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, opened in 1912 in Moscow. As Savoy and Skott make clear through an examination of the museum 



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founder’s correspondence with his architect, his financial patron, and foreign colleagues, the Moscow museum developed into an amalgamation of West European museum galleries in terms of architectural design, interior decoration, and materials used, as well as in the staging of the plaster casts and the reproductions of antique sculptures and monumental architecture. It became a kind of walkable museum of European museum models. In Moscow, whole exhibition rooms and fragments of rooms from Vienna, Florence, London, Dresden, Paris, Munich, Strasbourg, or Berlin were copied and recomposed in new combinations. In the middle of a global boom in the founding of immense museums, the intention was – with the help of established museum forms, as Savoy and Skott make clear – to create a national monument that would be internationally impressive. Unlike the founding director of the Moscow museum, the art historian Guglielmo Pacchioni had no personal contacts to colleagues beyond the boundaries of his own country when he began introducing modern staging principles into the museums of Fascist Italy. He was able to make use of the journal Mouseion, published by the forerunner of today’s ICOM, the International Museums Office, as a good a source of visual information. Galizzi Kroegel describes Pacchioni’s activities in her contribution on the reorganization of the Galleria Sabauda in Turin – a creative effort which has hardly been given recognition. Through the journal, the director was able to keep up-to-date on reforms that had been going on since the late nineteenth century in far-flung parts of Europe and the United States and that finally led both to a turning away from encyclopedic completeness in the presentation of objects and from the reconstruction of cultural-historical contexts in rooms evoking the style of the respective epoch (Epochenräume). Conversely, through the journal he was able to achieve international visibility for his own museographic innovations. Indeed, his new presentation guidelines, as carried out in Turin and also Novara and Pesaro, were certainly implemented in other museums in Italy. But, as Galizzi Kroegel points out, his ideas for modernization of presentation and exhibition practices found their greatest echo abroad.

Close Inspections of the “Other.” Commissions and Experts on Tour Models for museum architecture and the staging and organization of exhibits always had circulated beyond territorial and political borders in Europe – the above-mentioned examples from Turin, Moscow, and Kassel show this clearly. Often this circulation was the result of purposeful, personal networking, and, yes, sleuthing on both sides, on the part of individual art historians, museum officials, or even commissions. The activities and goals of museum actors are at the center of interest in the chapter Close Inspections of the “Other.” Commissions and Experts on Tour. In the opening 

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contribution, Thomas Adam describes the founding of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as being the result of a transatlantic network of dilettantes, in which members of the elite Union League Club were involved. In its administrative and organizational structure as well as in the make-up of its collection, the Metropolitan Museum was based to a large degree on the models of the Leipzig Kunstverein, the South Kensington Museum in London, and today’s Altes and Neues Museum in Berlin. After 1900, Adam argues, the transfer of models progressed into being a professional business. An example of this development is the investigative journey through almost 100 (!) European museums embarked upon by a commission of experts under the assignment of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, when a new building was being planned in 1904. A study, like Adam’s, of the transatlantic exchange makes clear that the administrative and didactic concepts were just as much the objects of appropriation as were the museographic models. But the transfers between Leipzig, Berlin, London, New York, and Boston also show that a differentiation between the culture from which impetuses originate and the beneficiary of such impetuses is hardly possible – transfers of ideas were always reciprocal. Arnaud Bertinet investigates the inner-European give-and-take of observations by museum representatives with a special emphasis on the imperial museums in France, namely the Louvre during the Second Empire. The staff of the Louvre, whose collection was considered exemplary, was the recipient of innumerable inquiries from curators, diplomats, and trustees from London, Venice, Madrid, Vienna, and Copenhagen. As Bertinet shows, their questions were usually of a practical nature and concerned the optimization of organizational processes in the respective museum operations or the improvement of the quality of the holdings through systematic lending activity and professional conservation methods. Staff and emissaries of the imperial museums were sent on trips through Europe to reap information from foreign collections in the hopes of maintaining the presumed high ranking of their national museums in the international competition. The defeat of the French army at the Battle of Sedan on September 1, 1870, the lost German-French War, and the Paris Commune – crises which, as Bertinet has researched, were the occasion for a systematic evacuation of the cultural heritage from the Louvre – put a sudden, if temporary, end to these mutual consultations. In the aftermath of the painful crises, France’s preoccupation with the political, economic, and cultural developments east of the Rhine grew strong. The bilateral relations between the two nation-states continued to be strained and were nationalistically loaded, as Lieske Tibbe’s paper on the investigations of art historian and critic Marius Vachon, also carried out in Germany, demonstrates. Vachon conducted several European trips commissioned in the 1880s by the French Ministry of Education and Arts. Through his excursions, he hoped to transmit his recommendation for the realization of an educational museum of the industrial arts in France. His ultimate goal was the revival of French national design, which, though it had held a leading position in Europe at one time, was now limping behind the German and English 



Towards a Transnational History of Museums 

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production. As Tibbe shows, Vachon rejected the cultural-historical staging of the industrial arts that was beginning to prevail all over Europe. Instead, he preferred the chronological presentation of objects, which alongside the originals might also comprise less valuable reproductions, in combination with a display that allowed a comparison with art historical artifacts on the basis of their similar material and function and would thus be edifying for the producers of such objects. Though Vachon achieved little success in the practical implementation of his ideas, his reports continue to be, as Tibbe emphasizes in conclusion, an excellent source of information in comparing the different ways of promoting industry in turn-of-the-century Europe. Similar to Vachon’s career, the professional path of the Russian artist, art historian, and museum aficionado Igor Grabar was marked by political upheaval and a strong emotional attachment to his country, a feeling devoid of any traces of nationalism, however. Roland Cvetkovski investigates Grabar’s activities at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and in the central restoration workshops, also in the city, which the artist himself had founded. Grabar, in his writings on art history and his works of art criticism, attempted to demonstrate the value of Russian art and to transmit this idea to the public in other countries. He had been schooled outside of the tsar’s empire, through visits to exhibitions and museums in western and southern Europe, where he also appropriated scholarly standards upon which he based his attempts to carry out reforms at the Tretyakov Gallery before and after the October Revolution. Especially the attention he gave to restoration and conservation met with international resonance in the late 1920s and early 1930s. A concrete occasion for this was the 1929 exhibition of Russian icons which Grabar co-organized, first in Berlin and subsequently in Paris, in which one section was devoted to the methods of restoration promoted by Grabar. The example of Grabar once again demonstrates: 1. that increasingly, in the nineteenth and twentieth century, museum actors were naturally moving across borders between countries, cultures, and disciplines; 2. that these actors, thanks to their physical and intellectual mobility, and later with the support of specialized media, were moving knowledge, concepts, and ideas along with them; 3. that, aside from all of the national labeling and nation-related intentions, at the level of concrete activity the museums in Europe always had been a product of cross-border entanglements.

Reforming the Museum – A Supranational Project The expansion of museum holdings and their repeated reorganization, the changes in the designs of the buildings and galleries, the experimentation with various staging models, as well as the efforts towards functioning administrative structures – all these aspects, discussed in the contributions shortly summarized here, show how mobile, vital, changeable, and indeed adaptable the institutions and/or their repre-



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 Andrea Meyer, Bénédicte Savoy

sentatives were from at least the eighteenth century onwards. Admittedly, above all in the discourses critical of museums, which around 1900 reached a first peak under the influence of cultural pessimism and with the avant-garde art movements, the charge was made that museums were antiquated, were nothing but dusty depositories, junk rooms and graveyards, in which treasures of cultural heritage were hoarded at the price of wearying the public and severing the works from their historical context.23 But, in fact, actual museum practice was distinguished by continuing reforms and attempts at reform. These are the focus of the fourth chapter, Reforming the Museum – A Supranational Project. In the chapter’s first contribution, Susanna Avery-Quash and Alan Crookham study the London National Gallery, which since its founding in 1824 has always been accused of inept management, an unsystematic collection and exhibition policy, as well as a flawed cleaning policy. The criticism is even known to have incited debates in the House of Commons, in parliamentary select committees, and the press. It peaked with demands for reform, whereby Avery-Quash and Crookham stress that the select committee of 1853, along with the Foreign Office, wanted to rely from the very beginning on a comparison with the principle European museums and the advice of foreign experts. Among other measures, the power of the trustees was curtailed and new posts were created, one of which was that of director, taken over by Charles Eastlake. Eastlake himself had developed his ideas about reform to a large degree outside of the national context, during his many years in Rome, on trips to different European collections, and in exchange with Gustav Friedrich Waagen, who for his part had provided evidence to various select committees. Not until the cosmopolitical Eastlake arrived as the principal conduit of foreign thinking – thus Avery-Quash and Crookham, was it possible to realize the reconstitution of the National Gallery. Less the implementation of reforms than their propagation in the media is the subject of Andrea Meyer’s contribution concerning the specialized journal Museums­ kunde, which was published between 1905 and 1924 by the art historian and museum director Karl Koetschau. With this journal, Koetschau created an organ for a broad discussion on reform-oriented approaches to museum work. It also included an astounding number of reports by foreign museum representatives, often those in leading positions – for the most part written directly in English or their core ideas indirectly reflected in reviews of German-speaking authors. Together with short announcements about current museum literature, accounts of new buildings, or particulars from all over the world, these reports – in retrospect – offer a view of a Eurocentrically organized topography of museums that reached far beyond the borders of Europe. The opening up of reporting to coverage extending beyond national boundaries had many

23 See e.g. David Carrier, Museum Skepticism. A History of the Display of Art in Public Galleries, Durham/London: Duke University Press, 2006; Marcus Andreas Habel, Ein Jahrhundert Zukunft der Museen. Krisen und Kritiken – Pläne und Perspektiven 1900–2010, Berlin: BibSpider, 2012, pp. 33–36; Anke te Heesen, Theorien des Museums. Zur Einführung, Hamburg: Junius Verlag, 2012, pp. 105–11.





Towards a Transnational History of Museums 

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functions, not least of which was its decisive importance in the professionalization of museum work, which in turn warranted the competitiveness of German museums in the international arena. Significantly, the article which opened the first edition of Museumskunde in 1905 was by Wilhelm Bode, who, in his double position, at that time, as general director of the Royal Museums in Berlin and director of the recently opened Kaiser Friedrich Museum, played a key role in the German museum reform movement. Xavier-Pol Tilliette sheds light on the close relationship between Bode and the staff and trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the New York museum was undergoing modernization of its administration and acquisition policies, which were very much geared toward expansion. The first contact between Bode and the director of the Metropolitan Museum can be traced back to the beginning of the 1890s. When the latter asked Bode to recommend an employee for the new department of decorative arts, the involvement between the two institutions became all the closer, since Bode named his own assistant, Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner. Valentiner acted as the curator of the department from 1908 until 1914, functioning basically as an extension of Bode, not only in implementing reform-oriented, museographic practices. Like Bode, he, too, cultivated relationships with collectors as a way to encourage them to make donations to the museum. He loyally kept his Berlin teacher abreast of the goings-on in the New York public and private collectors’ scene, and, indeed, even of what was being reported about the museums in Berlin and Germany. With his focus on Bode and Valentiner, Tilliette identifies one striking node in the transatlantic museum network before the First World War. While the collaboration between Bode and Valentiner, which took place over a great distance, was based on friendship, around 1900 there were increasing efforts made to institutionalize transnational cooperation between museums. The probably most significant initiative was taken in 1926 with the founding of the alreadymentioned International Museums Office (IMO) within the sphere of the League of Nations. Conceptually and financially promoted by the French, the IMO set up highly diverse projects for the standardization of museum practices. Against the background of the diplomatic tensions between France and the German Reich, which did not join the League of Nations until 1926 and then announced its withdrawal in October 1933 after Hitler had come into power, Christina Kott illuminates the changing positions of German museum officials in relation to the IMO. In part, they took a reserved stance, in part they cooperated closely with the office. Finally, as a result of the Machtübernahme of the National Socialists, which laid the legal foundations for an anti-Semitic personnel policy in museums as well, no museum staff members took part in the international conference on museography in Madrid in 1934 – an event which according to Kott was the climax of the IMO’s activities. Nevertheless, throughout the conference and in the conference journal, the German museums remained points of reference that can hardly be overestimated. Kott’s explanation for this supposed contradiction is the careful organization of the event under general secretary Euripide 

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 Andrea Meyer, Bénédicte Savoy

Foundoukidis. In order to present a paper at the conference on their assigned, precisely defined topics, the lecturers exchanged information and documents, ahead of time, especially frequently with the Germans, who were internationally recognized for their promotion of reforms.

Museums as Transnational Sites for National Identities The interplay of national and transnational forces, with their respective logic, is a structural element in the processes, realities, and particularities of museum history. This becomes especially clear from the example of the stance – imposed politically and ideologically after 1933 – of German museum representatives towards the IMO and its conference in Madrid. Emilía Ferreira, Ayse Koksal and Bärbel Küster, whose contributions comprise the last chapter, The Museums as Transnational Sites for National Identities, argue upon this very basis, but take it even further in that they describe the national and transnational interdependencies as being constitutive for the institution. Ferreira goes into the background history of the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon, which, compared to the national museums in other European countries was called to life quite late – not until 1884. The idea for this museum did develop in Portugal itself, within the circles representing the social elite. But its realization needed an external impetus, which came from the South Kensington Museum. On the occasion of the Special Loan Exhibition of Spanish and Portuguese Ornamental Art, organized in London in 1881, Portuguese members of the preparatory committee travelled through their country collecting appropriate objects which were then to be sent to London. Supported by the state and highly motivated, they were able to bring together almost 200 examples of ornamental art within a very short time. They made up ten per cent of all the objects that were shown in the South Kensington Museum. This ensemble formed the core of a much more comprehensive exhibit of Portuguese art that took place less than half a year later in the Lisbon Alvor Palace, which was reconstructed and modernized for this purpose. With the financial profits from this show – according to the number of visitors it was a blockbuster, Ferreira emphasizes – the project of a national museum could be realized in just a few years. The “non-national” roots of the “national” in regard to museum affairs could not be more clearly shown than by this example. In her contribution, Koksal links two museums that each in different ways are marked by the enmeshment of the national and transnational features of their collections, their architectural settings, and their displays, and that were each subject to political functionalization. One of these is the Imperial Museum, which during the Ottoman Empire was initially located in the Hagia Irene, then in the Topkapı Palace, and finally in the building of today’s Archaeological Museum in Istanbul. 



Towards a Transnational History of Museums 

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The other is the Painting and Sculpture Museum of Istanbul, which during the time of the Turkish Republic was housed in the Dolmabahçe Palace. The Imperial Museum was an instrument of the modernization efforts of the Ottomans. By falling back on their glorious cultural and military heritage, the Ottoman rulers wished to assert themselves as a hegemonic power over the newly organized European state system. In contrast, the republic spearheaded by Ata Türk desired to commend itself as a genuine part of Western society, or even, as Koksal formulates it, to put a transnational identity on display. Thus, the Louvre, with its similar history of transformation from a royal palace into a public museum, would serve as just one of several models rich with symbolism. As in Western European museums, works were exhibited based on their affinity with Western aesthetics and formal language, and displayed in chronological, historical order. In comparison, the Imperial Museum initially had the character of a cabinet of curiosities and was primarily accessible to select foreign diplomats and intellectuals, as well as the Ottoman elite of bureaucrats and officers. Western principles of display were consciously, as Koksal says, adapted and distorted in order to impress the visitors with a demonstration of power. With the final contribution of the volume, Küster similarly takes a look at two non-Western institutions, which in contrast to the examples treated by Koksal and all the other authors, were products of colonialism. The Musée Léon Dierx on La Réunion was the result of an initiative of two literati, from the island’s white upper class, who, in Paris in the years before the First World War, had moved in the circles of Symbolist artists sympathetic to Socialism. Out of this milieu they recruited supporters for their museum project, making possible the transfer of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Fauve works of art to La Réunion, where they were exhibited together with cultural-historical testimonies to French culture and plaster casts of French cathedrals in a private villa in the capital city Saint-Denis. As Küster establishes, it was the goal of the museum’s founder to raise the general level of education by familiarizing the public with the French cultural heritage on La Réunion. The museum founders combined ideas of superiority, in keeping with the typical patterns of colonialism, with socialist-democratic conceptions of art as a universally comprehensible language. Küster’s second example is the provincial Museum for Fine Arts in Algiers. Inaugurated in 1908, it was provided with a new building upon the occasion of the 100th jubilee of the French colony of Algeria in 1930 and simultaneously upgraded to the rank of national museum. This museum pursued a quite different collection strategy: as its name indicates, it limited itself to objects of art; furthermore, the holdings did not cover contemporary painting but ended at the nineteenth century with an emphasis upon academic Orientalism, the subjects of which, as Küster observes, were incommensurate with Islamic aniconism, to which the greater part of the population adhered. In final measure, in Algeria, too, the focus was upon the museal representation of the “leading” national French culture. Küster’s examination of museums founded under colonialism lays open to view the asymmetrical power structure that 

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can also underlie the transnational constellations with their mostly positive connotations and practices.24 All of this volume’s contributions are related in that they analyze collection profiles, exhibition stagings, architectural elements, scholarly or didactic concepts, and administrative structures – in short, essential aspects of the museum – as results of intensive regional and national cross-border transfers. Though the studies in no way ignore the national or colonial context of the cases being discussed, they do give a lesser importance to the national pathos that has accompanied the founding of many museums since the installation of the Musée des Arts in the Louvre during the French Revolution. The focus on the interaction of the actors and the institutions, on the circulation and appropriation of ideas, practices, and objects of our material artistic and cultural heritage promotes a differentiated perspective on the formation and development of the institution museum and on how it has been and is now perceived, a perspective that goes beyond the mere establishment of analogies. As a popular European export item – a “hit,” so to speak – the museum always has been an entangled state of affairs, just like the European culture itself. But the consciousness of this fact and the museum-historical research on the subject have – strangely enough – been absent up to this very day. The present volume should now clear the path for a transnational historiography of museums. Translated by Catherine Framm

24 See Patel 2004 (as fn. 18), pp. 631–32.



Museums and the Transnational Circuits of Artefacts

Mirjam Brusius

The Ancient Near East in Storage Assyrian Museum Objects as a Cultural Challenge in Victorian England

November 19, 2009 Convicted of theft, Farhad Hakimzadeh, a regular user of the British Library, is sentenced to two years imprisonment for the unlawful appropriation of material from the collection. Three years before, a brilliant series of art thefts came to an end: escaping the notice of all library employees, Hakimzadeh, using a scalpel, had been removing single pages from various sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century books – travel accounts by Europeans about their experiences in ancient Mesopotamia, Persia, and the Mughal Empire. After stealing the pages, Hakimzadeh pasted them into less valuable copies of the same books in his private collection. Hakimzadeh was not just anybody. A wealthy businessman, he was not only the director of the Iran Heritage Foundation, an organization dedicated to the promotion and preservation of the Iranian cultural heritage, but also of a publishing company which published books about the Middle East, and was a private collector as well. It cannot be mere chance that the pages which Hakimzadeh stole were from rare books with descriptions of journeys to cultural regions which the thief himself would have considered to belong to his own cultural heritage. BBC supplied its report of the theft with the following headline: “The thief who stole pages from history.” But whose history was actually stolen here? One of the heads of the collection told BBC that he was “extremely angry” about Hakimzadeh’s vandalism and called it “an attack on the nation’s collective memory of its own past […] What he has damaged is our historical record with (sic) how this country has engaged in that part of the world.”1 According to the British Library, the crime was made worse by the fact that the perpetrator was fully conscious of the value of the books he was damaging. Hakimzadeh himself has not commented on the incident. The security measures in the reading room have been tightened, but Hakimzadeh’s reasons for the crime remain in the dark. Without wanting to cast doubt on the seriousness of this despicable crime, I would like to raise the question as to whether Hakimzadeh was – consciously or unconsciously – extricating his own history from the European canon, i.e. Western historical accounts that had shaped conceptions of how the Oriental world should be perceived, and “repatriating” it into its Iranian context. Even if officially no one has come up with the actual motivation, two things can be taken note of in respect to this

1 The thief who stole pages from history, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7739953.stm (accessed May 2012).

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episode: first, an object in a collection is not physically stable, as it can be removed without much difficulty. Second, along with its mobility and almost ephemeral potential for fluctuation, the object’s instability is rooted in its content and its cultural significance. Especially in the case of objects from the Middle East, a geographical space in which the East and the West intersect, content is frequently intrinsically polyvalent. At the end of the 80s, in his influential book Collectionneurs, amateurs et curieux, the historian and philosopher Krzysztof Pomian declared that things in museums are concretely meaningful signs and symbols. They obtain their semiotic qualities from the uniqueness of their thingness. Objects in museums are thus distinguished as “semiophores,” which communicate visible and invisible messages. Their material characteristics are transformed into signs meant to create a relationship between the observer and the indicated invisible referent. In the museum, objects begin a new life: they become semiophores, testifying to a real life somewhere else, to other places and other times. In the museum, a consensus has been reached.2 But what kind of a place and what kind of a time are the objects pointing to here, and how is their referential, sign-like meaning constituted? Pomian’s deliberations seem to be based on the existence of two stabile components in the life of an object, the life before the museum, and the life after. But what happens in between? Also, in Pomian’s observations, certain characteristics of museum objects are not present: uncertainty concerning the object’s provenance, the chance nature of its existence in the collection, the ambiguity of its meaning, the danger inherent in its polyvalence; in other words: the instability of this “consensus” which the museum attempts to create. Most importantly, there are no answers which shed light on the question as to how meanings are constituted during times of transit – especially when the objects have originated in variously coded cultural spaces. One year after Hakimzadeh’s arrest, there was renewed confirmation of just how fragile the stability of museum objects could be. The incident, described below, is not a case of theft, but rather an argument about an item on loan.

September 10, 2010 After lengthy negotiations rife with political tensions, the British Museum has agreed to the loan of an important cuneiform cylinder to the National Museum of Iran in Tehran (fig. 1). The object, archaeological evidence from ancient Mesopotamia, a location frequently referred to as “the cradle of civilization,” was excavated in the nineteenth century in Babylon by a British expedition.

2 Krzysztof Pomian, Collectionneurs, amateurs et curieux. Paris, Venise XVIe–XVIIIe siècle, Paris: Gallimard, 1987.





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Fig. 1: Cyrus Cylinder in the National Museum Tehran, 2010

The clay cylinder bears an inscription in Babylonian cuneiform by the Persian King Cyrus II (ca. 580 BCE). Here, Cyrus described the conquest of Babylon from his point of view. The fact that prisoners of the ruling King Nebuchadnezzar were released on this occasion was the basis for a decree in the cylinder’s inscription according to which the Jewish people were to return to Jerusalem and build a temple. This decree is mentioned in the biblical book of Esra, which is part of the Jewish Tanach as well as being part of the Christian Old Testament. Here, the problematic nature of the object comes to light: we are dealing with an object, whose meaning fans out before us like a kaleidoscope of very different canonic cultures and traditions.3 Not without reason did the cylinder become a symbol for tolerance in very different parts of the world. As a single object, it is just as much a valuable bearer of meaning for Iranian history as it is for Jewish history, is just as much part of the Bible as of the Torah. But, beyond the meaning of the cylinder for Jewish and Persian history, the variety regarding its adaption as a historical and political symbol is vast. Even within Iran there seem to be contradictory interpretations. It was, for example, at one point not only claimed back by the post-revolutionary Iranian government, but was also adopted by the Shah

3 For a recent critical discussion of the object and its reception, see Jacob L. Wright, The Cyrus Cylinder and a Dream for the Middle East, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-l-wright/cyrus-cylinder-anda-dream-for-the-middle-east_b_1322262.html?ref=religion (accessed May 2012).



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of pre-revolutionary Iran, who put it on display in 1971 to commemorate the 2,500th anniversary of the Iranian monarchy. The Guardian’s headline contributes more to the confusion than to an understanding, since not only the cultural meaning but also the place of origin offers many possible interpretations: “Cyrus Cylinder, World’s Oldest Human Rights Charter, Returns to Iran on Loan.”4 It is anyone’s guess whether or not the Guardian intended to be provocative with its formulation, “Returns to Iran.” But particularly noteworthy in regard to this headline is the fact that though Cyrus II is still revered in Iran as a Persian king, the cylinder, on the other hand, was discovered in 1879 on a British Museum expedition in Babylon. Strictly speaking, then, it is from today’s Iraq. So it is even unclear from where the object comes, where it belongs, what it means, and of which cultural heritage it is a symbol. Neil McGregor, the director of the British Museum, takes this as an opportunity to plead for the removal of the object from the current collection from time to time, whereby he is in no way suggesting a return, but rather his willingness to loan the item: “You could almost say that the Cyrus Cylinder is A History of the Middle East in one object and it is a link to a past which we all share and to a key moment in history that has shaped the world around us. Objects are uniquely able to speak across time and space and this object must be shared as widely as possible.”5 But while Iran is to this day demanding the return of the cylinder, a half a year later the following statement appeared on the British Museum website: “The Cyrus Cylinder has returned (italics mine) to the British Museum from a successful seven month loan to the National Museum of Iran.”6 And that is where it is today – in the British Museum. Thus, nations that could not be more different culturally and politically invoke a common history in the form of a single (and ever-returning) object. But common history manifested in an object does not mean that a common canon can be formed of it as well. Depending on where the object is located at the time, other cultural meanings can even endanger the construction of a canon. So, it is not surprising to observe that, in the course of museums’ attempts to form a canon, processes of decanonization take place as well. As will be shown below, objects like the Cyrus Cylinder by no means allow themselves to be easily integrated into the European canon. This situation already existed in the nineteenth century. The 1879 excavations in which the Cyrus Cylinder was discovered were not the first British excavations in ancient Meso-

4 Cyrus Cylinder, World’s Oldest Human Rights Charter, Returns to Iran on Loan, http://www.guardian. co.uk/world/2010/sep/10/cyrus-cylinder-returns-iran (accessed May 2012). 5 The British Museum Lends the Cyrus Cylinder to the National Museum of Iran, http://www. britishmuseum.org/about_us/news_and_press/press_releases/2010/cyrus_cylinder_loan.aspx (accessed May 2012). 6 Cyrus Cylinder Back on Display in London, http://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/news_and_ press/statements/cyrus_cylinder.aspx (accessed May 2012).





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potamia. As early as 1850, expeditions set out to explore this biblically significant region – the presumed location of sites referred to in the Old Testament.

February 28, 1852 The popular British weekly, The Illustrated London News, publishes a drawing that is to become iconic for the British expedition to Mesopotamia (fig. 2).7 The picture does not show a recent episode. It is, rather, a visual construct which – after the fact, and thus retrospectively – legitimizes an event which took place two years earlier. In the picture’s background, the façade of the new British Museum building is visible. A massive ramp leads up the stairs up to the entranceway, which is dramatized, both architecturally and programmatically, by monumental Ionic pillars. Around the ramp are grouped various people, both laborers and gentlemen, who are witness to a spectacular scene: the enormous sculpture of a winged lion, about three times the height of the bystanders, is being hauled up the ramp into the museum. The statue’s gaze is directed outwards, as though the lion is taking his last look at freedom before entering the canonic order of the museum’s interior. A wooden contraption is stabilizing the sculpture, which is fastened by ropes which the laborers are pulling with all their might. In contrast, the gentlemen, with the one exception of a man who is standing midway up the steps, seem to be doing nothing at all. They are simply watching. Perhaps they are exchanging a few words with their neighbors. On and below the steps, are lying random fragments which may have come loose from the wooden contraption, the sculpture, or even from the building, which has just recently been completed. This picture became an icon for the successful integration of archaeological finds from Mesopotamia into European collections. From 1845 onwards, objects like this statue or the Cyrus Cylinder were excavated by the British adventurer – he could hardly be called an archaeologist – Austen Henry Layard (1817–1894) and transported to the British Museum. The biography of Layard’s youthful years gives the impression of a middle class student seeking diversion, a young man who wants to have his last fling in the greater world before settling down to a conventional job and marriage back at home. Layard had collected antiquities before the excavations, but he happened to be on a trip to the Orient anyway, and was en route to a stint of diplomatic service in Baghdad. In other words, he had never intended to become an archaeologist: it was more or less by chance that he stumbled upon the excavations of his French colleague, Paul-Émile Botta, who likewise was not an archaeologist but rather a botanist. Nor was the British Museum involved as a sponsor until later. Furthermore,

7 Illustrated London News (ILN) (28 February 1852), p. 184.



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Fig. 2: Engraving showing the reception of the Nineveh sculptures at the British Museum, Illustrated London News, February 28, 1852

Layard at first mistook Nimrud for Nineveh – it would thus be going too far to contend that the excavations were a project that was planned down to the minutest detail.8 After this rather haphazard beginning, the excavations in the region of ancient Mesopotamia – a province of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century – was soon spurred on by commercial and strategic interests in the region. Archaeology did not yet exist as a university discipline. Diplomats, politicians, but also natural scientists and botanists were among the first excavators. This fact is important, because it shows that in early times no one was sent into this region with the explicit purpose of digging or even less to search for specific objects. Rather, in the nineteenth century, excavations were something that took place on the sidelines of a quite complex interplay between various, sometimes competing, imperial interests, for which the exploitation of scholarly expeditions was an expedient tool. Layard’s expedition will serve as an example in the following investigation of a decade in the history of the British Museum. It is a history of transformation, in which archaeological museum objects from the Orient undergo processes of canonization and decanonization in the course of the constitution of meaning. In such an analysis, both the question of continuity and, especially, the question of breaches in the European canon are of importance. The dynamic process, with all its ambivalent aspects, will be emphasized more than the supposedly stabile integration of the object in the European museum. Objects – thus the hypothesis – wander between cultures and

8 For Layard, see Julian Reade, Reflections on Layard’s Archaeological Career, in: F. M. Fales, B. J. Hickey (eds.), Austen Henry Layard Tra L’oriente E Venezia. International Symposium: Selected Papers, Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 1987, pp. 47–53; esp. p. 47.





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systems before arriving for presentation in the context of a museum. Objects in no way have a distinct, unequivocal semantic identity, but rather acquire this in the course of a lengthy transformational process.9 But what is meant by “canonization” and where in these finds did the potential lie for the European canon? When I say “canon”, I do not only refer to biblical and classical texts, but also to aesthetic traditions which were at stake in Paris or neoclassical “Athens on the Spree” Berlin, where objects from Babylon arrived around 1900. In terms of the aesthetic value of the finds, for example, it was not apparent whether the Assyrian sculptures should be put next to canonical statues and excavated architecture from the classical world or next to other (e.g. Islamic) objects from the Middle East. They seemed to refuse to become part of any discourse. On the other hand, Layard’s excavations took place mainly in Nimrud and Nineveh, locations which were known from the Bible – one reason for the Englishmen’s fascination as they searched for such places and excavated them. Around 1800, the Bible was at the center of intellectual and religious life in England. It was the main source for the history of Assyria and it gave a historical foundation to the canon, which in England but also in France and Prussia was nourished first and foremost by classical antiquity and the Bible. Up to that point, geology was the only discipline which questioned the explanations in the Bible.10 Layard’s excavation thus laid the groundwork for a discipline which was beginning to establish itself as biblical archaeology.11 The assignment for this research was, among other things, to counter the increasing tendency, in Victorian England, to criticize the Bible.12 The artifacts from Mesopotamia were supposed to make the Bible something which it had never been: true, concrete, and objective. Above all, the approximately 28,000 clay tablets which had been dug up in the course of decades would later play

9 In research on the excavations and their reception in Europe, a critical distance has so far been lacking in regard to reports which depict the expeditions as purposeful, organized, and logical ‘operations’ in which the excavations are carried out according to clearly defined intentions. For an overview, see Bruce Trigger, Writing the History of Archaeology, in: George Stocking (ed.), Objects and Others. Essays on Museums and Material Culture, Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985, pp. 219–35. See Mogens Larsen, The Conquest of Assyria. Excavations in an Antique Land, 1840–1860, London: Routledge, 1996. See Frederick Bohrer, Orientalism and Visual Culture. Imagining Mesopotamia in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 10 See Martin Rudwick, The Shape and Meaning of Earth History, in: David C. Lindberg, Ronald L. Numbers (eds.), God and Nature, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986, pp. 296–321. 11 See P.R.S. Moorey, A Century of Biblical Archaeology, Westminster: John Knox Press, 1991. Steven Holloway, Orientalism, Assyriology and the Bible, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006. 12 See Barbara Zink MacHaffie, ‘Monument Facts and Higher Critical Fancies’. Archaeology and the Popularization of Old Testament Criticism in Nineteenth-Century Britain, in: Church History 50, no. 3 (1981), pp. 316–28; esp. p. 321.



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an important role in biblical research since there were inscriptions on them which referred directly to biblical figures and places. They soon became more important than the colossal statues. It was not long before Layard was able to count some 55  rulers, cities, and countries that were referred to in the Bible as well as in the excavated Assyrian texts.13 But, for the time being, that was as far as it went: the great quantity of further information on the thousands of clay tablets slumbered away in the abstract form of the hitherto undeciphered cuneiform signs.14 So, in conjunction with the expedition, the British Museum undertook measures to start on the deciphering of the mysterious cuneiform script. Layard himself had no capabilities in this regard. Since no one could read the clay tablets, there was not much that could be done with them. Consequently, it was difficult to decide which objects had sufficient value to bring them back to Europe. The clay tablet all looked terribly similar, and even within the walls of the museum they had an eerie quality. Thus, it was only their potential which made these objects worthwhile acquiring for the museum. The acquisitions, then, did not take place in order to decipher. Rather, the lack of philological background was just an additional problem in an undertaking which was already dubious. So for the time being, Layard decided to use his intuition: he chose the clay tablets which were well preserved and aesthetically pleasing. He also used the method of comparison. But even though he went to much effort to find corresponding characters, he had to admit that above all the clay tablets looked “precisely similar.”15 In order to find names corresponding to those in the Bible, the excavators kept their eyes open for certain names, but sometimes with no success at all. The first Assyrian conqueror, King Pul, for example, was not to be found in any of the sources.16 For the Bible and its advocates, this was problematic, since it tended to endanger the biblical canon rather than substantiate it. And in the following decades as well, situations continued to arise in which the European Christian-classical canon was called into question rather than corroborated. For example, in the 1870s, in the British Museum, single broken pieces of an Assyrian account of a Deluge came to light. The public was especially interested in this find and the subject was given the correspond-

13 See Austen Henry Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, London: Murray, 1853. 14 See Mogens Larsen, Hincks Versus Rawlinson. The Decipherment of the Cuneiform System of Writing, in: Börje Magnusson et al. (eds.), Ultra Terminum Vagari. Scritti in onore di Carl Nylander, Rome: Quasar, 1997, pp. 339–56; esp. p. 343. 15 See Layard 1853 (as fn. 13), p. 29, p. 332. 16 An assumption which was later confirmed by the German Assyriologist Eberhard Schrader. See Steven Holloway, The Quest for Sargon, Pul and Tiglath-Pileser in the Nineteenth Century, in: Mark W. Chavalas, K. Lawson Younger (eds.), Mesopotamia and the Bible, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2002, pp. 68–87. Steven Holloway, Biblical Assyria and Other Anxieties in the British Empire, in: Journal of Religion & Society 3 (2001), pp. 1–19; esp. pp. 8–12.





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ingly broad coverage in the press. The Daily Telegraph even financed an expedition which would hopefully uncover more fragments with diluvian references. After thoroughly investigating the text and painstakingly fitting together pieces of the puzzle, however, scholars came to the conclusion that the Deluge described on the tablets was not the one referred to in the Bible. The Deluge described in the Bible was not the only one – there had been several Deluges.17 Such finds undermined the biblical canon and shook the foundations of the Old Testament as the guarantor of an event of worldwide significance. Another reason for the excavations was for the expansion of the collection. For this purpose, from a certain time onwards, the British Museum asked Layard, on the one hand, to choose objects which would be appropriate to exhibit, but what the criteria for this were remains unclear. Layard swore he would “make every exertion, and to economize as far as it was in my power – that the nation might possess as extensive and complete a collection of Assyrian antiquities as, considering the smallness of the means, it was possible to collect.”18 To make possible the fulfillment of his promise, Layard, and later also his successors, were given official specifications stating that the artifacts should be selected “according to quality, state of preservation, legibility, historical and scientific value, variety, chronological succession.”19 The criteria for historical and scholarly value, however, were not specified. For example, Layard reported: “I discovered eight chambers, but found nothing capable of being transported to England,”20 but there is no evidence as to what “capable” means here. Elsewhere, Layard assures: “nothing of importance was discovered.”21 So Layard never gave specific details from which one might deduce what he was actually looking for; presumably because he himself did not have a clear idea.22

17 See David Damrosch, The Buried Book. The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh, New York: Holt, 2007. A similar discussion regarding evidence for the deluge had already taken place in palaeontology around 1700 where nature was regarded as a witness for the truthfulness of scripture. See Martin Rudwick, The Meaning of Fossils. Episodes in the History of Palaeontology (2nd ed.), New York: Folkestone: Science History Publications, 1976, pp. 83–95. For discussions about the flood and geology see Charles Coulston Gillispie, Genesis and Geology. A Study in the Relations of Scientific Thought, Natural Theology, and Social Opinion in Great Britain, 1790–1850, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996, pp. 41–72. 18 Austen Henry Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, vol. 2, London: John Murray, 1849, p. 327. 19 See manuscript and printed version of “Memorandum on the Publication of the Cuneiform Inscription” by Rawlinson, London July 18, 1855, (Original Papers), July 1855–March 1856, British Museum Central Archive. 20 Layard to the British Museum, July 24, 1847, C 6, Apr. 1847–July 1855, British Museum Central Archive. 21 Austen Henry Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, vol. 1, London: John Murray, 1849, p. 343. 22 Larsen briefly mentions this problem in connection with Botta, without going into further detail. See Larsen 1996 (as fn. 9), p. 23.



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In 1849, Layard returned to England and published a book, Nineveh and Its Remains, which became a bestseller and would thus finance further expeditions.23 Contemporary reviews spread the view that these excavators of Victorian England had dug up their own past there in distant Nineveh. In this way, Mesopotamia was marked as a place where the British had at one time been. Layard’s book also made it seem like the excavations had been a target-oriented undertaking, well organized and thought out. Accounts of the actual transport and integration of the finds, however, tell a different story. After Layard had excavated reliefs, clay tablets, and enormous statues, it was clear beyond question that the finds should be transported to London. The first shipment reached London in 1848. Even for the shipping, the expertise necessary for adequate packing and transport of the artifacts was lacking.24 When the objects finally reached London, the real problems were just beginning – there the objects in no way encountered a systematized collection in which they only had to be integrated, with the help of the curator. Reports by foreign visitors to the British Museum around 1850 give an impression of this period of transition and the untenable state of the institution at this time.25 They not only found the exhibition of the collection to be unsystematic, but also remarked upon a lack of willingness on the part of the museum to professionalize the archaeological classification system. But since the British Museum itself was interested in improving its image as a research institution, reforms were actually undertaken around 1850 and curators were named for newly defined departments. But the objects from Mesopotamia seemed to defy all attempts at classification.26 The artifacts appeared to shift between being objects of research, trophies, or curiosities.27 Instead of being considered enrichments of the collection, they were increasingly seen as a burden. Spectacular finds like the winged lions and bulls were sensational and could be marveled at in the exhibition, but other

23 See Layard 1849 (as fn.  21). For the images in Layard’s publication, see Bohrer 2003 (as fn.  9), pp. 142–54. The visualization strategies of the excavations themselves followed plans which were no less undefined. See Mirjam Brusius, “Map of Turkey, a Flexible Hat, Pencils, and the Talbotype”. Photography and the Search for Archaeological Imagery in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain’ (forthcoming). 24 Julian Reade, Nineteenth-Century Nimrud. Motivation, Orientation, Conservation, in: J.E. Curtis et al. (eds.), New Light on Nimrud, London: British Museum Press, 2008, pp. 1–21; esp. p. 18. 25 See Mirjam Brusius, Misfit Objects. Layard’s Excavations in Ancient Mesopotamia and the Biblical Imagination in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain, in: Journal of Literature and Science 5.1 (2012), pp. 38–52. See also Charlotte Schreiter’s contribution in this volume. 26 See Julian Reade, Restructuring the Assyrian Sculptures, in: R. Dittmann et al. (eds.), Variatio Delectat. Iran und der Westen. Gedenkschrift für Peter Calmeyer, Muenster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2000, pp. 607–25; esp. pp. 617–18. 27 Frederick Bohrer, The Times and Spaces of History. Representation, Assyria, and the British Museum, in: D. J. Sherman, I. Rogoff (eds.), Museum Culture, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994, pp. 197–222; esp. p. 203. Bohrer 2003 (as fn. 9), pp. 154–67. For the question of whether the objects were art, see Larsen 1996 (as fn. 9), pp. 99–107.





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finds initially ended up in storage, curators being unsure of what to do with them. Sculptures, too, presented their own type of problems. Should they be shown adjacent to the Egyptian sculptures, or rather together with the Greek sculptures, which were so firmly anchored in the European canon? Could these strange entities even be called art? What should be done with the cuneiform tablets, which nobody could read but upon which there could possibly be important information? The objects continued to have a marginal status in the British Museum – this was especially the case for the enormous collection of cuneiform tablets. Most of the tablets were never exhibited; the museum kept them in storage, where they were only accessible to a few specialists.28 But even in storage, the objects sometimes lay around for years before some specialist endowed them with importance. Scholars did not even know of the existence of many of the tablets.

Conclusion Even though the excavators had not known what they were actually looking for, their publications and the press sustained a picture of an all-round, purposeful expedition, after the fact. The chaos and the insecurity rarely entered into the descriptions. The objects, then, had not entered into a “disciplined” space after the chaos of the expedition. To the contrary, even after the transit time they had – in the rooms of the museum – the potential to rock the existing canon. This had to do, on the one hand, with the fact that in 1850 the British Museum was nothing less than a stabile space.29 On the other hand, the objects themselves were responsible – through their origin – for making the museum into a bearer of different patterns of meaning. Thus, it was the potential that the objects possessed, not their clearly definable semantic value, which made them collectable in the eyes of the curators. Let us once again call to mind the picture (fig. 2) showing the arrival of the lions at the British Museum. This short excerpt from the history of the British expedition to Mesopotamia, which we have traced above, was less about the lion and more about the broken parts of the building. It was less the history of the impressive façade than that of the steps leading to the museum, connecting exterior and interior space – in other words, it was more about the threshold, symbolizing time and space, than

28 See Christopher Walker, The Kouyunjik Collection of Cuneiform Texts. Formation, Problems, and Prospects, in: F. M. Fales, B. J. Hickey (eds.), Austen Henry Layard Tra L’oriente E Venezia. International Symposium: Selected Papers, Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 1987, pp. 183–93; esp. pp. 186–7. 29 For the notion of objects in the museum, see Simon Schaffer, Object Lessons, in: Svante Lindqvist (ed.), Museums of Modern Science, Canton, Mass.: Science History Publications, 2000, pp. 61–76; esp. pp. 61–2. Samuel Alberti, Objects and the Museum, in: Isis 96, no. 4 (2005), pp. 559–71; esp. p. 567. Regarding the Mesopotamian finds and the British Museum, see Bohrer 2003 (as fn. 9), p. 106.



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about the objects which, though already excavated, were not yet a systematized part of the collection inside the museum. It was less the story of the gentlemen who were discussing among themselves where the objects might be exhibited than that of the curators, who were asking themselves what in the world they were going to do with these huge statues. The efforts of the British Museum to re-form its national mission, to shore up the canon culturally and scientifically, were being undermined, then and there, by these foreign objects, which defied any and all attempts at clear semantic definition. Translated by Catherine Framm



Charlotte Schreiter

Competition, Exchange, Comparison Nineteenth-Century Cast Museums in Transnational Perspective Among the major museums of the nineteenth century with an emphatically national outlook, it is striking that some could make no claim that their exhibits were unique works of art. Plaster casts of sculpture and architectural elements made up a considerable proportion of the collections accessible to the public – reproducing both works of classical art, seen as ideal models, and the mediaeval and modern sculpture associated with each nation’s own past.

The Nation and the Cast It is paradoxical that in collections of similar content it was, of all things, the medium of the plaster cast that emerged as especially well suited to mould national references into the art of the ancient world or of each nation itself. To illuminate this paradox, it is necessary to understand the mechanisms by which casts were produced and disseminated, involving a Europe-wide network that linked together the producers of casts and the collecting institutions. Transnational cooperations thus created the ne­cessary conditions for national distinction. These were not only the circulation of the objects themselves, but rather the consequences of the fact that famous works of art were transported, sold and repositioned – and this not only in the major watershed of Napoleon’s artistic booty. From the midnineteenth century, casts were collected and exhibited in major museums and thus set in a national explanatory framework that was sometimes made explicit, sometimes less so. One of the most prominent examples, the Crystal Palace that stood in Sydenham from 1854, was, strictly speaking, not a museum at all, but it could hardly have been more museum-like in its presentation, nor more international in the sources of its collection. The present paper will take a selection of publicly accessible cast collections of the nineteenth century and identify the criteria that determined their presentation, thus showing how, by comparison with other countries, they were fitted into each nation’s own demands for self-representation. The focus will be on institutions in the three European capitals London, Berlin and Paris, though even these prominent examples allow only a partial view of the general picture.1

1 It is difficult to give a general overview of current research here. Since the 1980s the Association Internationale pour la Conservation et la Promotion des Moulages has tracked the progress of

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Recent studies of cast museums such as the Musée de Sculpture Comparée au Trocadéro,2 the Neues Museum in Berlin,3 the Victoria and Albert Museum (South Kensington Museum)4 and the Crystal Palace,5 and studies of the production6 and dissemination7 of casts, have created a basis for a general survey in a European context.

research on casts, beginning from the French collections, with a firmly international perspective: see Christoph Llinas (ed.), Moulages. Actes de Rencontres Internationales sur les Moulages 14–17 février 1997, Musée des Moulages, Montpellier, Montpellier: Éd. de l’Univ. Montpellier III, 1999, and Henri Lavagne, François Queyrel (eds.), Les moulages de sculptures antiques et l’histoire de l’archéologie. Actes du Colloque International, Paris, 24 Octobre 1997, Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2000. The most recent advances in research are reflected in the publication of the 2007 Oxford conference: Rune Frederiksen, Eckart Marchand (eds.), Plaster Casts. Making, Collecting and Displaying from Classical Antiquity to the Present, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010; see also the forthcoming work, Charlotte Schreiter, Gipsabgüsse und antike Skulpturen. Präsentation und Kontext, Berlin: Reimer, 2012 (=  Schreiter 2012 a). An overview of the French collections is provided by Florence Rionnet, L’Atelier de Moulage du Musée du Louvre (1794–1928), Paris: Éd. de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1996, pp. 81–08. Essential for the German-speaking countries are: Hans-Ulrich Cain, Gipsabgüsse. Zur Geschichte ihrer Wertschätzung, in: Anzeiger des Germanischen Nationalmuseums und Berichte aus dem Forschungsinstitut für Realienkunde (1995), pp. 200–15; Johannes Bauer, Gipsabgußsammlungen an deutschsprachigen Universitäten, in: Jahrbuch für Universitätsgeschichte 5 (2002), pp. 117–32; Johannes Bauer, Wilfried Geominy (eds.), Gips nicht mehr. Abgüsse als letzte Zeugen antiker Kunst, exh. cat., Bonn: Akademisches Kunstmuseum – Antikensammlung der Universität Bonn, 2000. An overview for Great Britain is given by Donna Kurtz, The Reception of Classical Art in Britain. An Oxford Story of Plaster Casts from the Antique, Oxford: BAR, 2000. 2 Susanne Mersmann, Die Musées du Trocadéro, Berlin: Reimer, 2012. 3 Gertrud Platz-Horster, Zur Geschichte der Berliner Gipssammlung, in: Willmuth Arenhövel, Christa Schreiber (eds.), Berlin und die Antike, Berlin: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, 1979, pp. 273–92; but above all Gertrud Platz-Horster, ‚… der eigentliche Mittelpunkt aller Sammlungen …‘ Die Gipssammlung im Neuen Museum 1855–1916, in: Ellinoor Bergvelt et al. (eds.), Museale Spezialisierung und Nationalisierung ab 1830. Das Neue Museum in Berlin im internationalen Kontext, Berlin: G+H Verlag, 2011, pp. 191–07. 4 Diane Bilbey, Marjorie Trusted, “The Question of Casts” – Collecting and Later Reassessment of the Cast Collections at South Kensington, in: Frederiksen and Marchand 2010 (as fn. 1), pp. 465–83. 5 I am especially grateful to Kate Nichols, who generously made available to me her unpublished doctoral dissertation: Kate Nichols, Greece and Rome at the Crystal Palace, 1854–1936, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 2009 (it will be published in 2013). 6 Rionnet 1996 (as fn.  1). An essential work on the Berlin Gipsformerei (cast workshop) and its international links is: Sibylle Einholz, Enzyklopädie in Gips. Zur Sammlungsgeschichte der Berliner Museen, in: Der Bär von Berlin. Jahrbuch des Vereins für die Geschichte Berlins 41 (1992), pp. 75–92; Sibylle Einholz, Orte der Kontemplation und Erziehung. Zur Geschichte der Berliner Gipsabgußsammlungen, in: Hartmut Krohm (ed.), Meisterwerke mittelalterlicher Skulptur, exh. cat., Berlin: Reimer, 1996, pp.  11–29; now also, for a more general readership, Hans Georg Hiller von Gaertringen, Meisterwerke der Gipsformerei. Kunstmanufaktur der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin seit 1819, Munich: Hirmer, 2012. 7 John Kenworthy-Browne, Plaster Casts for the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, in: The Sculpture Journal 15, 2 (2006), pp. 173–98.





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The Nation and the Antique There is a coincidence in the date at which the collections were founded, around the mid-nineteenth century, a time at which there were growing demands for classical art (and the art of other periods and cultures), and especially sculpture, to be presented in a chronological series that aimed for encyclopaedic exhaustiveness. Plaster casts made it possible for this progression through art history to be visualised.8 Although the museums of Europe’s major cities in some cases held quite considerable collections of ancient sculpture, the most common modes of presenting them were felt to be in need of improvement. Even the British Museum, the paradigmatic case of a great national project, was again and again the subject of debate: The premises devoted to art are untidy and neglected. No method in the classing, an indigestible mix of marble and plaster, no chronological order in the Greek and Roman monuments. It is a sumptuous and uncleanly bazaar. Beautiful busts and statues are covered with dust, the floors are filthy. The walls are dull and colourless, the whole place looks like a warehouse. In a large room painted a dirty yellow are the marbles from the Parthenon – the greatest masterpieces of Phidias and of all human sculpture.9

The French traveller Francis Wey spent time in London in 1856, where, among other things, he visited the British Museum, which he describes here. Already in its name, the museum includes a reference to the British nation, although the collection derived from individual donors.10 Few other museums in Europe could match its claim to hold important – even the most important – sculptures of classical antiquity. The acquisition of the Elgin Marbles, the sculptural decoration of the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis, in 1816 – precisely the moment when the confiscated antiquities from Paris were being returned to Italy – counted almost as a military victory, even without

8 Nichols 2009 (as fn.  5), p. 104 referring also to Ian Jenkins, Archaeologists and Aesthetes in the Sculpture Galleries of the British Museum 1800–1939, London: British Museum Press, 1992, pp. 20, 62. 9 Quotation taken from Francis Wey, A French Man Sees the English in the Fifties, translated by V. Pirie, London, 1935, pp. 226–27. See Francis Wey, Les Anglais chez eux, Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, Libraires-Éditeurs, 1856, pp. 228–29, http://books.google.de/books?id=pS5BAAAAcAAJ&printsec =frontcover&hl=de&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false (accessed August 2012): “[…] autant la portion du musée dévolue à l’art est mal coordonnée et négligement entretenue. Encombrement partout, mélange indigeste du plâtre et du marbre, absence de logique, de chronologie dans les monuments grecs et romains… On ne voit là que le plus somptueux et le plus malpropre des bazars: des bustes, des statue admirable sont souillés de poussière comme les dalles grises que le balai n’a point visitées. Les murs, de’nués d’ornements, sont gris et terne comme ceux d’un vieux jeu de paume. Ces musées ressemblent à des entrepôts. Dans une vaste pièce, badigeonnée en jaune faux et malsain, sont un peu mieux rangés les marbres célèbres du Parthenon, chefs-d’ouevre de Phidias et de la sculpture humaine.” Cf. Nichols (as fn. 5), p. 104, fn. 303; cf. Jenkins 1992 (as fn. 8), pp. 90–97, fig. 26–27 on the arrangement of the Parthenon collection in this period. 10 Jenkins 1992 (as fn. 8), p. 13.



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taking into account the significance that these original Greek sculptures of the classical period came to bear immediately thereafter.11 Though one may at first suspect that Wey’s description could reflect a negative view coloured by his own national perspective, other sources give the impression of an international public debate that offered both negative and positive comment on museums irrespective of their location. The Louvre, too, which Wey may have had in mind as a comparison, did not provide the desired chronological arrangement, but instead presented the traditional thematic groupings.12 Its Galerie des Antiques remained a first-rank attraction for the European public, even after it had given back a large part of the artistic treasures of Europe, with the gaps filled by sculptures from the Borghese collection.13 Englishlanguage guide books, such as Bayle St. John’s 1855 The Louvre. Or, Biography of a Museum, represent an engagement with the museum that goes beyond mere admiration to describe the structures even of its internal organisation.14 However, neither there nor in other museums of antiquities, such as the Munich Glyptothek or the Berlin Königliches Museum, were the antiquities presented in a chronological sequence, as was increasingly demanded around the middle of the century. Travellers’ accounts, such as that from 1848 by Charles Newton, later Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum,15 mention the dominance of thematic presentation styles – something that was in general viewed critically – and the important role assigned to casts in presenting a history of art that showed a process of development. For that reason, casts were occasionally included in the display in both the Louvre and the British Museum.16 As these descriptions demonstrate, various types of publication addressed the arrangements found in other nations’ museums. Along with travel reports, catalogues and guide books, articles in journals and newspapers also addressed the topic.

11 Ibid., p. 19. 12 Jean-Luc Martinez, Les antiques du Louvre. Une histoire du goût d’Henri IV à Napoléon Ier, Paris: Fayard, 2004, p. 196. 13 Pictures from the 1830s give an impression of the design of the gallery: Martinez 2004 (as fn. 12), pp. 202–03, fig. 221 (anonymous painting, La Salle des Saisons au Louvre vue du nord au sud, ca. 1820–1830, Paris, Musée du Louvre, Département des Peintures, RF 1999–18). 14 Bayle St. John, The Louvre. Or, Biography of a Museum, London: Chapman and Hall, 1885, http:// books.google.de/books?id=DAlf7ldb7LMC&printsec=frontcover&hl=de&source=gbs_ge_summary_r &cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false (accessed August 2012). 15 Jenkins 1992 (as fn. 8), p. 69. 16 Ibid., p. 70. In the Königliches (later: Altes) Museum in Berlin, too, prior to the foundation of the Neues Museum, plaster casts were “vorläufig” (temporarily) integrated into the exhibition, as revealed by the lectures of Eduard Gerhard in 1844: see Platz-Horster 2011 (as fn. 3), p. 192 and fn. 9 with quotation.





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Nation, Casts and the Great Exhibition In the discussions about how classical art, and especially sculpture, should be exhibited, the Crystal Palace took on a central role (fig. 3). Kate Nichols has shown clearly how much the debate about the British Museum influenced the creation of the Crystal Palace in Sydenham.17 The French traveller’s verdict was thus not exceptional, but was echoed in the periodicals of the time. In 1852 the newly founded journal Museum of Classical Antiquities. A Series of Papers on Ancient Art published an article by the Hungarian politician and author, and later Director of the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest, Ferenc Pulszky,18 with the title On the Progress and Decay of Art; and on the Arrangement of a National Museum, in which, among other things the following passage treats the British Museum: We go from the masterworks of the Parthenon straight up to the stuffed seal and buffalo; and two monster giraffes stand as sentinels before the gallery of vases. Moreover, in the arrangement of the several works of art, we see no leading idea, no system carried out continuously. The only arrangement approaching to a system is a geographical one, […], but without any regard to chronology and style. […].19

Pulszky gives a vivid account of this general failing, also making a comparison with the major museums in Berlin and Munich, and bases on this his requirements for a national museum: “A museum should give a perfect view of the history of art in every civilized nation. It should be a collection of all those monuments on which the artistic instinct of bygone centuries has exerted itself. It should contain all the important documents of the plastic power of mankind. […] and when we cannot attain this object by marble and brass, we should make up the deficiency by casts.”20 Plaster casts were thus the preferred means to make such a presentation feasible. However, it was not the British Museum, but a quite different venue that would meet this demand in a striking way: the Crystal Palace in Sydenham. For, to quote the

17 Nichols 2009 (as fn. 5), p. 104. She also convincingly shows that the special success of the Crystal Palace, to some degree, forms a link between the acquisition of the Elgin Marbles in 1816 and the creation of university chairs in archaeology, by setting it in the context of classical archaeology in England in the mid-nineteenth century. The discipline was only anchored institutionally in the 1880s, with the creation of institutes in London, Oxford and Cambridge, ibid., pp. 101–03. On the British Museum, see Jenkins 1992 (as fn. 8), pp. 56–59. 18 Entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_ Britannica/Pulszky,_Ferencz_Aurel (accessed August 2012). 19 Ferenc Pulszky, On the Progress and Decay of Art. And on the Arrangement of a National Museum, in: The Museum of Classical Antiquities. A Quarterly Journal of Ancient Art V, II (March 1852), pp. 1–15, here: pp. 11–12. 20 Ibid., pp. 12–13. Jenkins 1992 (as fn. 8), pp. 67–68 also discusses Pulszky’s text with respect to the British Museum and the chronological system.



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Fig. 3: The Creek Court in the Crystal Palace in Sydenham, London, color lithography after a photograph by Philip Delamotte, 1854

observations of Francis Wey once again: “Examples of all that various civilisations have produced in the way of beauty are to be found here in chronological order. In a few hours you can scan the entire index of universal annals.”21 The Great Exhibition undertaken in London in 1851, to much international attention, had left behind this building, which was originally planned as a temporary events venue but became famous as the Crystal Palace, thanks to its novel, and excessive, use of glass-and-steel construction techniques. Financed thanks to the commercial interests of the British Empire, it was planned by the architect Joseph Paxton and erected in London’s Hyde Park. When the international exhibition was over, Paxton founded the Crystal Palace Company, so that it would be possible to re-erect the building at a different location with different fittings and contents. The solution was to transfer the entire structure to Sydenham, at that time still outside London, though now an area in the south west of the city. There it was re-erected and remained standing until 1936, when it was destroyed by fire and not rebuilt.22

21 Wey 1935 (as fn. 9), pp. 157–58; Wey 1856 (as fn. 9), p. 156: “Tout ce que les sociétés on produit d’original et de beau se trouve là; chronologiquement disposé: on y parcourt en trois heures la table des matières des annales du monde.” 22 Cf. Kenworthy-Browne 2006 (as fn. 7), pp. 173–76 and Nichols 2009 (as fn. 5), pp. 11–13.





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A large part of this enormous building was occupied by a collection of casts, which now finally met the demand that art be presented in a chronological series – and now not in a museum! – and it also extended the series beyond Graeco-Roman antiquity to the art of ancient Egypt, Assyria, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the modern era. This example allows us to trace directly the intertwining of the two issues of, on the one hand, the exchange of casts between European nations and, on the other, the national contours created in the collections.23 In the Prospectus of the Crystal Palace Company of 1853 it is announced: The sculptures of the most eminent living artists of every nation, casts of the works of eminent sculptors in every age, architectural remains and casts of architectural monuments of the past and present times will occupy every salient part of the building. […] The French, Germans and Italians will cease to be the only European Nations busy in educating the eye of the people for the appreciation of art and beauty […].24

£ 20,000 was provided for the acquisition of the casts, an amount that would later even be exceeded. Owen Jones and Digby Watt, who had been involved in the design of the Crystal Palace during the Great Exhibition, undertook a journey through Europe to acquire casts. On this occasion they not only purchased casts from moulds already available in the plaster workshops, but also commissioned new moulds of other works. By 1854 the casts were already on show and accessible to the public in Sydenham.25 The account books of the Atelier de Moulage in Paris record the large quantities of casts that were produced for the Crystal Palace. The Atelier had an especially good collection of moulds, which went back to the period when, during the Napoleonic wars, vast numbers of important art works were brought to Paris as war booty.26 When the Italian antiquities arrived from Rome, the Louvre became a musée universelle, whose presentation not only documented France’s dominance of Europe, both military and cultural, but was also able to present exhaustively the entire – as yet uncontested – canon of ancient art.27 Already in 1794, before the arrival of the antiquities, the Louvre

23 In detail, see Charlotte Schreiter, Berliner Abguss-Sammlungen des 17.–19. Jhs. im europäischen Kontext, in: Nele Schröder and Lorenz Winkler-Horacek (eds.), Von Gestern bis Morgen. Zur Geschichte der Berliner Abguss-Sammlung(en), Berlin: Abguss-Sammlung Antiker Plastik, 2012, p. 11 (= Schreiter 2012 b). 24 Cited from ibid., p. 174, fn.  7 (Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, Imperial College London; exemplar in the Sotheby Scrap Album I, Bromley Libraries). 25 Ibid., pp. 176–83. 26 E.g. Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Archive (Louvre), AMN, Sign. *1MM42, Suite du Mois de Mai pour le Palais de Cristal, account book of the Atelier de Moulage, Mai 1853); see also KenworthyBrowne 2006 (as fn. 7), p. 177, Fig. 1–2. 27 Martinez 2004 (as fn. 12), p. 196; Bénédicte Savoy, The Looting of Art. The Museum as Place of Legitimization, in: Ellinoor Bergvelt et al. (eds.), Napoleon’s Legacy. The Rise of National Museums in Europe 1794–1830, Berlin: G+H Verlag, 2009, pp. 29–39.



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 Charlotte Schreiter

had commissioned mouleurs (plaster casters) to make casts, at first from the antiqui­ ties transferred from Versailles, but then primarily from the new sculptures that began to arrive from 1798 onwards.28 The casts’ contribution to forming a national identity can be seen in the delivery of casts to all the départements of France, which, by accepting casts of the Laocoon group, Apollo Belvedere, the Borghese Gladiator and many other renowned classical statues, received their share in the possession of these famous works of art.29 Although large collections had from time to time been assembled, above all in the academies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, on the production side the market had been dominated by plaster casters trading individually. The availability of moulds was limited, and the creation of new ones was tied to privileges granted by the owner of the piece to be copied.30 The creation of the Atelier de Moulage can be seen as a milestone. The growing cast collections of universities, academies, museums and private collectors throughout Europe, and in the second half of the century also in America, guaranteed the long-term future of the Atelier de Moulage.

The Neues Museum in Berlin as a Paradigm The exhibition on show in the Crystal Palace, presented by a commercial company, was in a position not only to challenge the British Museum for the attention of the general public, but also to tempt away the students at the Royal Academy. Ian Jenkins has remarked on this notable drop in visitor numbers at the British Museum in the mid-nineteenth century and linked it to the far better study environment in the Crystal Palace.31 The Crystal Palace, not being tied to a fixed collection of original antiquities, was able to use the medium of the copy to become, in a sense, an improved British Museum, despite not being a museum at all. In this, its aims differed decisively from a project undertaken in the same period, the Neues Museum in Berlin (fig. 4).32 The 1855 German language guide-book Der Kristallpalast in Sydenham brings the two projects together in a direct comparison: And you know from your own observation how at present dazzling galleries are being completed in Berlin, ready to receive the monuments of all periods of art in the Neues Museum, while in more humble rooms, but with no less devotion, a similar collection of purely Christian works

28 Rionnet 1996 (as fn. 1), pp. 7–9. 29 Charlotte Schreiter, Gipsabgüsse und antike Skulpturen. Aufstellung und Ausstellung seit der Renaissance, in: Schreiter 2012 a (as fn. 1), pp. 13–14. Cf. Rionnet 1996 (as fn. 1), pp. 345–57, Annexe 5, Les ventes aux institutions françaises. 30 Most recently, Schreiter 2012 a (as fn. 29), p. 13. 31 Jenkins 1992 (as fn. 8), pp. 32–33. 32 Platz-Horster 2011 (as fn. 3), p. 191; pp. 193–96.





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 39

of art is being preserved and developed. In a similar way, but as exhaustively as possible and without limitation to any one particular period of art history, a collection of this kind has now been produced in the Glass Palace.33

The display of the Neues Museum, from 1856, first allowed Berlin to meet the demand for an exhaustive presentation of art history,34 as the Königliches (later: Altes) Museum had intentionally excluded plaster casts completely from the exhibit.35 After Paris, Berlin was the next city in which a special workshop for the production of casts was set up. Whereas casts had had to be acquired by negotiation from the Louvre’s Atelier de Moulage to replace the antiquities taken to Paris, by at latest 1819 the Königliche Gipsformerei (Royal Plaster Moulding Workshop) was able to produce large numbers of casts in Berlin.36 A pattern of exchange with Paris and other cities of Europe, swapping the models available in each place, was very soon established. For example, casts of the Venus de Milo were in demand throughout the world as soon as she was discovered in 1820, but they could only be produced in Paris, as no moulds existed anywhere else.37 Nonetheless, the assembly of the cast collection for the Neues Museum followed an entirely different pattern from that for the Crystal Palace. Although a number of casts were acquired for the museum,38 the core of the collection consisted of material from collections already in Berlin, above all that of the Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts).39 The display was also characterized by its consistent design, which was disrupted by every change in the arrangement or addition of new casts. As early as 1868 the pieces were re-ordered on thematic criteria, ignoring the existing order and jeopardizing the whole original concept; the new arrangements met with sharp criticism both from the administration of the museum and from the general public.40

33 Ernst Guhl, Der Krystallpalast zu Sydenham und dessen Kunstsammlungen in geschichtlicher Uebersicht, Berlin: Verlag von J. Guttentag, 1855, p. 9. “Und Sie wissen aus eigener Anschauung, wie glänzende Säle sich gegenwärtig in Berlin für die Aufnahme von Denkmälern aller Kunstperioden im Neuen Museum vollenden, während in bescheideneren Räumen, doch mit nicht geringerer Liebe, eine ähnliche Sammlung ausschliesslich christlicher Kunstwerke gehegt und fortgebildet wird. In ähnlicher Weise nun, aber in dem umfassendsten Maasstabe und ohne Beschränkung auf irgend eine bestimmte Periode der Kunstgeschichte ist eine solche Sammlung im Glaspalast hergestellt worden.” 34 Cf. in general: Einholz 1996 (as fn. 6), pp. 18–19. 35 Most recently: Astrid Fendt, Antikeverständnis und Präsentationskonzepte antiker Plastik im Berliner Alten Museum des 19. Jahrhunderts, in: Schreiter 2012 a (as fn. 1), pp. 74–76. 36 Einholz 1996 (as fn. 6), pp. 13–14; Hiller von Gaertringen 2012 (as fn. 6), pp. 41–44. 37 Rionnet 1996 (as fn. 1), p. 10. 38 As examples, casts of selected paradigmatic sculptures were moulded and freshly cast specially for the Neues Museum: Platz-Horster 2011 (as fn. 3), p. 196 with fn. 21. 39 Platz-Horster 2011 (as fn. 3), p. 192; Schreiter 2012 b (as fn. 23), pp. 10–11. 40 Platz Horster 2011 (as fn. 3), pp. 196–197, fig. 2–3; pp. 198–199.



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 Charlotte Schreiter

Fig. 4: Otto F. Lindheimer, Venus de Milo in a niche of the Apollo Hall, watercolor, 1863, Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin

The trade and exchange of reproductions internationally had at this time been taken to a new level and consequently spurred further exhibition projects. The system of exchange was codified on the initiative of Henry Cole, the first Director of the South Kensington Museum during the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867, at which the “ideal plaster museum” was discussed. The result was a Convention for Promoting





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 41

Universally Reproductions of Works of Art for the Benefit of Museums of All Countries,41 signed by representatives of the royal houses of Europe, which provided in particular for the manufacture and exchange of reproductions of the works possessed by each country.42

Comparison and Competition. London and Paris While the Neues Museum was understood as an ‘annex’ of the Königliches Museum,43 and its collections were thus treated as complementary, in London the tone was set by an initiative that had only a limited association with the collections of the British Museum. A central point of reference in the debates about creating a cast collection in the South Kensington Museum (later: Victoria and Albert Museum) was instead the Neues Museum in Berlin. Since 1858, reproductions in the study galleries had formed an important element of the collections of the South Kensington Museum, but by this initiative Cole aimed to create a broadly based collection, primarily of architectural casts from different countries and cultures, which opened as the Architectural Courts in 1873.44 Diane Bilbey and Marjorie Trusted have given a precise picture of how widely the reactions to this project varied, from rejection to enthusiastic support, and of the criteria that were cited as important, comparisons being made with the Berlin collection in the Neues Museum.45 A newspaper report in The Times in 1882 by an anonymous “Student” about visits to the Neues Museum in Berlin and the Musée de Sculpture comparée in Paris stresses the exemplary order of the cast collection of the Neues Museum in Berlin, which is made the measure against which the Architectural Courts are to be judged: Having recently had an opportunity of inspecting the admirable Museum of Casts in Berlin, and also the recently opened Musée de Sculpture Comparée in the buildings of the Trocadéro, in Paris, I have, on paying a visit to the South Kensington Museum, been more than ever struck with

41 There is a copy held at the Victoria and Albert Museum: Julius Bryant (ed.), Art and Design for All. The Victoria and Albert Museum, p. 198, Nr. 197. 42 Platz-Horster 2011 (as fn. 3), pp. 199–200; Rionnet 1996 (as fn. 1), pp. 71–72; Bilbey and Trusted 2010 (as fn. 4), p. 466. 43 It is described as such, for example, in a later English article that contains a complete survey of the Prussian art collections: Joseph Beavington Atkinson, The Art Treasures of Prussia, in: The Nineteenth Century and After. A Monthly Review 16, 92 (Oct. 1884), p. 640. 44 Bilbey and Trusted 2010 (as fn. 4), p. 466. 45 Ibid., pp. 467–468; Marjorie Trusted, Reproduction as Spectacle, Education and Inspiration. The Cast Courts at the Victoria and Albert Museum: Past, Present and Future, in: Schreiter 2012 a (as fn. 1), p. 357.



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 Charlotte Schreiter

the extraordinary want of method in the arrangement of the numerous and valuable casts there […]. In Berlin the casts are admirably arranged, according to chronological order, with regard also to the school and place of production of the objects displayed. The collection of casts from Greek and Roman sculptures, which is quite unrivalled for completeness and arrangement, is kept entirely distinct from the almost equally comprehensive collection of works dating from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. [...] At South Kensington, in the two great halls which contain casts and copies, there is at present the most extraordinary jumble of works […] that can possibly be imagined […] The whole constitutes in its present state a gigantic curiosity shop arranged on no comprehensible principle, which can only perplex and irritate the student, while the result conveyed to the mind of the ordinary sight-seer must be one of absolute confusion.46

Order and method (or the lack of them in the Cast Courts) are the characteristics praised in the Berlin collection, though at this period in Berlin the disruption of the original arrangement and the re-grouping of pieces on thematic grounds had brought the cast collection close to dissolution. Overall a wide debate can be traced in the press reports of the period as well as in internal memoranda. Interestingly, there was a time-lag in the reactions of the English and French that set in motion what can best be described as the second wave of major cast museums. At a time when the dilution of the Neues Museum’s collection in Berlin was already being criticized in public, a series of reports in England and France show that, as late as the 1880s, it was still highly regarded and ranked as, at the least, one of the most influential cast museums.47 The example of the German cast collections – as well as Berlin, Dresden and Nuremberg were also relevant – provided the grounds for whole chains of argument in favor of setting up a museum or at least of elements within a museum. The Musée de Sculpture Comparée in Paris was a similar point of reference in these comparative discussions. This museum, which arose out of very disparate plans when the Atelier de Moulage was reorganized in 1848, finally opened in 1882.48 Less well known is the Musée historique de moulages d’après l’antique, which was one of various short-lived projects undertaken in the 1860s to provide an ideal venue for the products of the Atelier de Moulage.49 At around the same time as Viollet-

46 The Times, 20 September, 1882, p. 4. Cited from Trusted 2012 (as fn. 45), p. 263. 47 This is the case, for example, in Lionel G. Robinson, The Berlin Museum of Casts, in: Art Journal (March 1883), here p. 68: “Occupying the whole of the first floor of the Royal Museum, the Gipsabgüsse form a fitting introduction to the study of the various collections of original works with which the building is richly stored. Chronological order has been primarily aimed at in the arrangement of the works, and the discussions which have necessarily arisen out of the decisions of the authorities, have quickened public attention and stimulated the curiosity of those to whom so many of the riddles of archaeology were meaningless or insoluble.” 48 Rionnet (as fn. 1), pp. 108–109, fig. 87–88; essential now is Françoise Bercé, Le Musée de Sculpture Comparée de Villet-le-Duc à Enlart, in: Léon Pressouyre (ed.), Le Musée des monuments français, Paris: Nicolas Chaudun, 2007, pp. 57–89 sowie Mersmann 2012 (as fn. 2), here: pp. 14–16. 49 Rionnet 1996 (as fn. 1), pp. 94–97; Mersmann 2012 (as fn. 2), pp. 60–66.





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 43

le-Duc was making plans for the Musée de Sculpture Comparée, possibilities were being sounded out to establish this collection of casts of classical sculpture in the Louvre itself in suitable form and as a regular museum. The latter plans became obsolete when the Musée de Sculpture Comparée opened in the Palais de Trocadéro, which had been erected for the World Exhibition of 1878.50 These large museums, which have recently become a focus of research interest again, were by far the best known examples of this type of institution, which in the nineteenth century played a decisive part in debates about museums’ national role, no less than in debates about the exhaustive presentation of (classical) art history, a debate that could easily be extended to other periods and cultures. A characteristic feature is that they were linked in time, location or institutional connections with the World Exhibitions – shows that went beyond presentation in a museum context and gave visible form to the ambitions of each nation before an international public. Another characteristic, however, is the close ties between all the different institutions, due to their shared choice of suppliers. The total number of suppliers was quite large, but the majority of the casts were sourced from a small number of central institutions. A central element in the establishment of cast museums as national ventures was a comparative approach, and especially evaluative comparisons of ordering criteria, which took precedence over the presentation of art works as an aesthetic experience. It was an approach founded on sheer quantity and on exhaustiveness – irrespective of the particular arguments put forward to promote them. Translated by Orla Mulholland

50 Ibid.



Dorothea Peters

Reproduced Art Early Photographic Campaigns in European Collections In the mid-eighteenth century, increasingly specialized museums and picture galleries multiplied, gradually taking the place of the encyclopedic royal “cabinets of curiosities.” This development was closely interwoven with the political emancipation of the emerging middle classes and their demand for access to education and culture. The same was true for photography, which from the time it was made public in 1839 was celebrated as an artistic medium of the bourgeoisie. Photography also combined the hopes for the democratization of culture with the ambition of those in power to improve the tastes of the “lower” echelons of society. Photographic catalogues, which soon transcended the limitations of gallery walls and made even the remotest collections accessible to an interested public, created a kind of synthesis of museum and photography. These collections of reproductions not only popularized art at a surprising speed, and in unawaited fullness and authenticity, but also made material accessible to artists and art scholars, who at their leisure, without the need to travel, could study the works in the privacy of their homes or in their own studios. In a globalized view of European development in the nineteenth century, the common history of photography and museums, beyond all national particularities, displays a networking of institutions and actors that crossed boundaries very early on. Surprisingly enough, thanks to wide-ranging international contacts, England, which in the first half of the nineteenth century lagged behind France and Prussia considerably in respect to generally accessible museums, made the earliest and most consistent use of the new photographic method for documenting the holdings of its museums. This trend was closely associated with a new path-breaking project that was initiated in the early 1850s by Prince Albert, the originally German prince consort (1819–1861): spurred on by the desire to make the approximately 15,000 engravings and drawings in the royal collection accessible to the public, Prince Albert planned to compile a systematic visual history of painting that would not only include the final works of art but also the preparatory sketches and studies. The project was to start with Raphael, based on the monograph by Johann David Passavant1 that was published between 1839 and 1858, and, with the help of photography, was to docu-

1 Johann David Passavant, Rafael von Urbino und sein Vater Giovanni Santi, Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1839. 2 vols. + atlas vol. with 12 engraved plates, the second volume contains an annotated index of all of Raphael’s works known at that time with their locations; a third volume was published ibid. in 1858. I would like to heartily thank Catherine Framm, Berlin, for the careful translation of the text as well as for the stimulating discussions.

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 Dorothea Peters

ment all of his known paintings, frescoes, and drawings, which were scattered all over Europe in various private collections, churches, and museums.2

Early Photographic Campaigns for the Raphael Collection, London Since the 1851 World Fair in London, where the wet collodion process developed by Frederick Scott Archer caused furor, Prince Albert had been greatly enthusiastic about the new medium and considered photography to be superior to engraving because of its exact reproduction of every brush and pencil stroke.3 As early as 1855, he had the photographer Charles Thurston Thompson (1816–1868) reproduce the Raphael drawings in his own collection, and he sent a selection of these to various European royal houses, private collectors, museum curators, and church authorities, advertising his project and at the same time hoping for permission to photograph in the respective institutions. Due to the patronage of Prince Albert, the photographers almost always were granted access to the pictures, though frequently with the condition that only one print should be made from the negative and that this print should be for the royal collections only – commercial use was thus not granted.4 Some of Europe’s most renowned photographers set out between 1852 and 1862 to document Raphael’s works in numerous collections. Until 1859, the organization of the technically complicated photographic campaigns was in the hands of Ernst Becker, Prince Albert’s royal tutor, librarian, and private secretary. Becker took photographs himself and, in 1853, was a founding member of the Photographic Society of London, through which he was able to take up contact with photographers all over Europe.5 In the course of the project, Charles Thurston Thompson, Roger Fenton, Robert Howlett, Gustave Rejlander, Leonida Caldesi, William Bambridge, and Joseph Cundall photographed in England, Pietro Dovizielli and William Lake Price in Rome, Fratelli Alinari

2 See Frances Dimond, Prince Albert and the application of photography, in: Frances Dimond, Roger Taylor (eds.), Crown & Camera. The Royal Family and Photography 1842–1910, London: Penguin Books, 1987, pp. 45–49; Jennifer Montagu, The “Ruland/Raphael Collection”, in: Helene E. Roberts (ed.), Art History through the Camera’s Lens, Amsterdam: Gordon & Breach, 1995, pp. 37–57; further: Anthony Hamber, “A Higher Branch of the Art”, Photographing the Fine Arts in England, 1839–1880, Amsterdam: Gordon & Breach, 1996, pp. 217–24. 3 See Ernst Becker, Carl Ruland, The “Raphael Collection” of H.R.H. the Prince Consort, in: Fine Arts Quarterly Review 1 (1863), pp. 27–39, here: p. 30. 4 Ibid. (as fn. 3), p. 30 f. 5 See Charlotte Pangels, Dr. Becker in geheimer Mission an Queen Victorias Hof. Die Briefe des Prinzenerziehers und Bibliothekars Dr. Ernst Becker aus seiner Zeit in England von 1850–1861, Hamburg: Jahn & Ernst, 1996.





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in Venice, Florence, and Vienna, Charles Marville (Charles François Bossu) in Milan and Turin, and Robert Bingham in Paris and Lille. The results of the campaigns were impressive: in more than 30 European collections, more than 800 of Raphael’s drawings could be photographed6 – for the Disputá alone, drawings and studies were found and documented in Paris, Windsor, Oxford, Vienna, Munich, Milan, Florence, Montpellier, and Lille.7 In this way, within just a few years, the so-called Raphael Collection at Windsor Castle came into the possession of a unique, comprehensive body of works consisting of photographs, engravings, and lithographs such as had never before existed for a single artist. The scholarly analysis of the collection by Ernst Becker and his successor, the art historian Carl Ruland, resulted in 1863 in the first report on the Raphael Project and caused quite a sensation among art historians. “Such collections,” Herman Grimm, for example, wrote enthusiastically in 1865, “are almost more important for study than the greatest galleries of originals”:8 “In earlier times, who could possibly take the reproduction of a painting, all the sketches for it, all the subsequent engravings, all the preparatory studies and lay them out on one table for calm and concentrated comparison?”9 While the Raphael Collection was unique, and only accessible to single, privileged scholars, the photographic campaigns resulted in a series of important photographic publications on European art collections. These were distributed and sold on the international art market and were in this way available to a broader audience. For example, in 1858, the publisher Luigi Bardi in Florence published three series of 50, 80, and 90 photographs, by the Fratelli Alinari, of Raphael drawings and other Old Masters from the Uffizi in Florence, the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, and the gallery of Archduke Karl in Vienna (fig. 5); in 1859, Bardi followed this publication with a series of 132 photographs from the Uffizi.10 In 1862, Caldesi, Blanford & Co published 122 photographs, among these six of Raphael’s works from the collection of the Earl of Dudley, which were sold in Germany for 105 Rhenish thaler.11 In 1864 in Paris, Goupil published of 67 photographs, in folio format, by Robert Bingham documenting drawings by Raphael from the “musée Wicar” in Lille,12 and 160 pho-

6 See Becker/Ruland 1863 (as fn. 3), pp. 31–32. 7 Ibid., p. 34. 8 Herman Grimm, Über Künstler und Kunstwerke 1 (1865), p. 38. 9 Ibid., p. 37–38. 10 Disegni di Raffaello e d’altri Maestri esistenti nelle Gallerie di Firenze, Venezia e Vienna, riprodotti in Fotografia dal Fratelli Alinari (see Rudolph Weigel’s Kunstlager-Catalog, 29 (1859), pp. 42–52, no. 21885; Weigel 31 (1861), pp. 27–32). See the review by Charles Blanc, Les Dessins de Raphaël, in: Gazette des Beaux-Arts 4 (1859), pp. 193–209, especially pp. 196–99. 11 The Gallery of the Right Hon. The Earl of Dudley, photographed by Caldesi, Blanford & Co. (see Weigel 32 (1863), pp. 26–29, no. 23731b). 12 Collection de Dessins de Raphael du Musée Wicar à Lille. Photographies par M.(onsieur) Bingham, Paris 1864 (see Weigel 33 (1864), p. 29, no. 24280; not referred to in Laure Boyer, Robert J. Bingham.



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 Dorothea Peters

Fig. 5: Fra Antonio da Modena (recte: Fra Antonio da Monza), Last Supper (miniature), Vienna, Albertina. Salt print, Fratelli Alinari, 1858

tographs by Charles Marville of drawings by Old Masters from the museums in Turin and Milan.13 Through the photographic campaigns, photography and museums gradually drew closer to one another: the photographers, independently of their commission to photograph the works of Raphael, took advantage of the opportunity – as long as their unwieldy equipment was set up – to document the artworks in numerous

Photographe du monde de l’art sous le Second Empire, in: études photographiques 7 (2002), no. 12, pp. 126–47). 13 Collections des Dessins de Maîtres célèbres des Musées de Turin et de Milan, by Ch. Marville, Paris 1864 (see Weigel 33 (1864), p. 27–28, no. 24271); the photographs were taken in 1861–1862.





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European collections, works that ranged beyond those of Raphael and that promised commercial success. The museums, on their part, having just recently opened their collections to the photographers, recognized in the new medium not only a chance for the politically desirable popularization of art, but also for prestigious enhancement of their own image – a function which the opulent gallery catalogues with their engravings had traditionally had since the seventeenth century.14 Individual museums themselves employed photographers in order to publish either their own holdings or also other collections. Pioneers in this popularization of art were once again the English museums: from 1853 to 1858, the British Museum employed Roger Fenton as museum photographer.15 The South Kensington Museum, founded after the World Fair of 1851, established a Department of Photography in 1856 under the direction of Charles Thurston Thompson. In 1857, 52 photographs by Thurston Thompson were published in folio format documenting Raphael drawings from the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle,16 and in 1859, a publication followed with photographs, also by Thurston Thompson, of the Raphael tapestry cartoons kept at Hampton Court.17 When in 1857, inspired by long years of research and under the direct participation of Gustav Friedrich Waagen,18 the well-attended Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester assembled works of Old and Modern Masters from private English collections, the exhibit was also documented photographically.19 All these photographs were symptomatic for the increasingly ubiquitous photographic reproduction of artworks and

14 Gerhard Langemeyer, Reinhart Schleier (eds.), Bilder nach Bildern. Druckgrafik und die Vermittlung von Kunst, exh. cat., Münster: Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe, 1976. 15 See Christopher Date, Anthony Hamber, The origins of photography at the British Museum, 1839– 1860, in: History of Photography 14 (1990), no. 4, pp. 309–25; Hamber 1996 (as fn. 2), pp. 363–92; further: Mirjam Brusius, Experimente ohne Ausgang. Talbot, Fenton und die Fotografie am British Museum um 1850, in: Fotogeschichte 31 (2011), iss. 122, pp. 13–22. 16 Raffaelle’s Drawings in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, photographed by C. Thurston Thompson. (Publ. by Authority of the Royal-Consort Prince Albert at the South-Kensington Museum. 52 folios. London 1858. [18]60); Price: 60 Rhen. thaler (Weigel, 33 (1864), p. 29, no. 24277). See “I.D.P.” [= Johann David Passavant], in: Deutsches Kunstblatt 8 (1857), no. 22, p. 191. 17 Die Cartons von Raphael in Hampton Court von C. Thurston Thompson. Grosse Ausgabe. Breite 37 Z. 6 L. bis 46 Z. [ca. 95 to 117 cm], Höhe 25 Z. 6 L. bis 29 Z. [ca. 65 to 74 cm] à 2 Blätter altfranz. Mass. (Photographs from the South Kensington Museum in London), 7 folios, London 1859; Price: 54 Rhen. thaler (Weigel 31 (1861), p. 32, no. 23065 I). 18 See Giles Wakefield (with Florian Illies), Waagen in England, in: Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 37 (1995), pp. 47–59, here: p. 50–52. Between 1837 and 1839, Gustav Waagen published the 3-volume work Kunstwerke und Künstler in England und Paris, (publ. Nicolai in Berlin), and in 1854 once again 3 volumes, the Treasures of art in Great Britain…, with the supplementary volume Galleries and cabinets of art in Great Britain, being an account of more than 40 collections of paintings, drawings, sculptures, mss., etc. visited in 1854 and 1856, and now described for the first time, London: Murray, 1857. 19 Photographs of the Gems of the Art Treasures Exhibition Manchester 1857. Ancient Series with 100 Photographs, Modern Series with 100 Photographs (Weigel 29 (1859), pp. 28–33 no. 21850).



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 Dorothea Peters

so – as Prince Albert had clearly intended – the democratization of art.20 Other collections in other countries also put photography to an early use in documenting their holdings. In German-speaking regions, in 1854/1856, Robert Brulliot, the conservator of the Royal Print Collection in Munich, published the Copies photographiques, which comprised 50 rare engravings and woodcuts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as salt prints by Alois Löcherer.21 In the same year, there followed a Photographi­ sches Album nach Original-Handzeichnungen älterer Meister aus der Sammlung des Städel’schen Kunst-Instituts zu Frankfurt with 18 photographs by J. Schäfer,22 and in 1861 a Dresden Handzeichnungs-Werk from the Print Collection in Dresden with 100 photographs by Emil Römmler.23 The international networking of European art collections was mirrored by the parallel transnational migration of photographers. The photographic campaigns for the Raphael Collection not only meant that photographers from Italy photographed in England (Caldesi) and Austria (Alinari), from England in Paris (Bingham), and from France in Italy (Marville). Once the collections had opened up to photographers, the requests for permission to make reproductions increased from other photographers from other countries. The Berlin photographer Laura Bette, clearly sponsored by Gustav Waagen, who had given her works a positive review in 1857 in the Deutsches Kunstblatt,24 photographed cartoons, drawings, studies, and sketches by Raphael at Hampton Court and the Louvre, which she self-published in 1861 under the title Raphaelische Facsimilien and sold via the Wissenschaftliche Kunst Verein in Berlin.25 Charles Thurston Thompson, too, photographed in the Louvre: between 1859 and 1861, the South Kensington Museum, where he was the in-house photographer, pub-

20 See Dimond 1987 (as fn. 2), p. 46. 21 Copies photographiques des plus rares Gravures criblées, Estampes, Gravures en Bois etc. du XV. et XVI. Siècle qui se trouvent dans la Collection Royale d’Estampes à Munich. Avec la Permission de S. M. le Roi de Bavière publiées par Robert Brulliot, Conservateur de la Collection d’Estampes et de Dessins, exécutées dans l’Institut photographique de Mr. A. Löcherer, Munich 1854. Each of the ten sets of five photographs mounted on cardboard in folio format cost 6 Rhen. thaler. (Weigel, 26 (1855), p. 18–19, no. 20009 and ibid., 27 (1856), p. 17–18, no. 20710). See Helmut Heß, Copies photographiques. Alois Löcherer und die Anfänge der photographischen Kunstreproduktion, in: Ulrich Pohlmann (ed.), Alois Löcherer. Photograph 1845–1855, Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 1998, pp. 140–53, Reproductions of all the photographs, pp. 192–95. 22 Weigel 26 (1855), p. 23, no. 20022. 23 Weigel 31 (1861), pp. 23–27, no. 23063; ibid., 32 (1863), pp. 32–33, no. 23745. 24 Gustav Waagen, discussion of “thirty drawings at the Schinkel Museum,” in: Deutsches Kunstblatt 8 (1857), p. 460–61; further discussions, ibid. 9 (1858), p. 84. 25 36 photographs; see Frank Heidtmann, Wie das Photo ins Buch kam. Der Weg zum photographisch illustrierten Buch anhand einer bibliographischen Skizze der frühen deutschen Publikationen mit Original-Photographien, Photolithographien, Lichtdrucken, Heliogravuren und mit Illustrationen in weiteren photomechanischen Reproduktionsverfahren, Berlin: Berlin-Verlag Spitz, 1984, p. 371, no. 1692.





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lished 33 of his photographs of Raphael drawings, as well as 49 photographs of Limoge enamels, maiolica, ivory carvings, miniatures, etc and furthermore 29 reproductions of Crystal goblets, sardonyx vases, etc, all from the Louvre.26 At the same time, Charles Marville, who was employed as the Louvre’s photographer from 1855–1865, photographed the collections in Milan and Turin.27 As a result of the photographers’ mobility, in-house museum photographers became obsolete at the beginning of the 1860s. During this time, some photographers in Europe had specialized in art reproduction and, as commercially organized firms with well-trained “operators,” had begun to systematically document the holdings in European art collections. Adolphe Braun (1812–1877) from Dornach in Alsace and the Photographische Gesellschaft, founded in Berlin in 1862, both known for their technological innovation, became famous for their comprehensive photographic catalogues that even today form the core of numerous art historical picture archives.

Reproductions of Drawings through Adolphe Braun, Dornach/Alsace In 1864, Adolphe Braun28 began making reproductions of paintings and drawings at the museum in Basel,29 and in the same year he asked for permission to photograph paintings at the Louvre. His inquiry prompted the curator of the painting galleries, Frédéric Villot, to fundamentally think over the use of photography in the museum. His deliberations eventually led, in 1866, to a general prohibition of the photography of oil paintings in the Louvre, since photography was obviously not able to produce satisfying reproductions of the original paintings.30 Braun drew his own lesson from the Louvre’s refusal: for the time being, he concentrated on the reproduction of monochromatic works (drawings, graphics), in which the problem of an adequate trans-

26 See Weigel 31 (1861), p. 32–33, no. 23065. The series belonged to the „Photographien des SouthKensington Museums für Kunstschulen und öffentlichen Unterricht“ (Weigel 30 (1860), p. 61, no. 22867), and served as models for artists and artisans. 27 See note 13. Furthermore: Laure Boyer, La reproduction photographique et les musées au XIXe siècle, Lecture 5. Dec. 2007, http://laureboyerphoto.blogspot.de/2010/06/la-reproductionphotographique-et-les.html (accessed October 23, 2012). 28 See Maureen C. O’Brien, Mary Bergstein (eds.), Image and Enterprise. The Photographs of Adolphe Braun, London: Thames and Hudson, 2000; Christian Kempf, Adolphe Braun et la photographie, 1812– 1877, Illkirch: Editions Lucigraphie/Valblor, 1994. 29 157 drawings; see Gesammt-Verlags-Katalog des Deutschen Buchhandels (GKB). Ein Bild deutscher Geistesarbeit und Cultur, Münster: Russell, 1881, vol. 3, col. 839. 30 See Elizabeth Anne McCauley, Industrial Madness. Commercial Photography in Paris, 1848–1871, New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1994, pp. 284–86.



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lation of a colored original into the black and white of photography did not come up. Furthermore, in 1866, he paid 60,000 francs for the French patent for the carbon printing process, perfected by Joseph Wilson Swan, which produced light-resistant prints – a great improvement over the albumen photographs, which were very prone to fading.31 Shortly thereafter, Braun began – in an extensive campaign – to reproduce drawings from the Louvre which seem to have been excepted from the prohibition. The reproductions from Basel and Paris, variously colored carbon prints, were presented in the spring of 1867 at the World Fair in Paris, and enjoyed the acclaim of photographic colleagues and art historians alike.32 In summer 1867, Braun continued his photographic campaign in the Grand Ducal Collection in Weimar (152 drawings) and in the Albertina in Vienna (1,090 graphic works).33 As extensive as Braun’s photographic collections were, they still comprised only a fraction of the actual holdings. Thus, the choice of pictures for such publications took on decisive importance, and finally determined which study material would be easily accessible to art historians, who were positioned on the threshold between the original and the reproduction and were the main recipients of Braun’s photographic work. Indeed, from the very beginning, Adolphe Braun worked together with the renowned French art critic Paul de Saint-Victor,34 who recommended what should be photographed in which collections, established contacts, and reviewed the finished catalogues; in Germany, Carl Ruland and later Wilhelm Bode took on a similar role.35 Paul de Saint-Victor, for example, was involved in the photographic campaign in Italy that Adolphe Braun and his sons Henri and Gaston Braun undertook in 1868 and 1869 and that took them to museums in Florence,36 Venice,37 Milan,38 Rome, and the Vatican.39

31 See Photographische Mitteilungen 3 (1866), p. 239. 32 See the review by Wilhelm Lübke, in: Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst 2 (1867), pp. 199–203. 33 See GKB 1881 (as fn. 29), vol. 3, col. 839; Kunstchronik 2 (1867), p. 163. 34 See Naomi Rosenblum, Adolphe Braun, revisited, in: Image 32 (1989), pp. 1–16; Naomi Rosenblum, Adolphe Braun: Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, in: Kathleen Collins (ed.), Shadow and Substance. Essays on the History of Photography, New Mexico: University of New Mexico, 1990, pp. 191–96. 35 See Dorothea Peters, Fotografie als „technisches Hülfsmittel“ der Kunstwissenschaft. Wilhelm Bode und die Photographische Kunstanstalt Adolphe Braun, in: Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 2002 n.s. 44 (2003), pp. 167–206. 36 1,027 drawings, 188 paintings in the format 24 × 30 cm, 106 paintings in the format 40 × 50 cm, 88 Sculptures (40 × 50 cm) from the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, photographed in February and June 1868 (see ibid.; further: Kunstchronik 2 (1867), p. 163). 37 323 drawings from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice (see GKB 1881 (as fn. 29), vol. 3, col. 839 f.), photographed in June 1868. 38 324 drawings from the Biblioteca Ambrosiana and 175 drawings from the Accademia delle Belle Arti (Palazzo Brera) in Milan, photographed from June to August 1868 (see ibid.). 39 90 reproductions of frescoes and interiors from the Farnesina in Rome; 46 reproductions of paintings and sculptures from churches in Rome; Raphael’s Loggias (107 reproductions), Raphael’s Stanze (305 Blatt), the Sistine Chapel (6 large-format reproductions, 125 reproductions 40 × 50 cm,





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In 1870, “a hundred men and boys” worked for Braun, and 2,500 carbon prints were produced daily.40 Just in the three years from 1867 to 1869, Braun published around 4,500 art works, mainly drawings, but also sculptures and paintings from collections in France, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, which were sold all over the world by art and photography dealers – an unparalleled treasure for art history. At the end of the 1870s, Braun concentrated increasingly on reproducing paintings, and, in strictly secret experiments, attempted to find a solution to the problems involved in the process, of which the most serious issue was still the deficient light-sensitivity of the photographic chemicals, resulting in false tonal values for certain colors.

Reproduction of Paintings by the Photographische Gesellschaft, Berlin In this endeavor, Braun was competing with the Photographische Gesellschaft, which had been founded in 1862 by the brothers Albert, Friedrich, and Emil Werckmeister.41 The Werckmeister brothers were not trained photographers. In contrast to the pioneers in the field, they had turned to the photographic reproduction of art for business reasons. The city of Berlin offered an advantageous situation for such a venture: in contrast to England or France, the Prussian state did not subsidize any photographic campaigns, but the bourgeois directors of the Prussian museums, educated in art history, greeted the photographic reproduction of works of art positively. Due especially to Gustav Waagen’s unrelenting demands, the Berlin Royal Collections opened their doors to photographers with a noteworthy lack of bureaucracy. Until the middle of the 1860s, the Photographische Gesellschaft – like Braun – had concentrated on the reproduction of monochromatic works that did not necessitate any retouching. But when, in around 1865, the retouching of the negative became common practice, making the time-consuming reworking of every single print unnecessary, and as the experiments with color filters began to be successful, promising an adequate reproduction of colors, the Photographische Gesellschaft started producing photographic reproductions of Old Master oil paintings. In 1867, the first photographs for a comprehensive catalogue of the paintings of the Berliner Gemäldegalerie were

97 reproductions 24 × 30 cm), the Pauline Chapel (15 reproductions) and the Vatican Museum (39  reproductions of paintings, 227 reproductions of sculptures) from the Vatican palace in Rome, photographed 1869 (see GKB 1881 (as fn. 29), vol. 3, col. 839 f.). 40 Photographisches Archiv 11 (1870), p. 221. 41 See Dorothea Peters, Vom Visitkarten-Album zum fotografischen „Galeriewerk“: Die Kunstreproduktionen der Berliner Photographischen Gesellschaft, in: Ulrich Hägele, Irene Ziehe (eds.), Fotografien vom Alltag – Fotografieren als Alltag, conference proceedings, Münster: Lit, 2004, pp. 167–82.



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produced.42 The “excellence of these photographs of the originals”43 was the occasion for the National Gallery in London to issue a photography permit, which Gustav Waagen obtained for the Photographische Gesellschaft when the gallery director William Boxall made a visit to Berlin in September 1867.44 At the end of 1867, the first 50 photographs of paintings from the London National Gallery were finished,45 and were celebrated as being “some of the greatest triumphs of the art”.46 Like Adolphe Braun’s firm, the Photographische Gesellschaft now started doing international business and initially set up branches in Paris and London, later also in Vienna and New York. But reproduction permits were not granted with such ease everywhere else as they were in Berlin or London. After the intervention of the Foreign Ministry and lengthy negotiations on the part of the Prussian envoy in Italy, Count Guido von Usedom, the Photographische Gesellschaft “operators” were finally able to travel to Florence in March 1868, where for the whole summer they photographed in the Uffizi and the Palazzo Pitti – sometimes under the most difficult conditions.47 ”Many of the pictures,” as stated in the Kunstchronik, “have been defaced by retouching or are otherwise in a state of disrepair, others had to be photographed on the wall under poor light conditions, the Madonna della Sedia even had to be photographed behind glass that was impossible to clean!”48 In 1869, based on their previous achievements, the Photographische Gesellschaft obtained permission, in spite of the general photography prohibition of 1866, to take pictures of paintings in the Louvre in Paris.49 But the conditions were obviously restrictive: the photographers’ request to move the paintings into a studio with natural light for better lighting conditions or else onto the roof of the Louvre was denied.50

42 Gemälde-Galerie des Königlichen Museums zu Berlin. In Photographien direct nach den OriginalGemälden alter Meister (104 reproductions; see GKB 1881 (as fn. 29), vol. 2,1, cols. 600–602). See the review by Waagen in: Kunstchronik 3 (1868), p. 78. 43 Announcement in: Kunstchronik 3 (1868), p. 18. 44 Hamber 1996 (as fn. 2), p. 351: “[…] the Triptych of Rogier van der Weyden which I think will prove that his work will not disgrace the NG.” 45 Die National-Galerie zu London (see GKB 1881 (as fn. 29), vol 2,1, cols. 613–15). The subscription price of the complete catalogue with 91 photographs in imperial format was 700 marks – equivalent to almost the yearly salary of a laborer. 46 F. Roubiliac Conder, Heliography, in: The Art-Journal 1870, pp. 325–26, here: p. 325. 47 See Geheimes Staatsarchiv [SMPK/GStA], III. HA, MdA, Abt. III, no. 18430, fol. 197/198, Letter from Count Usedom to the Prussian Foreign Ministry, 17 Jan 1868; fol. 202, dito, 5 March 1868. 48 Kunstchronik 4 (1869), p. 33. See Königliche Gemälde-Galerie der Uffizien in Florenz (102 reproductions in folio format; see GKB 1881 (as fn. 29), vol. 2,1, cols. 609–611); Königliche GemäldeGalerie Pitti in Florenz (124 reproductions; see ibid., cols. 611–13). 49 See McCauley 1994 (as fn. 30), p. 287. Adolphe Braun photographed in 1871/72 in the sculpture gallery of the Louvre, and also in 1873/74 in the painting gallery. 50 See ibid., p. 286. Gemälde-Galerie des Louvre in Paris, 117 photographs, divided into „Italienische Schule“, „Spanische Schule“, as well as „Deutsche, vlämische und holländische Schulen“ (see GKB 1881 (as fn. 29), vol. 2,1, cols. 615–17).





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In the 1870s, presumably because of the elaborate apparatuses needed for such campaigns, the Photographische Gesellschaft concentrated on German collections, and, perhaps even at this time, worked together with the Berlin photo-chemist Hermann Wilhelm Vogel to steadily improve the picture quality. After the photography of paintings in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich was turned down on grounds of the general prohibition at this museum,51 in spite of the Prussian foreign minister’s appeal to the Royal Bavarian Government, the Photographische Gesellschaft – after lengthy correspondence on the highest level – finally received permission, as the very first photographers to be allowed this, to photograph the works of art in the Dresden Gemäldegalerie.52 Here, under the new gallery director Karl Woermann, the Photographische Gesellschaft was allowed to transport the paintings into a studio set up just for this purpose, in which the large-format glass negatives were prepared immediately before taking the photograph and could then also be developed immediately thereafter. In June 1873, the Dresden catalogue was complete: 300 reproductions in imperial format with a mat size of 66 × 90 cm for the price of 12 marks apiece, and 60 reproductions in extra format with mat size 120 × 90 for the price of 45 marks.53 In this way, even the Sistine Madonna could be reproduced at one-third of its original size, and some of the paintings by Correggio, Titian, Veronese, Rubens, van Dyck, Teniers, or Rembrandt could even be reproduced in their original size. After the success of the Dresden catalogue, the Photographische Gesellschaft was able to establish itself on the Museumsinsel (Museum Island) in Berlin and set up a permanent studio there. But even before this, it began work on the “officially authorized photographic catalogue” of the Berlin National Gallery54 and between 1874 and 1878 it again photographed the Old Master paintings in the Berlin Gemäldegalerie with the improved technology (fig. 6). Differently than for the first catalogue of 1868, the selection of the paintings to be reproduced was made by the scholars of the Gemäldegalerie. For six weeks, Wilhelm Bode worked on an 8-page list of the 209 pictures in the Gemäldegalerie and the 113 pictures in the newly acquired Suermondt collection.55 The Photographische

51 Geheimes Staatsarchiv [SMPK/GStA], III. HA, MdA, Dept. III, no. 18430, fol. 222, Letter of the Prussian envoy in Bavaria, G. Werther, to the Prussian Foreign Ministry, 10 Sept. 1868. 52 See, for example, the letter of the director of the Dresden Gemäldegalerie, Albert von Zahn, to the general secretary of museums at the Prussian Ministry of Culture, Privy Councilor Dielitz, 30 June 1871 (Zentralarchiv der Berliner Museen [SMPK/ZA], GG 2, inv. no. 585/71). 53 Königliche Gemälde-Galerie zu Dresden (see GKB 1881 (as fn. 29), vol. 2,1, cols. 602–609). See the review by Wilhelm Lübke, in: Kunstchronik 9 (1873), cols. 81–86. 54 Die Königliche Berliner National-Galerie with 70 photographs, which were sold in folio format as individual reproductions to be freely selected (see GKB 1881 (as fn. 29), vol. 2,1, cols. 594). 55 Zentralarchiv der Berliner Museen [SMPK/ZA], GG 3, fol. 121, ad inv. no. 925/76, Liste der von der Photographischen Gesellschaft aufzunehmenden Bilder der Königl. Gemälde-Galerie, 29 June 1876. – Gemälde-Galerie des königlichen Museums zu Berlin (GKB, Münster: Russell, 1894, vol.16, 1,3, cols. 1087–1093).



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Fig. 6: Rogier van der Weyden, Miraflores Altarpiece. Berlin, Gemäldegalerie. Albumen print, Photographische Gesellschaft, 1867

Gesellschaft’s systematic photography of originals from museum holdings, which took place simultaneously with increasing international competition,56 endowed painting reproductions with a hitherto unknown authenticity. Around 1880, a few years after the publication of the Berlin catalogue by the Photographische Gesell­ schaft, Adolphe Braun, in the middle of his work on a catalogue for the Hermitage

56 See Dorothea Peters, „... Unternehmungen internationalen Charakters ...“. Der Kampf um die fotografischen „Galeriewerke“ der Berliner Gemäldegalerie im 19. Jahrhundert, in: Rundbrief Fotografie, n.s. 10 (2003), iss. 39, pp. 24–27 and iss. 40, pp. 28–31.





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in St. Petersburg, achieved a breakthrough in the development of “orthochromatic” photography, which once again decisively improved the reproduction of color values and thus the quality of the photographic reproductions in general.57 Since the 1850s, the transnational photographic campaigns in European collections, which were only possible in close cooperation between photographers and museum personnel, laid extremely important groundwork for the newly establishing field of art history, and decisively influenced its methods as well. The photographs not only reflected the art historical canon – they also helped to form it. Through their boundless accessibility, they ultimately transformed art connoisseurship into photographic connoisseurship.58 Translated by Catherine Framm

57  Wilhelm Bode wrote the text to Braun’s catalogue of the Hermitage. See Peters 2003 (as fn. 35), pp. 177–80. 58  See Hubert Locher, Creative Visions. Photograph, the Art Historical Canon, and the Object of Art History, in: Acta of the CIHA 2012 in Nuremberg (will be published 2013).



Cross-border Transfers of Architectural Models and Display Principles

Stefanie Heraeus

Top Lighting from Paris in 1750 The Picture Gallery in Kassel and Its Significance for the Emergence of the Modern Museum of Art In the debates on the architectural design of art galleries in the eighteenth century, a major topic of discussion concerned the best way of lighting the works displayed inside. This is an issue that has rarely received systematic attention up till now.1 This question of optimum lighting began to be raised in an era in which light as a metaphor played a central role in the contemporary Enlightenment discourse. The discussions on lighting were also connected, moreover, with the discussion of perception. The creation, during these years, of institutional settings within which art could be perceived under better conditions, coincided with the publication of the first important theoretical statements on aesthetics.2 During the eighteenth century, a number of princes reorganized their collections of art objects and curiosities, removing the paintings and displaying them separately in specially re-designed wings of their palaces or in purpose-built galleries. The most important of these new German galleries were created around 1750 in Dresden, Kassel and Potsdam. Whereas the new galleries in Dresden and Potsdam largely adhered to tradition as far as their architecture was concerned, the forward-looking construction implemented in Kassel represented a whole new departure. After much research and discussion, the patron of the Kassel Picture Gallery opted for a way of lighting and displaying the paintings that was astonishingly modern for its day. He thereby took advice and inspiration from art collectors and examples of gallery architecture in other parts of Europe, and most especially Paris. In this regard, the construction of the Kassel Picture Gallery, and the discussions over the optimum lighting and display of its paintings, offer a particularly good insight into the way in which transnational factors in the history of museums were already at play in the mid- eighteenth century. The example of Kassel shows that the institutional transition from a princely collection to a modern museum of art – a tran-

1 The few publications to address this subject include: Georges Teyssot, The Simple Day and the Light of the Sun. Lights and Shadows in the Museum, trans. by Jessica Levine, in: Assemblage 12 (Aug. 1990), pp. 58–83; Michael Compton, The Architecture of Daylight, in: Palaces of Art. Art Galleries in Britain 1790–1990, exh. cat., London and Edinburgh: Dulwich Picture Gallery, 1991/92, pp. 37–40; and Adrian von Buttlar, Europäische Wurzeln und deutsche Inkunabeln der Museumsarchitektur, in: Bénédicte Savoy (ed.), Tempel der Kunst. Die Entstehung des öffentlichen Museums in Deutschland 1701–1815, Mainz: von Zabern, 2006, pp. 41–42. See also: Christopher Rowell, Display of Art, I. Lighting, in: The Dictionary of Art, vol. 9, London: Macmillan, 1996, pp. 11–12 and p. 32. 2 See James J. Sheehan, Museums in the German Art World. From the End of the Old Regime to the Rise of Modernism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 4–9.

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sition for which the years 1750 to 1770 are considered increasingly important – was hallmarked right from the start by a transnational exchange. The patron in Kassel namely looked in great detail at the galleries and palaces of other courts and ruling houses, his interest extending not just to the type of building and its lighting but equally to the interior decoration of the galleries and the arrangement of the paintings on display. The Kassel Picture Gallery in question only existed for fifty years: from 1753 to 1807. Its founder, Landgrave Wilhelm VIII of Hesse-Kassel, had originally planned to create a gallery comprising three wings, of which the first was completed in 1753. The Seven Years’ War, which broke out in 1756, the death of the Landgrave in February 1760, and probably, too, a lack of funds, meant that the two other wings were never built. The gallery ensemble remained a fragment. In 1807 the French arrived in Kassel and shipped all the important paintings off to Paris, after which the new king, Jérôme Bonaparte, had the gallery building – now left without a function – converted for the use of his household. Despite its brevity, however, the history of the first Kassel Picture Gallery is particularly revealing. This history unfolded under two Landgraves with extremely different interests: Wilhelm VIII (1682–1760) and his son Friedrich II (1720–1785). Even if we shall be concentrating here upon Wilhelm VIII it should be noted that the institutional change from a princely gallery to a public institution with an emphasis on educational utility, only took place under Friedrich II. When the latter opened the Picture Gallery to the public in 1775, the building was no longer part of the family’s palatial residential complex but was accessed via the newly founded Academy of Painting and Sculpture.3

Prince Wilhelm: Exceptional Art Connoisseur and Ambitious Gallery Builder As the discussions concerning the design of the new gallery building were led by Prince Wilhelm himself (he only succeeded to the title of Landgrave Wilhelm VIII in 1751) and reflected his own high level of expertise, it is useful at this point to take a brief look at his person. It was Wilhelm who expanded the family’s existing collection of paintings with acquisitions of high-quality works and who commissioned the construction of a new gallery in which to display them. Indeed, the scale and quality of his acquisitions exceeded by far those of his predecessors.4 Wilhelm VIII was no doubt motivated by all the usual ambitions associated with princely patronage of the

3 See Patrick Golenia, Die Gemäldegalerie in Kassel, in: Savoy 2006 (as fn. 1), pp. 191–92. 4 See Bernhard Schnackenburg, Landgraf Wilhelm VIII. von Hessen-Kassel. Gründer der Kasseler





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arts, namely the desire to reinforce the legitimacy of his claim to power and to underline his distinguished position within society. What is much more interesting about him from a sociological point of view, however, is the fact that, while still a young man and decades before he became landgrave, he took up the nobility’s general custom of collecting art and developed it into an exceptional knowledge of the subject and a lifelong interest. This is witnessed not least by his extensive correspondence, which shows him discussing questions of attribution, potential acquisitions and the painterly quality of works with agents and connoisseurs over many decades. He was thereby not only the one seeking advice but also the one whose expertise was being solicited. His exchange of letters with Baron Heinrich Jakob von Häckel in Frankfurt is particularly extensive.5 The first documentary evidence of Wilhelm’s activities as a collector dates from 1716. At this point everything still seemed to be pointing towards a military career: in 1713 he became governor of Breda, in 1723 governor of the fortification of Maastricht, and in 1727 general of the Dutch cavalry. It was as a high-ranking member of the military in the service of the United Provinces (Holland) that Wilhelm, who also moved in artist and dealer circles, began systematically buying works of art. His intention of building up a comprehensive collection of paintings became clear at the latest in 1722, when his acquisitions in Rotterdam included not only works by Netherlandish artists but also those by masters of the Italian and French Baroque. In 1730 Wilhelm’s situation changed insofar as he took over the governorship of the landgraviate of HesseKassel on behalf of his brother, who had become King of Sweden. Not until 17 years later would Wilhelm finally lay down his military responsibilities. His official retirement from Dutch military service marked the start of the busiest phase in his activities as a patron of art and architecture, one that reached its peak between 1748 and 1752. If Wilhelm’s early collecting can be seen as a perfected form of an activity typical of his class, this later period of intensive acquisition and construction can be seen as a facet of landgravian policy. In 1749 Wilhelm had an inventory of his paintings drawn up, and work on the construction of the gallery in Kassel’s Oberneustadt began that same year. Governor Wilhelm’s ambitions for his new gallery are clearly reflected in his choice of architect, François de Cuvilliés, court architect to the Elector of Bavaria. Cuvilliés’ first set of plans for Kassel have come down to us in the form of traced copies made by his pupil Carl Albrecht von Lespilliez;6 they show the city palace with living areas and three gallery wings running in parallel, of which only one

Gemäldegalerie, in: Heide Wunder, Christina Vanja, Karl-Herman Wegner (eds.), Kassel im 18. Jahrhundert. Residenz und Stadt, Kassel: Euregio, 2000, pp. 75–85. 5 Cf. Staatsarchiv Marburg, Bestand 4a, correspondence between Wilhelm VIII and Baron von Häckel. 6 See Bernhard Schnackenburg, Der Kasseler Gemäldegaleriebau des 18. Jahrhunderts und neuentdeckte Pläne dazu von François de Cuvilliés, in: Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst 49 (1998), pp. 163–84 and Golenia 2006 (as fn. 3), pp. 175–97. An extensive bibliography on the history



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would be built. Cuvilliés’ commission was to create an architectural ensemble that married existing buildings, including Wilhelm’s palace, with new ones. It is immediately obvious that the Bavarian court architect had proposed a conventional solution for the Kassel gallery: windows along one of the long walls, pictures along the other.7 The design was similar in type to the Picture Gallery begun shortly afterwards, in 1755, for Frederick the Great in the grounds of Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam. Wilhelm VIII maintained close links with the Prussian king. The Sanssouci gallery type is also found in the Hofgarten Gallery in Munich, likewise designed by Cuviellés and built between 1778 and 1783.

Marquis de Voyer d’Argenson: Renouncing the Conventional Gallery Type In 1750, when construction was already well advanced, the story of the Kassel gallery took the sudden turn that is of such interest for the history of art museums in general: the cornice had only just been put in place when Wilhelm called an abrupt halt to the building works. The structure was given a temporary roof. Wilhelm’s sudden decision was triggered – as emerges from the correspondence of his court architect Charles du Ry – by the visit of Marquis Marc-René de Voyer d’Argenson (1722–1782), a distinguished collector of art from Paris, who came to Kassel in early July 1750. The Marquis, who was himself the owner of an important collection of works by Flemish masters, cast an expert – and evidently appreciative – eye over the Landgrave’s collection of paintings (in a letter to Baron Häckel, Wilhelm would later describe de Voyer d’Argenson as a “connoisseur the like of whom I have rarely seen”8). He also took an appraising look at the unfinished gallery and suggested that Wilhelm should consult the French architect Jacques Hardouin-Mansart de Sagonne, grandson of the famous Jules Hardouin-Mansart, premier architecte du roi under Louis XIV.

of the Gemäldegalerie can be found in Bernhard Schnackenburg (ed.), Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister. Gesamtkatalog, vol. 1, Mainz: von Zabern, 1996, p. 21. 7 See Frank Büttner, Zur Frage der Entstehung der Galerie, in: architectura, Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Architektur 2 (1972), pp. 75–76. 8 Wilhelm VIII wrote to Häckel regarding the Marquis: “I am very busy with same going through my paintings and find him to be an expert the like of whom I have rarely seen. I can also tell you that he is very satisfied with my collection and finds it magnificent.” (“Ich bin mit selbigem sehr beschäftigt, meine Schildereyen durchzugehen und finde an demselben einen solchen Kenner, desgleichen ich noch nicht leicht gesehen, kann Ihm auch sagen, daß er sehr wohl von meiner Collection zufrieden ist und solche ganz artig findet”), Staatsarchiv Marburg (as fn. 5), 1750, Pkt. 83, sheet 293.





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The literature on the Kassel Picture Gallery pays scant attention to the person of the Marquis de Voyer d’Argenson.9 The Marquis came from the noble de Voyer de Paulmy d’Argenson family, whose members had held high offices under the kings of France for several generations (his father was Secretary of State for War under Louis XV and his uncle Minister of Foreign Affairs). Although the Marquis, too, embarked on a military career, his passion for art and architecture led him, in 1745, to seek – without success – the post of Director of the Royal Buildings, Academies and Manufactories. At the time of his Kassel visit, he was himself employing the services of Hardouin-Mansart de Sagonne, whom he had engaged to build his new palace, the Château d’Asnières, outside Paris.10 The Marquis de Voyer d’Argenson contacted the architect even before his journey back to Paris was over. On 10 July 1750 he wrote to Kassel from Metz to say that he had already commissioned Hardouin-Mansart de Sagonne to draw up new plans. The lively correspondence between Wilhelm and the Marquis comprises eleven letters, exchanged between July 1750 and October 1751.11 These document the Frenchman’s extensive involvement in the redesign of the Kassel gallery and also prove, moreover, that he made a number of acquisitions on Wilhelm’s behalf. From the point of view of the Picture Gallery, the most illuminating letter is that of 29 August 1750, which was accompanied by Hardouin-Mansart’s new plan. Although the plan itself has not survived, the Marquis wrote in his letter that the Parisian architect had criticized the proportions of the Kassel gallery as conceived by Cuvilliés, considering that it was too long for its narrow width. Hardouin-Mansart de Sagonne therefore proposed to break up its length by means of what he termed a “Salon en Saillié” – a salon with a ceiling carried on squinch arches that would project above the height of those around it. This room was to be something similar to the Duke of Orleans’ famous corner salon in the Palais Royal, which housed “the most beautiful works by Paul Veronese and Titian.”12

9 He is mentioned in more detail by Wolf von Both and Hans Vogel, Landgraf Wilhelm VIII. von HessenKassel. Ein Fürst der Rokokozeit, Marburg: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1964, pp. 136 and 182; and also by Tristan Weddigen, The Picture Galleries of Dresden, Düsseldorf, and Kassel. Princely Collections in Eighteenth-Century Germany, in: Carole Paul (ed.), The First Modern Museums of Art. The Birth of an Institution in 18th and Early 19th Century Europe, Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2012, p. 159. But the authors identify him incorrectly as Antoine René, Marquis de Paulmy d’Argenson – a different member of the family. 10 For biographical information on the Marquis cf. Anne Leclair, Les plafonds peints de l’hôtel d’Argenson. Commande d’un amateur parisien (1767–1773), Gazette des Beaux-Arts 140 (2002) pp. 275–77. 11 Staatsarchiv Marburg, Bestand 4a, no. 79/13. 12 “Sur cequil a trouvé la galerie trop longue pour la largeur il propose de la couper par uns Salon en Saillié qui s’élève par le moyen d’une trompe, c’est a peu près la même idée que celle du Salon du Palais Royal, où sont tout les plus beaux tableaux de Paul Veronese et du Titien.”, Staatsarchiv Marburg (as fn. 11), letter of 29.8.1750, p. 1.



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Palais Royal: A French Model for Top Lighting The sole surviving interior view of the Palais Royal is provided by a wash drawing (fig. 7) executed by an architecture student from Kassel based in Paris, Simon Louis du Ry, at the request of his father and sent back to the court in Kassel.13 It shows a crosssectional view of the Gallery of Aeneas – so named after its Aeneas cycle of paintings by Antoine Coypels – and its adjoining corner salon, lit by an upper clerestory. Du Ry has also reproduced the corner salon’s interior décor and the arrangement of the paintings on the wall. Two other views of the corner salon are also documented on the same sheet, one showing its entrance from the Gallery of Aeneas, and the other the opposite wall with the fireplace and mirror above. Around the middle of the eighteenth century, the Orleans Collection housed in the Palais Royal was considered the most important collection of paintings in Paris alongside that of the king. It owed its reputation both to the outstanding quality of the works it contained and to the modern manner in which it was displayed, and was regularly taken as a benchmark.14 Around 1720, Duke Philippe II of Orleans and his architect Gilles Marie Oppenord had overseen the construction of the Galerie à la Lanterne. This room received its light – as can be seen in the drawing by du Ry and in two designs by Oppenord – from vertical windows in the storey above.15 It was precisely this system of top lighting that the Marquis de Voyer d’Argenson suggested to the Landgrave for his Kassel gallery. Since no one in Kassel was familiar with the Galerie à la Lanterne in the Palais Royal or with its construction, on 10 September Wilhelm’s court architect, Charles du Ry, wrote to his son in Paris. Funded by a grant from the Landgrave, Simon Louis du Ry was at that time studying at the school of architecture run by Jacques-François Blondel. Charles told him about the situation in Kassel and asked him for information: “[Building] has advanced to the height of the main cornice, but has been suspended because the Marquis de Voyer d’Argenson, who was here, has advised the Prince to design the gallery like that of the Duke of Orleans, which receives its light

13 Staatsarchiv Marburg, Karten P II, no. 9546/I. The literature on the Palais Royal, including Alexandre Gady, Les Hôtels particuliers de Paris du Moyen Age à la Belle Epoque, Paris: Parigramme, 2011, reproduces no interior views of the corner salon. The exhibition catalogue Le Palais Royal (Musée Carnavalet, Paris: Edition Paris-Musées 2, 1988, p. 71, no. 43 and p. 73) includes only the two design drawings by Gilles Marie Oppenord, executed around 1720. 14 See Virginie Spenlé, Die Dresdner Gemäldegalerie und Frankreich. Der “bon gout” im Sachsen des 18. Jahrhunderts, Beucha: Sax-Verlag, 2008, pp. 29–30, pp. 139–40 and pp. 212–13. 15 Cf. Jean-François Bédard, Political Renewal and Architectural Revival During the French Regency. Oppenord’s Palais-Royal, in: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 68, 1 (March 2009), pp. 31–41; see also: Katharina Krause, “Cabinet” oder ”Galerie”. Die Räume der Sammlung im Paris des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, in: Christina Strunck, Elisabeth Kieven (eds.), Europäische Galeriebauten. Galleries in a Comparative European Perspective (1400–1800), Munich: Hirmer, 2010, pp. 319–22.





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Fig. 7: Simon Louis du Ry, Gallery of Aeneas and corner salon in the Palais Royal, 1751

from the roof. [...] Even though the Marquis has promised to send the prince a design drawing, if you are acquainted with the gallery and its construction, I should not be displeased if you would tell me about it at your earliest opportunity.”16 In reply, Simon Louis du Ry sent his father the wash drawing accompanied by a letter in which he specifically pointed out that only the corner salon received its light from overhead. He ended his letter with the observation: “The experience has taught me that such top-lit rooms are excellently suited for looking at pictures in comfort.”17 Du Ry’s conclusion was probably substantially influenced by the views of his teacher, Jacques-François Blondel, one of the leading Paris architects of the period. In 1752 Blondel would expressly recommend the use of top lighting for the presentation of

16 “Man ist zur Höhe des Hauptgesimses vorgerückt, hat aber eingehalten, weil der Herr Marquis de Voyer d’Argenson, der hier war, dem Prinzen geraten hat, die Galerie wie die des Herzogs von Orleans einzurichten, die ihr Licht vom Dachstuhl empfängt. […] Der Herr Marquis hat zwar versprochen, dem Prinzen ein Modell zu schicken, solltest Du aber die Galerie und deren Konstruktion kennen, so würde ich nicht böse sein, wenn du mir bei der ersten Gelegenheit davon Mitteilung machen wolltest.” Otto Gerland, Paul, Charles und Simon Louis du Ry. Eine Künstlerfamilie der Barockzeit, Stuttgart: P. Neff, 1895, pp. 27–28. 17 “Die Erfahrung hat mich gelehrt, daß solche von oben erleuchtete Säle ganz vortrefflich für eine bequeme Betrachtung der Bilder geeignet sind.” Ibid., pp. 28–29.



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art in the first volume of his definitive book on French architecture.18 In 1747 the art critic Etienne La Font de Saint-Yenne had also – with express reference to the Palais Royal – declared top lighting to be the most suitable sort of lighting when he called for the royal collection of paintings to be made accessible to artists and the public.19

Top Lighting: Prominent Historical Examples When considering the buildings that may have served as points of reference for Landgrave Wilhelm VIII, we should bear in mind that overhead lighting at this early stage was not light that fell directly through the roof, but light that passed through mezzanine windows situated immediately below the ceiling or at the base of the cupola. A variety of lighting solutions had already been employed for famous art collections even before 1750, with perhaps the best-known example being the Tribuna in the Uffizi in Florence. Even if the system of lighting employed in the octagonal Tribuna was taken from ecclesiastical architecture and thus differed from that of the Galerie à la Lanterne in the Palais Royal, it nevertheless deserves mention as one of the earliest instances of a picture gallery using top lighting.20 The palatial residence of Peter Paul Rubens in Antwerp also featured two rooms lit from above, one of them a rotunda housing the Flemish master’s most important works. Bearing in mind that Wilhelm spent many years in the United Provinces as governor of Breda and Maastricht, it seems likely that the Landgrave – who had a particular preference for Rubens and purchased more than ten paintings by him – could have been familiar with the artist’s house. Buildings such as the Mauritshuis in The Hague, a palace built in the 17th century for Count Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen, may also have played a role in modelling less conventional forms of lighting.21 The details of the conception and construction of the Kassel Picture Gallery are well known. Although the Landgrave did not in the end implement the plans sent from Paris, it is clear that his discussions with the Marquis de Voyer d’Argenson prompted him to look around for alternative architectural solutions. Rather than a long gallery with one wall given over to windows, Wilhelm evidently now wished to

18 Jacques-François Blondel, Architecture française, 4 vols. (1752–1756), vol. 1, Paris, pp. 36–38. 19 Etienne La Font de Saint-Yenne, Réflexions sur quelques causes de l’état present de la peinture en France, in: id., Oeuvre critique, Paris: Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, 2001, p. 57. 20 The first publication on the Tribuna was Galerie de Florence et du Palais Pitti. Dessinee par M. Wicar et gravee sous la direction de Lacombe et Masquelier, avec les explications par Mougez l’aine, 50 livraisons in 4 vols., containing 200 plates, 1st edition, Paris, 1789. 21 See J. J. Terwen, The Buildings of Johan Maurits van Nassau, in: E. van den Boogaart (ed.), Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen 1604–1679. A Humanist Prince in Europe and Brazil, The Hague: Johan Maurits van Nassau Stichting, 1979, p. 69, fig. 26 and p. 79. 



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create an interior that could be hung with pictures on all four walls and whose lighting arrived from above. The inventory of Wilhelm’s estate drawn up after his death shows that he owned two plans of the picture gallery at Salzdahlum palace, near Braunschweig.22 This large gallery evidently provided Wilhelm with an important model for his own building in Kassel. The Salzdahlum summer palace was built for Duke Anton Ulrich of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, who in 1701 added a picture gallery as a pendant to the orangery. This “Great Gallery” contained a single, high-ceilinged interior. Light was admitted through the almost square windows situated above the blind windows on the lower level.23 Having called a halt to work on his own gallery, Wilhelm opted for a comparable solution. In the final version of his Kassel Picture Gallery, lighting was provided by a clerestory directly below the roofline and consisting of vertical windows that lay even higher than those at Salzdahlum. In short: the visit of the Marquis de Voyer d’Argenson and the discussions that ensued, the opinions and proposals obtained from Paris, the stoppage of building work in Kassel and the two plans of Salzdahlum – all of these show that the Landgrave completely rethought his Picture Gallery with regards to hanging and lighting. He embraced a concept that would ultimately become generally established but which in his own day had few precedents.24 The only surviving view of the interior of this new Kassel gallery is a wash drawing executed by Benjamin Zix in January 1807, which shows the confiscation of the paintings in progress.25 The two kneeling figures in the left-hand foreground are those of the general director of the Louvre (at that time called the Musée Napoléon), Dominique-Vivant Denon, and Benjamin Zix himself. The superintendent of the Kassel gallery, Johann Heinrich Tischbein the Younger, is the person in the tricorn. It is interesting to note the architecture of the room, which measured 40 metres long, 7 metres wide and 11 metres high. The windows are situated one storey above the high walls and directly beneath the ceiling, where they form a continuous band of light. This ensured that the maximum amount of natural light fell into the interior from above and – depending on the time of day – illuminated one of the two long walls.

22 See Schnackenburg 1998 (as fn. 6), p. 181. 23 See David Blankenstein, Die Gemäldegalerie in Salzdahlum bei Braunschweig, in: Savoy 2006 (as fn. 1), pp. 69–70. 24 One of the first truly modern museums with its main galleries lit from overhead was the Pinakothek (today: Alte Pinakothek) in Munich, designed by Leo von Klenze and built between 1825 and 1836. Klenze had previously been active in Kassel from 1808 to 1813 as court architect to King Jérôme Bonaparte of Westphalia, and must have been familiar with the Picture Gallery. There are no references to this in the literature, however; cf. Adrian Buttlar, Leo von Klenze. Leben – Werk – Vision, Munich: Beck, 1999, pp. 47–66. 25 Cf. König Lustik!? Jérôme Bonaparte und der Modellstaat Königreich Westphalen, exh. cat., Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel, Museum Fridericianum, Munich: Hirmer, 2008, p. 237, fig. 79.



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Contemporary Reactions The unusual lighting of the Kassel Picture Gallery was regularly emphasized by contemporary visitors. The earliest commentary on the Picture Gallery dates from the year in which the gallery was completed. It takes the form of an ode signed with the monogramm “G.,” plausibly identified with Johann Christoph Gottsched, and appeared in the Casselische Policey- and Commercien Zeitung. The author makes explicit reference to the way in which “the refracted light of the sun falls onto the paintings solely from above.”26 In the official description of the capital of the landgraviate by the Kassel councillor and librarian Christoph Schmincke, published in 1767, the lighting is celebrated as the “latest invention”: “The magnificent Painting Gallery […] is of the latest invention. The windows are positioned at the top, near the ceiling, so that the light falls better into the room and the paintings appear more in their own light and shadow.”27 Visitors, too, remarked upon the mild, tempered quality of the light arriving from above through mezzanine windows.28 Ludwig Sigismund Ruhl, the later director of the Picture Gallery and the Kassel Academy, who had seen the original gallery in his youth, prior to its conversion in 1807, commented: “How soothing to the eye was the light flowing down from above onto the gleaming parquet floor.”29 The painters Johann Friedrich Overbeck and Carl Friedrich von Rumohr (who, alongside Winckelmann, is considered the founder of art history as a scholarly discipline) are alleged to have declared, at the start of the nineteenth century, that they had never seen “more excellent lighting.” According to Academy professor Friedrich Müller in his History of the Kassel Gallery, published in 1871: “We have heard Rumohr and Overbeck say that they never saw a more excellent lighting. It bathed the visitor entering the room in a truly solemn atmosphere and all the pictures were thereby shown to their best advantage. The important question of lighting was resolved more

26 “wenn das gebrochene Licht der Sonnen bloss von oben auf die Gemälde fällt”; see Schnackenburg 1998 (as fn. 6), p. 163. 27 “Die vortreffliche Schilderey-Galerie […] ist von der neuesten Erfindung. Die Fenster sind oben gegen das Plafond angebracht, damit das Licht besser hineinfalle, und die Gemälde mehr nach ihrem Licht und Schatten erscheinen.” Friedrich Christoph Schmincke, Versuch einer genauen und umständlichen Beschreibung der hochfürstlich-hessischen Residenz und Hauptstadt Cassel nebst den nahe gelegenen Lustschlössern, Gärten und anderen sehenswürdigen Sachen, Kassel: H. Schmiedt, 1767, p. 297. 28 The architect Georg Heinrich Hollenberg, who visited the gallery in 1781 (and possibly two years earlier), commented: “A long and magnificent room which is lit from above via mezzanine windows by a gentle, moderate light” (“Ein langer prächtiger Saal; welcher durch ein sanftes gemäßigtes Licht von oben durch Mezzaninen erleuchtet wird”) cf. Savoy 2006 (as fn. 1), p. 441. 29 “Wie wohltuend war dem Auge das hoch von Oben, auf glänzendes Parquet herabfliessende Licht”, Ludwig Sigismund Ruhl (before 1806), in: Savoy 2006 (as fn. 1), p. 445.





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successfully then than now, in other words.”30 Overbeck, then at the height of his fame, had visited the Picture Gallery on his way to Vienna to study under Heinrich Friedrich Füger at the Academy. This is evidenced by his entry in the visitor book, dated 23 March 1806.31 Rumohr also voiced criticism of the lighting in Kassel, where the narrowness of the interior resulted in light arriving from different angles. This visually irritating phenomenon was less pronounced in Salzdahlum, whose gallery was wider: “The breadth of the room [in Salzdahlum] reduced the nuisance of intersecting shafts of light that was rightly deplored in the old galleries in Kassel and Munich.”32 The Brussels doctor, collector and art expert François-Xavier de Burtin, who visited the picture galleries at Salzdahlum, Düsseldorf, Dresden, Kassel and Vienna, complained that grey curtains in front of the windows, and a projecting cornice underneath them, prevented the daylight from actually reaching the pictures.33 Observations of this kind show that lighting was an issue regularly raised in the eighteenth century as part of the wider debate on the presentation of paintings. It was a subject likewise discussed in travelogues from this same era.34 There was evidently a desire to explore alternatives to the conventional method of gallery lighting. Up until then, picture galleries had received their light from one side, through windows that ran along one of the building’s two long walls and which looked out onto a garden or park. This traditional gallery type was employed for the Picture Gallery in Dresden,

30 “Wir haben aus dem Munde von Rumohr und Overbeck vernommen, daß sie niemals eine vortrefflichere Beleuchtung gesehen. Sie habe den Beschauer beim Eintritt in den Saal in eine wahrhaft feierliche Stimmung versetzt und dabei wären alle Bilder zu der ihrer Güte entsprechenden Geltung gekommen. Man ist also in der Lösung der wichtigen Beleuchtungsfrage damals glücklicher als heute gewesen.” Friedrich Müller, Zur Geschichte der Kasseler Galerie, Kassel: Dietrich, 1871, p. 6, col. 1. 31 See Hans Vogel, Die Besucherbücher der Museen und fürstlichen Bibliothek in Kassel zur Goethezeit, in: Zeitschrift des Vereins für hessische Geschichte und Landeskunde 67 (1956), p. 160 and Pl. II, no. 17. Unlike the Museum Fridericianum’s visitor book, currently being evaluated within the DFG project “The Museum Fridericianum as a Destination of Educational Travel and Research Trips During the European Enlightenment. Annotated, Digitalized Edition of the Visitor Book from 1769–1796” at the University of Kassel, the Gemäldegalerie visitor book has yet to receive systematic investigation. 32 Carl Friedrich von Rumohr, Drei Reisen nach Italien (Leipzig, 1832), in: Enrica Yvonne Dilk (ed.), Sämtliche Werke, Hildesheim: Olms-Weidmann, 2003, pp. 8–9. 33 “Les murs, où pendent les tableaux des deux côtés, ont au-delà de 20 pieds de hauteur, et vont aboutir aux fenêtres, qui règnent tout autour, mais qui éclairent très-mal, tant par les rideaux de toile grise qui les masquent, que par une corniche très-saillante qui se trouve dessous et qui empêche le jour de tomber sur les tableaux, sans parler des inconvéniens qu’elles ont en commun avec toutes les fenêtres posées dans les murs au-dessus des tableaux, don’t j’ai parlé fort amplement à l’article de la galerie de Munich,“ François-Xavier de Burtin (before 1806), in: Savoy 2006 (as fn. 1), p. 446. 34 Cf. Savoy 2006 (as fn. 1), contemporary voices on lighting: p. 381, col. 2, p. 403, col. 1, p. 441, col. 1, p. 445, col. 1, p. 468, col. 1, p. 474, col. 2, p. 475, col. 1, p. 487, col. 1, p. 498, col. 1, p. 501, col. 1, p. 508, col. 1, p. 518, col. 1, p. 532, col. 2, p. 537, col. 1–2.



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created in 1746 out of the Prince Elector’s former stables on Jüdenhof. As we can see from an aquatint made in 1830, the light falls through large, tall windows along one side onto the opposite wall, which is completely covered with paintings of all shapes and sizes, mounted side by side in the style of a Baroque wall of pictures. Although the etching itself was made 1830, it documents a hanging from a clearly earlier date.35

Reinventing the Art Gallery: Granting a New Status to Paintings In Kassel, the unconventional lighting solution and the discussions that surrounded it show that the Picture Gallery was planned around the paintings as works of art. The pictures were no longer treated simply as part of the princely décor but were to be presented with greater thoughtfulness and respect for the works themselves. A short look at the Louvre in Paris, and specifically at the Salon Carrée and the Grande Galerie, is sufficient to clarify the importance attached to the question of lighting. There were numerous instances from the 1780s onwards in which overhead lighting was discussed and indeed in many cases implemented. Thus Charles de Wailly opted for top lighting in his design of the Salon Carrée, which opened in 1789. In the 1790s Hubert Robert executed a number of paintings presenting his visionary proposal to convert the Grande Galerie to overhead lighting, with soaring glazed lanterns rising at regular intervals along the ceiling and the two long walls hung with paintings. This type of lighting would only finally be realized in the Louvre between 1805 and 1810.36 This new manner of lighting galleries from above would have profound consequences for the paintings inside. The priority given to better lighting led to innovations in gallery design and layout, including the hanging of the paintings on the two long walls. The original function of the picture gallery as a glittering walkway, with paintings on one side and a view out of the windows on the other, was thus radically changed. The search for optimum solutions to gallery lighting – a search no less relevant today – went hand in hand with a new respect and appreciation for the painting

35 See Gregor J. M. Weber, Die Galerie als Kunstwerk. Die Hängung italienischer Gemälde in der Dresdener Galerie 1754, in: Barbara Marx (ed.), Elbflorenz. Italienische Präsenz in Dresden 16.–19. Jahrhundert, Amsterdam: Verlag der Kunst, 2000, pp. 229–42. 36 See Andrew McClellan, Inventing the Louvre. Art, Politics and the Origin of the Modern Museum in Eighteenth-Century Paris, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 54–60. The interior views of the Louvre by Gabriel de Saint-Aubin document the Salon exhibitions of 1753, 1765, 1767 and 1779, still lit by windows in the side walls, in: Colin Bailey et al. (eds.), Gabriel de Saint-Aubin 1724–1780, exh. cat., Paris: Somogy Art Publishers, 2008, pp. 266–77.





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as a work of art. Changes in lighting thus had a major and enduring impact on the way we look at pictures. The possibility, achieved in Kassel at great expense, of hanging all four walls with paintings, had massive consequences for their overall impact upon the viewer.37 Unlike the Picture Gallery opened just a few years earlier in Dresden, whose light was delivered through windows along one side and which consequently had only one uninterrupted picture wall, the Kassel Picture Gallery gave visitors the impression of being surrounded by an ordered world of paintings. It was not necessary to walk further down the long gallery to see that the paintings were organized according to a principle that extended across several walls. The top lighting in Kassel allowed for a different display, in which three to four rows of paintings were hung in a symmetrical arrangement directly facing each other on the two long walls. The elaborately calculated layout of Baroque picture galleries, with their multiple axes of symmetry fanning out around central pieces and their pendants, and the hierarchical presentation of works by genre, now applied not just to one wall but also to the wall opposite. What made the hanging in Kassel new and unusual was the fact that viewers could directly compare this orchestrated discourse between the two gallery walls.38

The End of the Glazed Façade: Displaying Art on All Four Walls The paintings displayed in the gallery were predominantly works by Dutch and Flemish masters. The other, projected outer wing was evidently intended to house the Italians, as emerges from a letter from Wilhelm VIII to Baron Häckel: “I am gradually

37 The historical hanging of the Kassel Picture Gallery is not precisely documented, although it is possible to deduce certain details from the 1783 catalogue of paintings by Simon Causid. The hanging has thus far only been reconstructed in an internal, unpublished sketch by Bernhard Schnackenburg. For the most detailed discussion to date, see Gregor Weber, in: Rembrandt – Bilder. Die historische Sammlung der Kasseler Gemäldegalerie, exh. cat., Staatliche Museen Kassel, Munich: Hirmer, 2006, pp. 47–49 and p. 58. 38 I am indebted to Gregor Weber for exploring these ideas with me in conversation. For an indepth examination of the conception of Baroque picture walls as a visualization of art-theoretical discourses, cf. Weber 2000 (as fn. 35), pp. 229–42 and Tristan Weddigen, Kennerschaft ausgestellt. Die erste Hängung der Dresdner Gemäldegalerie und das verlorene Inventar von 1747, in: Barbara Marx, Karl-Siegbert Rehberg (eds.), Sammeln als Institution. Von der fürstlichen Wunderkammer zum Mäzenatentum des Staates, Munich and Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2006, pp. 101–09.



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obtaining the necessary material for a gallery of Italian pieces, and I don’t think I am lacking a great deal more, if only the building for it were also there.”39 The Landgrave’s preference for genre scenes manifested itself in the finished gallery. Two monumental Flemish representations of lively gatherings hung on one of the long walls (facing the courtyard): Peasants Dancing Outside an Inn by David Teniers the Younger and, above it, The Bean King by Jakob Jordaens, each flanked by two studies of heads by Rembrandt. Another painting by David Teniers the Younger, The Procession of the Antwerp Civic Guards, hung at the centre of the opposite wall, likewise flanked by two half-length portraits by Rembrandt, with above it the altarpiece of The Virgin and Child with the Infant St John, Adored by Penitents and Saints by Peter Paul Rubens (at that time attributed to Antony van Dyck). This arrangement operated with points of similarity and contrast, with the aim of facilitating comparisons. Dutch and Flemish art was differentiated not in terms of schools of equal standing, but in terms of an aesthetic norm. The fact that the collection obeyed no regional or chronological taxonomy, as had been devised in the 1780s by Christian von Mechel for the Habsburg collection of paintings in the Upper Belvedere in Vienna, was expressly deplored thirty years later in the Kassel inventory of 1783, where it was put down to terms of lack of space: “[…] it would have been better, certainly, to base the arrangement on the plan recently implemented with such felicitous results in the splendid and magnificent Imperial Royal Picture Gallery: in such a way that the paintings by each master are arranged into a proper order according to their sequence, and then according to the school to which they belong, so that they can be studied and used like a visual school of art, from which one can follow their emergence, growth and flowering step by step.”40 The plans of Salzdahlum listed in the posthumous inventory of Wilhelm’s estate show that the Landgrave studied the design of other galleries. He also kept up to date with developments in Dresden and the opening of the new Picture Gallery on Jüdenhof, as suggested by the two volumes of the gallery guide by Carl Heinrich von Heinecken that were likewise in Wilhelm’s possession. It was evidently the Landgrave’s ambition to match Parisian standards not only in the lighting of his gallery but in its interior design, as revealed by another commission

39 “Ich erhalte allmählich den nötigen Stoff zu einer Galerie von italienischen Stücken, und ich glaube, daß mir so viel nicht mehr daran fehlet, wann nur das Gebäude dazu auch da wäre.” Cf. Schnackenburg 1998 (as fn. 6), p. 168. 40 “[…] so wäre es freylich besser gewesen, nach dem jüngst glücklich ausgeführten Plan der so vortrefflichen als prächtigen kayserlich-königlichen Bildergallerie, diese Einrichtung zu treffen: daß man die Gemälde eines jeden Meisters nach ihrer Stuffenfolge in eine zweckmäßige Verbindung gebracht, und ihnen alsdenn nach Schulen, zu welchen sie gehören, [...], daß sie eine sichtbare Schule der Kunst kann angesehen und benutzt werden, woran man stuffenweise ihre Entstehung, Zunahme und Vollkommenheit wahrnehmen kann.” Simon Causid, Verzeichniß der hochfürstlichheßischen Gemäldesammlung in Cassel, Kassel: J. F. Estienne, 1783, Introduction.





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Fig. 8: Simon Louis du Ry, Interior of the Hôtel de Lassay, c. 1751

to architecture student Simon Louis du Ry. Du Ry was asked to document the interiors of the collections in Paris, a task of which he wrote: “This took me longer than I had anticipated, since I wished to visit all or at least the most noteworthy galleries of Paris in order to look at the arrangement of the furnishings and paintings. I had to allow time for this because I had to consider the convenience of the owners.”41 One of the galleries visited by du Ry was that of the Hôtel de Lassay, a private townhouse built in the 1720s by architect Jean Aubert. In a hand-coloured ink drawing of one of the gallery’s long walls, du Ry recorded the ornate décor of the interior in meticulous detail (fig. 8).42 The paintings are arranged at a certain distance from one another – the large works on top and the small one below – along symmetrical axes to the right and left of the central fireplace and the tall mirror above it. They are bounded on either side by a set of double doors surmounted by sopraporte paintings. The fireplace with mirror above and the double doors with sopraporte paintings are also found in the Kassel gallery, albeit here without paintings in between due to the room’s smaller dimensions. We know from contemporary accounts that the overdoor paintings in Kassel showed allegories of the Four Seasons and were commissioned by Wilhelm VIII from

41 “Ich habe längere Zeit dazu gebraucht als ich anfangs glaubte, da ich alle oder wenigstens die meisten beachtenswerten Galerien von Paris besichtigen wollte, um die Aufstellung der Möbel und Bilder zu sehen, wozu ich mir die Zeit nehmen musste, weil ich Rücksicht auf die Bequemlichkeit der Eigentümer zu nehmen hatte.” Cf. Gerland 1895 (as fn. 15), p. 31. 42 Staatsarchiv Marburg, Karten P II, no. 9546/II.



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Jakob de Wit, while the mirrors on the two end walls were acquired specifically for this purpose by du Ry in Paris. The stoppage of building work in Kassel in 1750, the move away from the conventional gallery type of the day, with its light arriving from one side, and lastly the unconventional decision in favour of top lighting, together bear particularly spectacular witness to the development of a new gallery type, one that would determine the museum architecture of the nineteenth century and make a significant contribution to the emergence of the modern museum of art. The Kassel Picture Gallery – and this is symptomatic of galleries and museums making the transition from princely collection to public institution in general – was both the site and the product of crossborder processes of exchange and transfer, with the Marquis de Voyer d’Argenson and Simon Louis du Ry as transnational intermediaries. Translated by Karen Williams



Bénédicte Savoy, Sabine Skott

A European Museum-Cocktail around 1900 The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow What connects the internationally known Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow with the museums in Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, and Paris? In Germany, the spontaneous answer would be: looted art. A major part of the art treasures transported out of Germany under Soviet orders – including Heinrich Schliemann’s Trojan finds and the Treasure of Eberswalde – is now stored in the Pushkin Museum. At least since the 1990s, the Moscow museum has been a symbol of the most muddled chapter of Russo-German relations, the painful attempts to carry on a dialogue. The situation is paradoxical. In actuality, this renowned Russian institution, even just as a building, is the fruit of a Russo/German dialogue that could hardly have been more intense. The museum, its galleries, and the architecture itself testify to this fact, as do a whole series of letters which the founder of the museum Ivan Tsvetaev wrote to colleagues both within Russia and abroad.1

Museum Building Boom As so often happens, the story begins in Rome – and on a trip. Ivan Tsvetaev, a young professor of classical philology in Moscow and the author (it would be hard to think up anything more appropriate!) of a dissertation on Tacitus’ Germania, was in Rome in the late 1880s and made the initially modest decision to expand his university’s laughably small collection of plaster casts. Inspired by the academic “plaster cast cabinets”, like those in Munich, Bonn, and Prague, he began collecting. Indeed, in these years, there was a veritable building boom all over Europe of new, enormous museums

1 The correspondence between Tsvetaev and Georg Treu together with commentaries was published in 2006. Erhard Hexelschneider, Alexander Baranov, Tobias Burg (eds.), In Moskau ein kleines Albertinum bauen. Iwan Zwetajew und Georg Treu im Briefwechsel (1881–1913), Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2006. The letters to the architects were published in two volumes in 1977, with commentaries. Ирина Евгеньевна Данилова, История создания музея в переписке профессора И.В.Цветаева с архитектором Р.И.Клейном и других документах 1896–1912, том 1 и 2, Москва: Советский художник, 1977. The letters to the patron were published in four volumes from 2008 to 2011, with commentaries. Маргарита Борисовна Аксененко, И.В.Цветаев – Ю.С.Нечаев-Мальцов. Переписка. 1897 – 1912, Том 1–4, Москва: Красная площадь 2008, 2010, 2010, 2011. See also Sabine Skott, Das staatliche Museum der Bildenden Künste Alexander Puschkin 1894–1912, Magisterarbeit, Technische Universität Berlin 2006.

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Fig. 9: The Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow surrounded by scaffolding, 1905

superseding in grandeur and magnificence anything that had been achieved in the nineteenth century up to that time: around 1890, within just a few months, Prague’s National Museum on Wenzel’s Square, the Dresden Sculpture Collection in the Albertinum, the New Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and the two monumental, mirror-image buildings that house the Museums of Natural History and Art History in Vienna – to name just a few – were given grand openings as mighty establishments with not only the most modern exhibition technology but ambitious representative pretenses as well. In early 1892, Tsvetaev spent a whole day on his return trip from Italy to Russia in the newly opened Albertinum, one of the most exquisite plaster cast collections in Europe, and the largest as well. After his visit to Dresden, one thing was beyond question for this Russian scholar: Moscow had to have a large, public museum for the art of classical antiquity. He gave his first lecture on the subject of his museum plans in 1894 at the first pan-Russian Congress of Russian Artists and Amateurs of the Arts. Here, Tsvetaev explicitly envisioned a collection that would be systematized after the model of the Albertinum.2 And, later, in the first museum guidebook of 1912, Tsvetaev expressly referred to the adoption of spatial concepts used in the Albertinum in Dresden.3

2 Юдифь Матвеевна Каган, И.В.Цветаев – Жизнь Деятельность Личность, Москва: Наука, 1987, p. 95. 3 Музей изящных искусств имени императора Александра III в Москве краткий илюстрированный Путеводитель, часть I, 1912, p. IX.





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In the 1890s in Moscow, the mood was extremely advantageous for the founding of a new museum. Monumental museums as places of national affirmation belonged to the standard repertoire of every capital city of world renown at the end of the nineteenth century, and the Moscow public quickly warmed up to the idea. Thus, Tsvetaev confidently wrote to his colleague Georg Treu, director of the Albertinum in Dresden: “I have started rousing the public here as to the importance of a museum for the art of classical antiquity at the Imperial Moscow University. The issue has pleased a great number of people and some monetary donations have already been made.”4 He wrote these optimistic words to his Dresden colleague in Russian. This was to be the beginning of a twenty-year-long, intensive exchange of letters that was pervaded by an obsessive, and quite practical, question: how to build a museum out of nothing? (fig. 9)

How to Build a Museum out of Nothing? Money, light, heat, a building, and a collection: these were the prerequisites in Moscow. And, furthermore, as Tsvetaev remarked in an early letter, “the participation of European scholars.”5 Only one of these aspects was tackled in an outspokenly Russian manner: the question of financing. In contrast to the other European museums of that time, the Moscow museum was, almost without exception, privately funded by the Russian bourgeoisie. The ultra-rich industrialist Yury Nechaev-Maltsov, namely, took over almost the total cost of construction from beginning to end (!) and thus provided an impressive example of the amazing potency of cultural patronage in tsarist Russia prior to and even for some years after the revolutionary upheavals of 1905.6 After taking a stroll through the landscaped exterior on the Berlin Museum Island in June of 1899, Tsvetaev wrote to Nechaev-Maltsov: “You are the one who has made it possible for us to dream and imagine, to come up with the boldest of ideas. And with what simplicity and ease you are lifting us to the heights of founding a state museum in Europe.”7 The Moscow museum aspired to be and was intended to be on a par with the other European museum buildings of the time. A little more than one

4 Letter from Tsvetaev to Treu, March 1/13, 1893 in: Hexelschneider 2006 (as fn. 1), p. 100. 5 Letter from Tsvetaev to Treu, March 15/27, 1893 in: Hexelschneider 2006 (as fn. 1), p. 107. 6 A Russian television documentary of 2012 on the occasion of the centenary of the opening of the museum reported that two-thirds of the construction costs were covered by Yury Nechaev-Maltsov alone. Film by Леонид Парфёнов, Глаз Божий, at: http://parfenov-l.livejournal.com/45581.html (accessed January 21, 2013). See Skott 2006 (as fn.  1); Waltraud Bayer, Die Moskauer Medici. Der russische Bürger als Mäzen 1850–1917, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag 1996. 7 Letter from Tsvetaev to Nechaev-Maltsov, June 8, 1899 in: Bénédicte Savoy, Philippa Sissis (eds.), Die Berliner Museumsinsel. Impressionen internationaler Besucher (1830–1990), Cologne: Böhlau Verlag 2012, p. 133.



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year later, on the day of the official opening of the museum (1912), Tsvetaev reported with palpable satisfaction: “Happily, the museum was opened without one kopek’s worth of debt. We have completely repaid all of Europe.”8 Whereas the financing of the museum remained completely Russian all the way through to the successful opening of the museum, other issues – ranging from the conception of the collection, over acquisition strategies and gallery presentation, to the exterior appearance of the museum – were dealt with by mail between Moscow and the various European capitals, in reciprocal exchange and lively dialogue. Ample evidence of this interchange can be found in the recently published Russo-German edition of the correspondence between the Moscow founding director Ivan Tsvetaev and his Dresden colleague Georg Treu.9 Tsvetaev’s intensive study of European museum buildings is, however, also reflected in letters which he wrote to colleagues within Russia – the correspondence has recently been published by the Pushkin Museum, which has the letters in its archives.10 In the more than 800 letters to Nechaev-Maltsov, Tsvetaev explains the various European architectural models and types of collections, many of which, in the end, left their imprint on the museum in Moscow.11 Furthermore, the 260 letters Tsvetaev wrote to his architect – published in 1977 – contain detailed documentation of the construction work and the planning of the museum.12 This valuable source material, furnished with detailed commentaries by the archival staff, makes possible a reconstruction of the synthesis of the Moscow museum out of the European museum buildings and collections of the time. At the same time, this internal, Russian turn-of-the-century correspondence makes clear that the main models for Tsvetaev’s ideas in respect to the museum’s collection, architecture, and its general aura were the museums in Berlin and Dresden.

Circulations Dresden, then, played a special role: “Most esteemed Yegor Yegorovich…” From 1881 until his death in 1913, Tsvetaev wrote untiringly long letters to his colleague Treu,

8 Letter from Tsvetaev to Treu, June 14, 1912 in: Hexelschneider 2006 (as fn. 1), p. 296. 9 Of the correspondence between Tsvetaev and Treu, 125 letters have survived. Эрхард Хексельшнейдер, Семья Цветаевых и Дрезден, in: Ирина Юрьевна Белякова (eds.), Семья Цветаевых в истории и културе России, XV Международная научно-тематическая конференция, 8–11 октября 2007, Москва: Дом-музей Марины Цветаевой, 2008, pp. 13–31. Hexelschneider 2006 (as fn. 1). 10 Аксененко (Том 1–4) 2008–2011 (as fn. 1). 11 Аксененко (Том 1) 2008 (as fn. 1), p. 62. 12 Данилова (Том 1 и 2) 1977 (as fn. 1).





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inquiring about the best addresses in Europe for ordering plaster casts and galvanoplastic reproductions, about the heights and widths of galleries for his museum, about glass facades and skylights, styles of ceilings and types of marble, about floors, orders of columns, pedestals, about “measures that can be taken to protect the plaster casts against dirt and dust,”13 and much more. And week for week, year for year, for two decades, Treu faithfully answered these missives from Moscow, comprehensively and with precision (fig. 10). He warned, for example, against the plaster casts of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris (“we have had the nastiest of experiences”),14 recommended moveable cross walls and wood paneling rather than masonry and stucco in the galleries in order to make changes possible whenever necessary, and in general he advocated flexibility and comfort in a museum. His advice extended into the smallest of details: “Rather than placing modern sphinxes at the doors, I would get copies of ancient Egyptian sphinxes or even better, copies of the two magnificent lions from the Vatican. […] That would be the best invitation to your cast collection.”15 A distinct symbol for the Russo-German, actually pan-European, origin of the Moscow museum was provided by the splendid decorative frieze that was mounted a few months before completion of the building at a height of ten meters along the outer colonnade: a relief, a free rendition of the Parthenon frieze of the British Museum, created with the help of casts at the Albertinum and hewed out of Tyrolean marble by a German artist in Dresden. The frieze along the main façade of the Pushkin Museum is the work of Leopold Armbruster.16 The Dresden sculptor, who also carried out the frieze on the Albertinum, was recommended to Moscow by Georg Treu and, in 1902, was commissioned17 to copy the Parthenon frieze at the British Museum and to supplement it in marble.18 The Parthenon frieze thus exists twice in the museum, once inside as a plaster cast19 together with the chronologically corresponding works in Gallery 7, and again as a decoration, reproduced in marble, on the façade. Athens in Moscow, via London, Saxony, and the Vinschgau Valley – the transnational character of this national museum founding could hardly be portrayed more palpably. Tsvetaev asked to be sent exact photographs of the spatial situation from various European museums, requested scholarly publications on the room décor of Classical

13 Letter from Tsvetaev to Treu, June 17, 1895 in: Hexelschneider 2006 (as fn. 1), p. 162. 14 Letter from Tsvetaev to Treu, April 13, 1893 in: Hexelschneider 2006 (as fn. 1), p. 108. 15 Letter from Tsvetaev to Treu, October 10, 1897 in: Hexelschneider 2006 (as fn. 1), p. 172. 16 Armbruster’s invoice for Moscow in the archive of the Pushkin Museum: ГМИИ Фонд № 2 опись 1 дело 252. 17 Letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, October 12, 1902 in: Данилова (Том 1) 1977 (as fn. 1), p. 116. 18 Letters from Treu to Tsvetaev, September 25, 1902 and Treu to Klein, August 1, 1904 in: Hexelschneider 2006 (as fn.  1), pp. 192–194, 215–217. Details on procuring the marble from Austria in the letters from Kühnert to Tsvetaev, August 7, 1904 and August 25, 1904. Archive of the Pushkin Museum: ГМИИ Фонд № 2 опись 1 дело 69. 19 Letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, September 15, 1900 in: Данилова (Том 1) 1977 (as fn. 1), p. 102.



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Fig. 10: Ground-plan of the top floor with inscriptions by Ivan Tsvetaev and Georg Treu (pencil)





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Antiquity, and had dozens of casts made for his collection. As a result, some of his exhibition galleries in Moscow were almost twin copies of various European galleries. Nor did Tsvetaev ever tire of calling his sugar-white, gigantic, Ural marble building on Volkhonka Street the “little Albertinum” and, gratefully, the “son” of the museum in Dresden. That such formulations were purely expressions of gratitude and that the Moscow museum is by no means a “little Albertinum” is clear even from reading between the lines of the Treu/Tsvetaev correspondence. It quickly becomes obvious that Tsvetaev had close professional contacts not only with Dresden but with half of Europe, and that his correspondents were situated in the museums of Vienna, London, Berlin, and Budapest.20 He gives accounts, for example, of study trips that took him and his architect Roman Klein to the most important museums in Europe. He reports on well-intentioned advice from Berlin, heady inspiration from Florence, and good museum catalogues from the United States: “The Americans, he writes full of admiration in 1893, are in this regard, too, people with a lot of verve. That’s one country – the world’s most powerful – that you won’t outshine!”21

Adoption and Adaptation of Western European Models Though it was clear to the founders in Moscow that there would “only” be one building for the collection of teaching materials for the Moscow University, their aspirations were high: “Most esteemed Ivan Vladimirovich, since the year 1896 we have been working on transforming a storage house for plaster casts into a temple of art,” wrote the architect Roman Klein to Tsvetaev in 1902.22 With this in mind, Klein had already been sent in early 1897 on a long journey abroad, to study the museums in Germany, France, England, and Italy in respect to their facades, ground plans, and technological equipment.23 Tsvetaev initially had wanted to have an exact historical copy of a Greek temple for his Moscow museum.24 In the different correspondences it becomes clear that, for the exterior of the museum, he only wanted to copy traditional Greek architectural elements. The outside appearance of the museum – the protuberances on the façade and the Ionic order of columns – was based on the small temple of Nike Apteros near the Propylaea on the Acropolis.25 That Tsvetaev gave preference

20 Данилова (Том 1 u. 2) 1977 (as fn. 1). 21 Letter from Tsvetaev to Treu, March 15, 1893 in: Hexelschneider 2006 (as fn. 1), p. 106. 22 Translated from: letter from Klein to Tsvetaev, December 23, 1902 in: Данилова (Том 2) 1977 (as  fn. 1), p. 90. 23 Letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, April 25, 1897 in: Данилова (Том 1) 1977 (as fn. 1), p. 31. 24 Letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, August 7, 1897 in: ibid., p. 43. 25 Letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, December 18, 1897 in: ibid., p. 50.



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to the Ionic order had to do with his opinion that Corinthian columns had been used far too frequently in Russia. “Corinthian columns are commonplace in Russia and have become boring.”26 Furthermore, Tsvetaev did not know of any buildings in the Greek style which had a second story, so he urged that they do without one, discussing the issue with specialists in Munich and Stuttgart, among others.27 As a compromise, they agreed upon a windowless second floor, which was supposed to disguise the fact that more than one floor existed. The result was a top floor which offered the opportunity for overhead lighting. According to Tsvetaev, the inspiration to use skylights in the upper galleries came to him in his visit to the British Museum and the National Gallery in London, whereby the steep roof construction was an accommodation to Moscow weather conditions.28 In general, the planning and design of the interior was an intensive adoption and adaptation of Western European models. As in the case of the façade, Tsvetaev acquired precise information for every single room of his museum, examining corresponding rooms in the great Western European museums, studying the models carefully, and explicitly taking over – often without a single change – whole orderings of rooms, interior decoration ideas, and furnishings, creating a curious synthesis of all of these in Moscow. Mentioned below are a few examples, all of which actually deserve a more detailed description than is possible in this context.29 Based on Tsvetaev’s correspondence with his architect and with the director of the Dresden Albertinum, for example, it has been clearly ascertained that the Olympic Gallery in Moscow is based on the eponymous gallery in Dresden.30 Klein was not only sent by Tsvetaev to Dresden especially for the purpose of studying the gable figures in the Dresden Olympic Gallery and to take the measurements of the gable, but also to do a careful reading of Treu’s publications.31 For the Assyrian Gallery in Moscow, Tsvetaev and his team followed Parisian models: in 1888 in the Louvre, namely, three rooms for Assyrian art had opened, the Salle Sarzec as well as the “grande” and the “petite” salles de Suse.32 The Moscow architect was supposed to base his design on these Parisian galleries and, in this case too, study the most up-to-date literature

26 Translated from: letters from Tsvetaev to Klein, July 25, 1897 in: ibid., p. 39. 27 Letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, April 22, 1897 in: ibid., p. 29; letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, June 3, 1897 in: ibid., pp. 34, 35. 28 Letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, July 1 and July 27, 1897 in: ibid., p. 36, 41. 29 Skott 2006 (as fn. 1), pp. 28–63. 30 Letter from Treu to Tsvetaev, January 2, 1908 in: Hexelschneider 2006 (as fn. 1), p. 248. 31 Letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, June 3, 1897 in: Данилова (Том 1) 1977 (as fn. 1), p. 36; letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, May 28, 1897 in: ibid., p. 33; Letters from Tsvetaev to Klein, December 26, 1907 and August 5, 1908 in: ibid., pp. 244, 260. 32 Genevíeve Bresc-Bautier, The Architecture of the Louvre, London: Thames & Hudson, 1995, p. 178.





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on the subject:33 “You must become familiar with the corresponding galleries in the Louvre,” wrote Tsvetaev. “There you will find two rooms designed in the Assyrian and the ancient Persian style (on the third floor!), carried out like nowhere else in the world by the best connoisseurs of Assyrian antiquity.”34 The Gallery of the Aeginites, for which inspiration was taken from Munich, Strasbourg, and Berlin, resulted in a fusion of the three models: the gable sculptures from the Temple of Aphaia35 in Aegina were set up, with but minor adjustments, according to Bertel Thorvaldsen’s suggestions for the Munich Glyptothek.36 However, since the room was not broad enough, the sculptures were placed closer together than in Munich, as was the case for the figures in the plaster cast museum at the Institute for Art and Archaeology at the Kaiser Wilhelm University in Strasbourg, today’s Gypsothèque de l’Université de Strasbourg.37 Further, Tsvetaev demanded that his architect look to the Neues Museum in Berlin for the design of the gable.38 Another example of such fusion and remixing of different gallery conceptions from the museums of Western Europe is the Egyptian Gallery of the Moscow museum: here, the columns are exactly the same as those in the Egyptian gallery in the art historical museum in Vienna; the starry skyceiling comes from Berlin’s Neues Museum and the partitions from the Louvre.39 And, when it came time to design the Gallery of Early Christian and Medieval Art, Tsvetaev spent five weeks on the second floor of the recently opened Kaiser Friedrich Museum (today’s Bode Museum) in Berlin in order to study the arrangements in the section for Christian sculpture: “In the summer of this year, I spent more than five weeks in Berlin, and worked in your museum [Bode Museum], in the Christian sculpture department.”40 The list of further examples is endless… In final measure, with the help of Ivan Tsvetaev’s letters, almost every single detail of the interior design and the architecture of the museum can be traced back to some European model. Even when Tsvetaev explicitly named some museums as being models for certain rooms, he always allowed elements from other collections

33 Letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, March 4, 1904 in: Данилова (Том 1) 1977 (as fn.  1), pp. 147, 148. Named as literature necessary for the designing of the Assyrian galleries were: Georges Perrot und Charles Chipiez, Historie de l’art dans l’antiquité, Paris 1882. 34 Translated from: letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, March 26, 1905 in: Данилова (Том 1) 1977 (as fn. 1), p. 181. 35 In the museum guide, it is called the Temple of Athena. Краткий Путеводитель с иллюстрациями, часть I, Москва 1917, p. 76. 36 On the reconstruction and presentation in Munich, see Raimund Wünsche, Glyptothek München, Munich: C.H. Beck 2005, pp. 182–185. 37 Данилова, том II, Москва 1977, p. 133. 38 Letters from Tsvetaev to Klein, October 14, 1903, July 17, 1908, and August 5, 1908 in: Данилова (Том 1) 1977 (as fn. 1), pp. 144, 255, 260. 39 Letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, July 18, 1903 in: ibid., p. 135. 40 Letter from Tsvetaev to Bode, August 25/September 6, 1899. Zentralarchiv der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin (SMB-ZA), NL Bode 1374.



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to flow into his Moscow designs. It would be no exaggeration to view the Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, for the time around 1900, as one of the most exciting – and most unrecognized – syntheses of modern museum design in all of Europe.

Impress the World But that is not all. The fact is that the unusual lyricism of this imposing institution does not reveal itself until you actually pace through these galleries, even today. You step into an enormous, glass-covered hall with terraces and vista points, the so-called “Greek courtyard,” where antique architectural fragments of purest white plaster are positioned at odd angles in surrealistically close proximity to one another – monumental exterior spaces enclosed within museum walls: a corner of the Parthenon, life-sized (around 1900, this corner existed only in Paris, not in one other museum of the world), the Porch of the Caryatids from the Ionian Erechtheion, the Corinthian Monument of Lysicrates, a bull’s head capital from Persepolis, “all the chefs d’oeuvre of Greek sculpture and other awkwardly shaped objects,” as Tsvetaev once formulated it.41 With a courtyard like this, modeled after the Cour Vitrée of the École des Beaux Arts in Paris, Tsvetaev saw the possibility of installing in the museum monumental casts of architectural details in their original sizes. Klein was commissioned to study the atrium in the Paris Academy of Fine Arts: “The idea for a Cour Vitrée for our museum met with general approval. So go ahead with the plans for the atrium, do not postpone it, and let it be of imposing dimensions, since there must be room for all of the chefs d’oeuvre of Greek sculpture and the awkwardly shaped objects […], like the corner of the Parthenon in its original size (think of the École des Beaux Arts).”42 Tsvetaev was extremely enthusiastic about the atrium, and surely the fact that such a terrace-like courtyard “was not to be found in this unique form in any other museum” was not the least of his interest.43 His vision was for the museum in Moscow to impress the world, and he would achieve the desired effect, it must be said, through effective staging – consistently carried out through the whole museum: “Stucco the walls with artificial marble,” wrote Tsvetaev to his architect in 1903. “We should mix some yellow tones into the powder or the paste. A white gallery and a white courtyard for white plaster casts is impossible, and is not to be found in a single museum.”44

41 Translated from: letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, April 7, 1897 in: Данилова (Том 1) 1977 (as fn. 1), p. 25. 42 Ibid. 43 Translated from: И.В.Цветаев, Записка, Москва 1908 in: Данилова (Том 2) 1977 (as fn. 1), p. 20 44 Translated from: letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, March 1, 1905 in: Данилова (Том 1) 1977 (as fn. 1), p. 177.





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The Greek Courtyard was symmetrically paired with a peculiar replication of the Bargello Courtyard in Florence. Basically a one to one copy, it is at the same time a simplification, since the walls are hung with sandstone plates45 to protect against the danger, according to Tsvetaev, of soiling from “students’ boots.”46 This was the so-called “Christian Courtyard.” Today, Michelangelo’s David stands in front of the Golden Gates of the Saxon Freiberg Cathedral, and Colloni’s equestrian statue is not far from the choir stalls from the Ulm Cathedral.47 Everything made of plaster, everything fake. And, at the entranceways into the galleries, Tsvetaev used copies of church portals – inspired by those he had seen in the recently opened Musée du Trocadéro in Paris. Since 1882, this museum arranged by Viollet-le-Duc had displayed Gothic church portals, frescoes, and capitals – without exception French patrimony – in the original size but out of plaster.48 Tsvetaev wanted this for his museum as well.

Transnational Space for National Affirmation Included in this Western museum synthesis in Moscow are of course, needless to say, elements of Russian representative architecture that make the museum a prime example of national affirmation through transnational means. This is especially obvious in the main stairway of the museum and the so-called Hall of Fame:49 the stairs have a representative character that has more in common with a palace than a museum and are an indication of the origin of museum buildings as architectonic representatives of the power and wealth of a state. Although, according to Tsvetaev, the stairway is a “colossal Greek-Roman-Italian hodgepodge that would never hold up to scholarly criticism,”50 he finally did come to terms with the “Ionic, if not purely Greek

45 Letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, March 1, 1905 in: ibid. 46 Translated from: letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, August 7, 1899 in: Данилова (Том 1) 1977 (as fn. 1), p. 86. 47 Letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, September 1, 1910 in: ibid, p. 298. 48 See Susanne Mersmann, Die Musées du Trocadéro: Viollet-le-Duc und der Kanondiskurs im Paris des 19. Jahrhunderts, Berlin: Reimer, 2012; Schreiter, Charlotte, Antike um jeden Preis. Gipsabgüsse und Kopien antiker Plastik in Mitteldeutschland am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012; Charlotte Schreiter (ed.), Gipsabgüsse und antike Skulpturen. Präsentation und Kontext, Berlin: Reimer, 2012. Purely plaster cast collections that called themselves museums were, in Paris, the Musée des Monuments Français, in the United States in Cambridge, Ma., the Germanisches Museum, today named Busch-Reisinger Museum. The collections were founded for the purpose of constructing national cultural monuments. Frank Matthias Kammel, Der Gipsabguss- vom Medium der ästhetischen Norm zur toten Konserve der Kunstgeschichte, in: Andrea M. Kluxen (ed.), Ästhetische Probleme der Plastik im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Nuremberg: Aleph, 2001, p. 52. 49 Letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, January 27, 1899 in: Данилова (Том 1) 1977 (as fn. 1), pp. 76, 77. 50 Translated from: letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, June 23, 1907 in: ibid., p. 234.



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staircase.”51 Designed by William Craft Brumfield, the stairs are the most imposing Neo-Classical creation existing in Russia and clearly show the influence of the New Hermitage by Leo von Klenze in Saint Petersburg.52 The main gallery, planned as a Hall of Fame in the style of an early Christian basilica (as was also planned for the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin),53 was meant to be proof of both the national orientation within Russia and the indirect dependence of the museum on the tsar’s favor.54 It is precisely this tension between national ambitions for the museum and the transnational paths of museum design that is the point with this museum. Here we can experience how museum models and spatial fictions develop that transcend national borders, how they circulate, gain acceptance, and are adapted, how they set stand­ ards – or not, and all of this far from any grand theories or state museum pathos. In the year of its opening, 1912, the Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow was far, far more than a comprehensive and well-assorted plaster cast collection in the sense of the noble Albertinum. In its ideals, it was very close to the most up-to-date architecture museums in the world, such as the Musée des Monuments Français by Violletle-Duc in the Paris Trocadéro, which had reopened in autumn 2007, the Albertinum in Dresden (opened 1891), the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin (opened 1904), and many more. Conceptually, the Moscow museum furthermore points beyond its time to the sensational and not unproblematic museum designs of the early twentieth century, for example the Berlin Museum Island and the audacious reconstruction of the Pergamon Altar, the Market Gate of Miletus, and the Processional Way and Ishtar Gate of Babylon in the Pergamon Museum – in all of these, however, not plaster but the original objects of Classical Antiquity. It is against this background that the editions of the letter exchanges – between Treu and Tsvetaev on the one hand, between Tsvetaev and his architect Klein on the other hand, and between Tsvetaev and the patron of the Moscow museum, to whom he regularly sent reports about the progress of their work – unfold their full potential for research and discovery. They are not only both the fruits of and the sources for German-French-Italian-Russian cultural transfer research, not only a renewed testimony to the advantages of transnational history writing devoted to the dynamics of exchange and the mechanisms of interweaving. These exchanges of letters are, beyond all this, among the most interesting source materials for museum history that have been brought to light in recent years. Translated by Catherine Framm

51 Translated from: letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, December 29, 1905 in: ibid., p. 198. 52 William Craft Brumfield, A History of Russian Architecture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 443. 53 Letter from Tsvetaev to Klein, March 19, 1902 in: Данилова (Том 1) 1977 (as fn. 1), p. 106. 54 Tsvetaev’s diary, March 12, 1898 in: Александра Андреевна Демская, Людмила Михайловна Смирнова, И.В.Цветаев Создает Музей, Москва: Галарт, 1995, pp. 87–88.



Alessandra Galizzi Kroegel

The Journal Mouseion as Means of Transnational Culture Guglielmo Pacchioni and the Dawn of the “Modern Museum” in Italy

Modern Museums out of the Blue? In an article of 1952 Giulio Carlo Argan, one of Italy’s most influential art historians of the twentieth century, welcomed the refurbishment of the Gallerie Comunali di Palazzo Bianco in Genoa in the most enthusiastic terms, recognizing in such intervention the making of “today’s most modern museum in Italy.”1 The museum of Palazzo Bianco, hosted in an eighteenth-century palace which had been severely damaged during World War II, had reopened in 1951. The museum’s director Caterina Marcenaro had conceived a totally new organization of the collections, making the explicit effort “of abandoning the concept of palace and pursuing the concept of museum.”2 Her ambitious program had been translated into architectural forms by Franco Albini, a Milanese architect who had already distinguished himself in a number of innovative temporary exhibitions, especially at the Triennale di Milano.3 According to the above-mentioned article by Argan, Palazzo Bianco deserved the title of “Italy’s most modern museum” because it allowed “the work of art to fully exercise its educative function.”4 In Argan’s view, such “educative function” was made possible by the

1 “Quella che fino a pochi anni or sono era ancora una dimora patrizia, in cui le opere avevano soltanto una funzione di decorazione ambientale, è oggi senza dubbio il più moderno museo italiano”. Giulio Carlo Argan, La Galleria di Palazzo Bianco a Genova, in: Metron VII, 45 (1952), pp. 24–40, spec. p. 26. This translation is mine, and the same applies to all the quotes translated from Italian into English in the present essay. 2 “Nell’attuale ordinamento è stato programmaticamente abbandonato il concetto di palazzo ed è stato rigorosamente perseguito quello di museo.” Caterina Marcenaro, Foreword to Catalogo provvisorio delle Gallerie di Palazzo Bianco (Genoa 1950) quoted in Marco Mulazzani, Gallerie Comunali di Palazzo Bianco, in: Antonella Huber, Il museo italiano. La trasformazione degli spazi storici in spazi espositivi. Attualità dell’esperienza museografica degli anni ‘50, Milan: Lybra Immagine, 1997, pp. 97–99. 3 Federico Bucci and Augusto Rossari (eds.), I musei e gli allestimenti di Franco Albini, Milan: Electa, 2005. 4 “[…] la moderna concezione […] del museo come lo strumento che permette all’opera d’arte di esercitare tutta la sua funzione educativa”. Argan 1952 (as fn. 1), p. 26. It is not by chance that in those years Argan was engaged in the diffusion of the progressive museum philosophy of John Dewey and Herbert Read. For the influence of American pragmatism on Italian museology in the 1940s and 1950s see Paolo Morello, La museografia. Opere e modelli storiografici, in: Francesco dal Cò (ed.), Storia dell’architettura italian. Il secondo Novecento, Milan: Electa, 1997, pp. 393–417.

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fact that the Genoese museum had inaugurated a dialectic relationship to the public: in particular, Argan was praising the fact that the works on exhibit were the result of a rigid selection: many pieces had been put in storage, and the storage had been planned so that it could easily be accessible to scholars. Most importantly, however, Argan was convinced that the installation by Franco Albini, namely his daring interior design, where the essential language of Modernism had been adopted in order to present both Gothic sculpture and Old Masters painting, had created such a sober and “neutral” atmosphere that the works of art were finally able to be “the absolute protagonists of the museum’s space.”5 As is well known, Franco Albini’s refurbishment at Palazzo Bianco marks the beginning of a series of important interventions which the architect did in museums in Genoa and Milan during the 1950s and 1960s. In the same years, the Venetian Carlo Scarpa reorganized a number of collections according to analogous criteria from Sicily to Veneto. Just like Albini, Scarpa worked almost solely within historic buildings, transforming their monumental rooms in beautifully innovative spaces, where the works of art were surrounded by an “aura” which was both timeless and compelling.6 Indeed, thanks to the work by Franco Albini and Carlo Scarpa, as well by a few other architects of their generation, from the 1950s on Italian museum professionals increasingly felt that a new era had started for their institutions.7 As the enthusiastic review of Palazzo Bianco by Giulio Carlo Argan of 1952 had anticipated, museum directors, as well as many architects, shared the opinion that the exceptional esthetic quality of the new Italian museography was going to compensate the delay with which the concept of “Modern museum” had reached Italy in comparison to the rest of Europe, not to mention the United States.8 According to this view, which is still shared by most scholarship, the work by Albini and Scarpa seems to have developed out of the blue, as if during the first half of the twentieth century Italian museums followed either the most traditional canon of nineteenth-century galleries (with rooms en enfilade, and a rather crowded accrochage), or the evocative model of “historicizing” reconstructions à la Wilhelm von Bode.9 In fact, this view holds true in general

5 “Ogni particolare è stato minutamente studiato e condotto alla massima semplificazione, affinché le opere d’arte fossero veramente le sole protagoniste dello spazio del museo.” Argan 1952 (as fn. 1), p. 26. 6 For an overview of the museums by Albini and Scarpa see Huber 1997 (as fn. 2). 7 According to Paolo Morello, more than 150 museums were reconstructed and reopened between 1945 and 1953, and the phenomenon does not appear to have diminished in the following years. Morello 1997 (as fn. 4), pp. 399–400. 8 Ibid. See also Luca Basso Peressut, Il Museo Moderno. Architettura e museografia da Perret a Kahn, Milan: Lybra Immagine, 2005. 9 The Epochenräume which Bode inaugurated at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum (1904) corresponded to an exhibit model which was already known in Italy since the last decades of the 19th century, and which may have influenced Bode himself. See in particular the neo-medieval exhibit design at





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terms, yet there are a few remarkable exceptions: in this essay I will briefly discuss the museum philosophy of Guglielmo Pacchioni (Pavullo 1882–Milan 1969), an art historian who was responsible for a few of the most innovative refurbishments dating back to the 1930s. By pointing out how deeply his pioneering work was influenced by the journal Mouseion, I will argue that the latter functioned as a powerful means of transnational culture, playing a major role in the diffusion of the concept of “Modern museum” throughout Europe.

The Italian Contribution to the Journal Mouseion In 1926 museums from all over the world started being represented, and somehow coordinated, by the Office International des Musées (International Museums Office), an institution which had developed within the Institut de Coopération Intellectuelle (International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation) of the newly born Société des Nations (League of Nations).10 One year later, in 1927, the International Museums Office, which is nothing else but the forerunner of today’s ICOM, begun publishing Mouseion, a journal which immediately became a lively forum of discussion involving museum directors, curators, and architects from a number of different countries. The main idea was to compare as many opinions and experiences as possible in the effort of understanding in which way “the concept of modern museum”11 could be translated into concrete architectural forms, and into practical systems of organization. Between the late 1920s and early 1930s, architects such as Auguste Perret, Richard Bach, and Fritz Schumacher discussed their museum projects, both ideal and real, precisely in the pages of Mouseion;12 in the same journal, museum professionals such as José Alvarez de Sotomayor from the Prado, Horace Jayne from the Philadelphia Museum of Arts, Theodor Demmler as well as Wolfgang Volbach from the Kaiser

the Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan, which opened as casa museo in 1881: Lavinia Galli Michero and Fernando Mazzocca (eds.), Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli. L’uomo e il collezionista del Risorgimento, Turin: Allemandi, 2011. 10 Jean Jacques Renoliet, L’UNESCO oubliè. La Société des Nations et la Coopération Intellectuelle (1919–1946), Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1999. See also Christina Kott’s chapter on the International Museums Office in this volume. 11 Henry Focillon, La conception modern des musées, in: Actes du Congrès d’Historie de l’Art, Paris: Les Presses Universitaires de France, 1923, pp. 85–94. Focillon’s paper at the XI Art History Congress (Paris, September 26-October 5, 1921) is a milestone within the debate over the “Modern museum” in Europe. 12 Auguste Perret, Le Musée Moderne, in: Mouseion III, 9 (1929), pp. 225–35; Richard Bach, Le musée moderne. Son plan, ses functions, ibid. IV, 10 (1930), pp. 14–19; Fritz Schumacher, La construction moderne des musées, ibid., pp. 111–16. 



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Fried­rich Museum in Berlin illustrated the criteria according to which they had reorganized their collections.13 Significantly enough, the role that Italy played within the pages of Mouseion, at least during the journal’s first decade, is rather contradictory: on the one hand, the essays by Italian authors are quite numerous, and from the very beginning; on the other hand, these contributions mainly focus on issues of conservation and restoration, while they rarely discuss new specific installations. And when they do so, they present examples which suggest a very traditional image of Italian museums, as if the ongoing debate on the “Modern museum” had never reached the peninsula.14 Two essays are quite representative of this position, namely the “Reorganization of the National Galleries and Museums in Italy” by Franceso Sapori, which appeared in the very first issue of Mouseion, dating 1927; and the article by Gustavo Giovannoni “Historic Buildings and the Needs of Modern Museography,” published in 1934.15 In theory, Sapori and Giovannoni shared a few basic ideas with the new displaying philosophy of international museology, as they both claimed to support the need of making a selection of the works on exhibit. In practice, however, their view was definitely more conservative: Sapori repeatedly argued that art collections hosted inside historical buildings could be best exhibited by evoking “une maison habitée,”16 that is by recreating the “lived-in atmosphere” of an aristocratic mansion. In today’s eyes, this is hardly synonymous of a sober exhibit design. As for Giovannoni, his position is more ambiguous since he indifferently praised examples of neo-Renaissance exhibit design as well as more moderns solutions; in the end, however, he published more photographs of the “historicizing” group.17 In light of this rather conservative museum perspective, which was certainly imbued of political implications,18 it is no wonder that in his essay Giovannoni did not mention of the recent installation of the Galleria Sabauda in Turin, the Royal Picture

13 José M. Alvarez de Sotomayor, La transformation récente du Prado à Madrid, ibid. I, 3 (1927), pp. 196–200; Horace H. F. Jayne, Le nouveau Musée d’art de Philadelphie, ibid. II, 4 (1928), pp. 19–25; Theodor Demmler, La réorganization du département de la sculpture italienne au Kaiser-FriedrichMuseum de Berlin, ibid. VIII, 25–26 (1934), pp. 78–83; Wolfgang Volbach, La nouvelle présentation des collections d’art primitif chrétien, byzantin et du moyen âge italien au Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum de Berlin, ibid. VIII, 27–28 (1934), pp. 135–38. 14 Marisa Dalai Emiliani, Per una critica della museografia del Novecento in Italia. Il “saper mostrare” di Carlo Scarpa, Venice: Marsilio, 2008, spec. pp. 34–49. 15 Francesco Sapori, Réorganisation des Galeries et Musées nationaux d’Italie, in: Mouseion I, 3 (1927), pp. 201–21; Gustavo Giovannoni, Les édifices anciens et les exigences de la muséographie moderne, ibid. VIII, 25–26 (1934), pp. 17–23. 16 Sapori 1927 (as fn. 15), p. 204. 17 I refer to the photos of Palazzo Venezia in Rome (pl. II) and of Palazzo Ducale in Urbino (pl. IV) versus those of the more modern exhibit in Palazzo Ducale in Mantova (pl. III). All these museums were reorganized during the 1920s. Giovannoni 1934 (as fn. 15). 18 Undoubtedly one of the components of the neo-medieval and neo-Renaissance revival of the





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Gallery of the House of Savoy, which was hosted in a prestigious historic building.19 Inaugurated in 1832, and newly installed at the end of the nineteenth century, the museum had undergone a thorough and rather pioneering reorganization between 1929 and 1932. This was done under the supervision of Guglielmo Pacchioni, who at that time was both director of the Galleria Sabauda and Superintendent to the Fine Arts for the regions of Piedmont and Liguria.20 In fact, the second issue of Mouseion from 1934 (i.e. the one following the issue where Giovannoni had published his own essay), includes an article in which Pacchioni himself discussed “The principles of reorganization of the Galleria Sabauda in Turin.”21 This article stands out as exceptionally innovative if compared to the rather traditional view of Italian museology which had been represented in the pages of Mouseion up to that moment. The journal itself must have been aware of this, as Pacchioni’s essay is the very first extensive monographic study of an Italian museum which was published there; furthermore, the number of illustrations accompanying it, ten black and white photos, was exceptionally large for the editorial standards of the time.22 To the best of my knowledge, this article has not received specific attention so far in spite of the fact that it illustrates the practical criteria and the museum philosophy which its author followed in reorganizing not only the Galleria Sabauda, but also the other museographical interventions he directed in the 1930s, namely those for the municipal collections of both Novara (1934) and Pesaro (1936). Indeed, Pacchioni’s article for Mouseion includes a long theoretical excursus which he republished, with very minor changes, in a contribution for Bollettino d’arte of 1937 where he discussed the reorganization he had just completed for the Musei Civici in Pesaro.23 Significantly enough, this is the only museum refurbishment by Pacchioni which still survives.24

1920s was the Fascist government’s self-identification with Italy’s greatest past. Fabrizio Lanza (ed.), Museologia italiana negli anni Venti. Il museo di ambientazione, Feltre: Comune di Feltre, 2003. 19 Built in 1678 on a project by Guarino Guarini, the Palazzo dell’Accademia delle Scienze was completed in the 19th century. Paola Astrua and Carla Enrica Spantigati, Servire all’incremento delle belle arti. Da Real Galleria a Galleria Sabauda, in: La Galleria Sabauda. La Pinacoteca dell’Accademia Albertina, Turin: Allemandi, 2008, pp. 3–16. 20 Paola Astrua, Guglielmo Pacchioni, in: Dizionario biografico dei Soprintendenti Storici dell’Arte (1904–1974), Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2007, pp. 434–45. 21 Guglielmo Pacchioni, Les principles de réorganisation de la Galleria Sabauda de Turin, in: Mouseion VIII, 27–28 (1934), pp. 124–34. 22 Ibid., pl. XII–XV. 23 Guglielmo Pacchioni, Galleria e Museo della ceramica di Pesaro. Trasporto e ordinamento della nuova sede, in: Bollettino d’arte, XXXI (1937), pp. 116–35. In 1933 Pacchioni moved from Turin to Ancona having been promoted Superintendent of the Marches and Dalmatia. Astrua 2007 (as fn. 20), pp. 441–42. 24 The Galleria Sabauda was given a new exhibit design by Piero Sanpaolesi in 1952–59. Astrua and Spantigati 2008 (as fn. 19), pp. 12–13. As for Pacchioni’s work for the Musei Civici of Novara, hosted in the Broletto, see later on in this essay.



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Since the articles for Mouseion (1934) and Bollettino d’arte (1937) are identical in structure, and quite similar in content, it will suffice here to concentrate on the earlier essay, which was written in 1933.25

Guglielmo Pacchioni’s Museum Philosophy Pacchioni started his article for Mouseion by listing the faults of the Galleria Sabauda’s installation of 1899: at that time the collection had been divided according to regional schools in the most rigid way, and had been distributed along a sequence of rooms which were monotonously similar both in size and lighting-conditions. Furthermore, that accrochage had been extremely crowded, and had followed the criterion of symmetry in an almost compulsory way: as Pacchioni pointed out, this had ended up bringing together some of the paintings in a pretty arbitrary way. Finally, almost all the walls had been painted in a deep red color, “without which, until a few years ago, it seemed impossible to hang any painting.”26 After this introduction, Pacchioni moved to illustrate the principles that he had followed in reorganizing the gallery. The main criterion, he wrote, had been the esthetic one, and by “esthetic criterion” he meant the effort of enhancing the timeless beauty of the works of art, so that this beauty could appeal to, and be understood by, the simple museum visitor, not just the scholar.27 According to Pacchioni, who at this point raised his discussion to considerations which are both practical and theoretical, this goal could be reached by organizing museums’ collections in two different sections. The first section, or group of rooms, was meant for the general public: it would present a selection of the best pictures, and would follow a chronological order, albeit in a rather flexible way. Here the accrochage would be sparse and low, the walls would be painted in light colors, and the pieces of furniture would be soberly modern. Pacchioni explained that in this way the new museum would avoid two mistakes which are frequently made (and there is no doubt that at this point he was thinking about a number of contemporary

25 A first draft of the article is a typed report, dated April 1933, that can be found in Pacchioni’s personal archive now at the Istituto per la Storia dell’Arte Lombarda (ISAL, FGP, i.e. Fondo Guglielmo Pacchioni). See Guglielmo Pacchioni, Relazione sull’ordinamento Pinacoteca per il Concorso Soprintendenti 29 agosto 1933, in ISAL, FGP, 6/1; Ferdinando Zanzottera, Il Fondo Guglielmo Pacchioni nell’Archivio ISAL e la salvaguardia del patrimonio artistico durante la seconda guerra mondiale, in: Rivista dell’Istituto per la Storia dell’Arte Lombarda, I (2010), pp. 109–16. 26 “Murs à fond rouge, sans lesquels, jusqu’à ces dernières années, il semblait impossible de suspendre un tableau”. Pacchioni 1934 (as fn. 21), p. 124. For the original Italian text see Pacchioni 1933 (as fn. 25), f. 2. 27 Pacchioni 1934 (as fn. 21), pp. 126–27.





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examples in Italy): first of all, visitors would not be confronted with a sequence of galleries reproducing the “cold character” of a scientific catalogue, therefore they would not feel bored nor affected by museum fatigue;28 secondly, visitors would not enter rooms which pretended to reproduce the atmosphere of a lived-in mansion, a solution which ended up relegating works of art to a merely decorative function. Pacchioni was particularly critical about the latter solution, finding that any form of pseudohistoric reconstruction not only generated confusion in the general public, but also stimulated the “bad taste of the well-off bourgeoisie.”29 So much for the first section of the museum, the one for the general public. As far as the second section was concerned, Pacchioni had planned it as a group of “study rooms”: these were smaller in number (6), but much more crowded than the other galleries (19): in these rooms, scholars would find movable ladders for examining the pictures in the upper rows, cabinets full of books, standing folders presenting the most recent journals, and large tables for reading and writing (fig. 11).30 By now, anybody familiar with the theories of the “Modern museum” which started circulating in Europe, particularly in France, in the first decades of the twentieth century, will have detected the echo of those ideas in the article by Pacchioni, as well as in his reorganization of the Galleria Sabauda (and, by extension, of the Musei Civici of both Novara and Pesaro). For instance, “the esthetic criterion” discussed by Pacchioni strongly recalls Henri Focillon’s idealistic concept of the museum experience (1921): this concept implied that museums play an important role in society since it is precisely here that “the education of good taste” takes place. Therefore, organizing them in a visitor-friendly and stimulating way becomes a kind of moral duty: the exhibit design should be elegant and essential, and any form of historical reconstruction should be avoided as a cheap and “rather vulgar mistake.”31 As far as Pacchioni’s practical criteria of reorganization are concerned, his division of the museum in two groups of rooms – one for the general public, the other for the scholars – corresponds to the criterion of selection of the works on exhibit which was one of the founding principles of the theory of the “Modern museum” as it had been illustrated by Auguste Perret, among others, in a seminal article for Mouseion of 1929.32 The same can be said for Pacchioni’s concern about differentiating space and lightening conditions according to the different nuclei of the collection, as well as for his efforts to avoid

28 Ibid., p. 128. 29 “Nous pensons […] que ces mêmes musées sont en grande partie responsables du mauvais goût régnant surtout dans la bourgeoisie aisée”. Ibid., p. 129. For the original Italian text see Pacchioni 1937 (as fn. 23), pp. 124–25. 30 Pacchioni 1934 (as fn. 21), p. 134. 31 Focillon 1923 (as fn. 11), pp. 90–93. 32 Perret 1929 (as fn. 12).



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Fig. 11: Turin, Galleria Sabauda, Study Rooms, 1932: Plate XV from Pacchioni’s article in Mouseion of 1934





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generating boredom, confusion and tiredness in his visitors. In fact, his daring choice of using linoleum to cover some of the galleries’ pavements in Novara and Pesaro was inspired, most likely, by Perret’s suggestion that this material can alleviate museum fatigue (fig. 12).33

Fig. 12: Pesaro, Musei Civici, Salone del Giambellino, 1936: the geometric decoration of Pacchioni’s linoleum pavement echoes the shape of Bellini’s altarpiece

Pacchioni’s Sources In light of the fact that Italy’s contemporary museum landscape was pretty conservative, both in theory and in practice, one wonders which source may possibly have inspired Guglielmo Pacchioni to develop such an innovative perspective. As his personal archive demonstrates, he could not count on an international network of personal relationships: although his French was excellent, and his English was quite good, his correspondence with international scholars and museum professionals throughout his life was relatively limited.34 As a matter of fact, in his article for Mou-

33 Ibid., p. 235. 34 Significantly enough, an undated address book of Pacchioni, which is entitled “Art Scholars” (Studiosi d’arte), includes only the names of Italian colleagues. ISAL, FGP (as fn. 25), 4/390 (busta 21, f. 7).



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seion, as well as in the one for Bollettino d’arte, Pacchioni himself candidly admitted that the principles which he had followed in reorganizing the museums in Turin and Pesaro were not new, nor had been invented by him. These principles, he wrote, “have been discussed during the last years in conferences, books, journals, so that presenting them more at length here, would mean nothing but summarizing opinions which are already well-known.”35 A few lines below this statement, Pacchioni indicated more explicitly where one could read about those principles, in particular about “the need of giving the works of art more room and breath,” therefore about the idea of dividing museum galleries in two groups.36 In his article for Mouseion (1934), he advised to look “at the studies of the International Museums Office, and in particular at the works presented at the recent Conference of Madrid.” Yet later on, in his essay for Bollettino d’arte (1937) he recommended more specifically to “flip through the issues of Mouseion, or to read the results of the international survey on public galleries.” Considering that the Enquête international sur la réforme des galleries publiques, a survey directed by Georges Wildenstein, was published only in 1932,37 and that the famous Conference of Madrid took place in the fall of 1934, Pacchioni must have relied mainly on the journal Mouseion while conceiving his reorganization of the Galleria Sabauda, a work which was conducted between 1929 and 1932. This is confirmed by an interview that Pacchioni gave to the Corriere della sera on occasion of its inauguration: in it, he proudly stated that Turin picture gallery was the first Italian museum where the new exhibit criteria published by the journal Mouseion had been applied systematically.38 As Gianluca Kannés has recently pointed out, the Soprintendenza in Turin is one of the very few offices of Italian public administration to own every issue of this journal, including its very first five years, starting from 1927.39 Since those were the years in which Pacchioni held leading positions at the Soprintendenza of Piedmont and Liguria, he must have followed the publications and the activity of the International Museums Office with great interest. Indeed, his intervention at the Galleria Sabauda must be understood in the context of the general redistribution of

35 “Criteri non nuovi, né miei personali; discussi anzi ampiamente in questi ultimi anni in congressi, libri, riviste, così che il dirne ora più lungamente si ridurrebbe a riassumere opinioni già note”. Pacchioni 1937 (as fn. 23), p. 123. See also Pacchioni 1934 (as fn. 21), p. 127. 36 “La necessità di dare alle opere d’arte maggior spazio e respiro togliendo dalle sale di esposizione i pezzi d’interesse secondario e suddividendo le gallerie in due sezioni è stata sostenuta e difesa da tutti, o quasi, i direttori dei musei d’Europa e d’America”. Pacchioni 1937 (as fn. 23), p. 123; Pacchioni 1934 (as fn. 21), p. 127. 37 Georges Wildenstein (ed.), Musées. Enquête internationale sur la réforme des galleries publiques, Paris: Cahiers de la République des lettres, des Sciencs et des arts, XIII, [1932]. 38 Corriere della sera, October 1, 1932, quoted in Gianluca Kannés, Vittorio Viale e la partecipazione italiana alla Conferenza Internazionale di Museografia di Madrid del 1934, in: Palazzo Madama, studi e notizie. Rivista annuale del Museo Civico d’Arte Antica di Torino II, 1 (2011), pp. 70–79. 39 Ibid., p. 70.





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Turin’s municipal and state collections, which was promoted precisely at the end of the 1920s: although most of the projects under discussion ended up not being brought forth, they confirm that the International Museums Office had a truly deep impact on the city’s museum professionals.40 In fact, while Pacchioni was completing his reorganization of the Galleria Sabauda, his colleague and friend Vittorio Viale began transforming also Turin’s Galleria d’Arte Moderna according to “the modern principles of a clear, sober, and intelligible exhibit design,” and he too had the honor of presenting his work on the pages of Mouseion.41 Thanks to the activity of the International Museums Office, and to its journal in particular, not only did the criteria of the “Modern museum” opened a breach in Italy’s conservative landscape, but also the very first modern museums in Italy seem to have been better appreciated on an international than on a national level. Once more, it is Pacchioni’s work at the Galleria Sabauda which provides the best example of such contradictory “fortune”: in spring 1934 Euripide Foundoukidis, the head of the International Museums Office, had invited Pacchioni to participate to the Conference of Madrid which the Office was planning for the fall, asking him to deliver a paper about the excellent work he had done at the Turin picture gallery.42 In spite of the fact that Pacchioni had enthusiastically accepted this invitation, the Ministry did not allow him to be part of the Italian delegation, and designated Roberto Paribeni and Ugo Ojetti as its official speakers: needless to say, they both represented the most conservative side of Italian museology.43 Yet, when the Office decided to publish the conference’s results in two monumental volumes (1935),44 Italy’s contribution was represented mainly by Pacchioni’s Galleria Sabauda: together with the Pinacoteca Vaticana, the Sabauda was the most illustrated among Italian museums with as many as five photographs (immediately followed by Vittorio Viale’s Galleria d’Arte Moderna, with three photos).45 Furthermore, the appendix to Chapter VII, dedicated to “The different systems of presentation of the collections”, was nothing but a summary of the article that Pacchioni had published in Mouseion the year before.46 Ironically enough,

40 Ibid., p. 76. 41 Vittorio Viale, La Réorganisation de la Galerie d’Art Moderne de Turin, in: Mouseion VIII, 25–26 (1934), pp. 111–12. Viale’s article was much shorter than the one by Pacchioni, but it was published one issue before. 42 The letters between Foundoukidis and Pacchioni date April 9 and April 15, 1934. ISAL/FGP (as fn. 25), 4/131. 43 Dalai 2008 (as fn. 14); Kannées 2011 (as fn. 38). 44 Muséographie, Architecture et aménagement des musées d’art. Conférence internationale d’études Madrid 1934, 2 vols., Paris: Société des Nations. Office International des Musées. Institut International de Coopération Intellectuelle, [1935]. 45 Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 207, 208, 230; vol. 2, pp. 356, 426. The refurbishment of the Pinacoteca Vaticana presented a number of interesting technical solutions, yet its exhibit design was pretty traditional. 46 Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 246–47.



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while these editorial decisions were being taken in Paris, in Novara the exhibit design which Pacchioni had conceived for the municipal collections was being dismantled as a consequence of the harsh criticism expressed by the numerous supporters of a more traditional approach.47 In the meantime, Pacchioni had been forced to leave the Soprintendenza of Piedmont and to move to the one of the Marches,48 where in 1935–36 he further developed his modern exhibit criteria not only at the Musei Civici of Pesaro, but also at the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino. In the early 1950s, he engaged in the reorganization of the Uffizi in Florence with the same innovative enthusiasm. It is difficult to say why his work has received little attention so far, yet this can definitely change thanks to a transnational perspective.

47 Silvana Garegnani, Novara. Il restauro del Broletto tra riproposizione stilistica e progetto museale, in: Ananke 17–18 (1997), pp. 111–23. 48 Pacchioni’s promotion as Superintendent of Ancona, which he fierily opposed, was probably the consequence of the fact that he had become persona non grata on a political as well as on a professional level. Astrua 2007 (as fn. 20), pp. 440–43.



Close Inspections of the “Other.” Commissions and Experts on Tour

Thomas Adam

Cultural Excursions The Transnational Transfer of Museums in the Transatlantic World1 From the 1820s, wealthy Americans made the cities of the German Confederation their favored destination for purposes of education and enjoyment. Among the American visitors were students such as George Ticknor and John Lothrop Motley who attended the University of Göttingen as well as intellectuals and politicians such as Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and George Bancroft who came for the benefits of the rich cultural and social life in cities such as Dresden and Berlin.2 Industrialization had made some Americans very rich. The number of millionaires in the United States rose slowly but steady from just 20 in 1850 to more than 4,000 by 1892 and approximately 16,000 by 1916.3 While these individuals had amassed incredible riches, they often lacked the social graces which supposedly come with wealth.4 German cities provided these newly rich a source and training ground in social manners and helped newly rich Americans to acquire social etiquette and cultural education. Dresden’s royal court and the city’s nobility was very open and welcoming to all wealthy Ameri-

1 This chapter summarizes the arguments from chapter 1 “Cultural Excursions: Museums, Art Galleries, and Libraries in a Transatlantic World” from my book Buying Respectability. Philanthropy and Urban Society in Transnational Perspective, 1840s to 1930s, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009, pp. 13–38. It is in fact a condensed version of this chapter and large segments of this chapter are reprinted here. This chapter appears courtesy of Indiana University Press. 2 Konrad Jarausch, American Students in Germany, 1815–1914. The Structure of German and U.S. Matriculants at Göttingen University, in: Henry Geitz, Jürgen Heideking, Jurgen Herbst (eds.), German Influences on Education in the United States to 1917, Washington D.C and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 195–12; Carl Diehl, German Scholarship 1770–1870, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1978; Jurgen Herbst, The German Historical School in American Scholarship. A Study in the Transfer of Culture, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1965; Anja Becker, For the Sake of Old Leipzig Days… Academic Networks of American Students at a German University, 1781– 1914, Ph.D. thesis University of Leipzig, 2006; Eberhard Brüning, “Saxony Is a Prosperous and Happy Country”. American Views of the Kingdom of Saxony in the Nineteenth Century, in: Thomas Adam, Ruth Gross (eds.), Traveling between Worlds. German-American Encounters, College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2006, pp. 20–50; Ashley Sides, “That Humane and Advanced Civilization.” Interpreting Americans’ Values from their Praise of Saxony, 1800–1850, in: Thomas Adam, Nils H. Roemer (eds.), Crossing the Atlantic. Travel and Travel Writing in Modern Times, College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2011, pp. 11–49; Thomas Adam, Gisela Mettele (eds.), Two Boston Brahmins in Goethe’s Germany. The Travel Journals of Anna and George Ticknor, Lanham et al.: Lexington Books, 2009. 3 Olivier Zunz, Philanthropy in America. A History, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012, p. 8. 4 Judith Martin, Star-Spangled Manners, New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003.

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can visitors who made that city the prime destination for educated Americans and those who aspired to become part of the High Society. In the last third of the nineteenth century the daughters of newly rich Americans were even married to titled but poor European noblemen. These contacts from visiting to marrying contributed to the creation of a bourgeois-noble transatlantic upper class that embraced the value system of the European nobility and introduced European pre-modern traditions and concepts to American society.5 Stays of six to twenty-four months in Dresden were not uncommon for American visitors who enjoyed a favorable exchange rate and a city in which accommodation and participation in cultural life was quite affordable.6 Yet, Dresden was also an eminent cultural center with its gallery of paintings where the famous Sistine Madonna by Raphael is on display. Among art experts and connoisseurs, Dresden – affectionately called the “Florence on the Elbe” – was considered to be the most impressive place of art north of the Alps.

The Founding of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City After decades of having to cross the Atlantic in order to enjoy a rich cultural life, New York’s High Society became impatient with the quality of urban life in the New World. At the end of the 1860s members of the exclusive Union League Club took a lead in the creation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (fig. 13). Many of its members were men with colonial (Dutch and English) names such as Stuyvesant, Beekman, Rhinelander, and Winthrop (the so-called Knickerbocker families). They claimed that their ancestors were among the first Europeans to reach the shores of the New World. They belonged to New York’s leading circles and had made their money in real estate and banking.7 To ensure the social exclusivity of this political and social club, membership requirements limited access. Candidates for admission had to “be proposed by one member, seconded by another, and bulletined, before reference to the committee whose business it [was] to investigate as to qualifications or eligibility. At every monthly meeting of the club, it [was] the duty of this body to report upon the names of candidates submitted to its consideration, after which the members vote[d] by ballot

5 Sven Beckert, The Monied Metropolis. New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850–1896, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 6 Nadine Zimmerli, “The Rendezvous of all Nations”. Cosmopolitan Encounters in the German City of Dresden before World War I, Ph.D. thesis University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2011. 7 Will Irwin, Earl Chapin May, Joseph Hotchkiss, A History of the Union League Club of New York City, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1952, p. 24.





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Fig. 13: Opening Reception in the Picture Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 681 Fifth Avenue, February 20, 1872. Wood-engraving published in Frank Leslie’s Weekly, 1872

upon names thus recommended.”8 The Grand Tour to Europe for cultural education was a shared experience among its members. After John Jay suggested the establishment of a Metropolitan Art Museum in New York City in his speech given to Americans in Paris celebrating the ninetieth anniversary of American independence in 1866,9 William Cullen Bryant, a founding member of the Union League Club, became involved in the attempts made by this club to popularize such an enterprise among his peers. He accepted George P. Putnam’s invitation to preside over a meeting on November 23, 1869 in the Theatre of the Union League

8 Francis Gerry Fairfield, The Clubs of New York. With an Account of the Origin, Progress, Present Condition and Membership of the Leading Clubs, an Essay on New York Club Life, New York: Henry L. Hinton, Publishers, 1873, pp. 114–15. 9 Winifred E. Howe, A History of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. With a Chapter on the Early Institutions of Art in New York, New York: Gilliss Press, 1913, pp. 100–01; Leo Lerman, The Museum. One Hundred Years and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Viking, 1969, p. 12.



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Club to which all individuals interested in establishing an art museum were invited.10 Some three hundred members of the Union League Club, the National Academy of Design, the New York Historical Society, the Century, the Manhattan, and other social clubs, attended this meeting. In his introductory speech, Bryant reminded his fellow citizens that in terms of cultural life and atmosphere New York City could not compete with even the tiniest European city or kingdom: Yet beyond the sea there is the little kingdom of Saxony, which, with an area less than that of Massachusetts, and a population but little larger, possesses a Museum of the Fine Arts marvelously rich, which no man who visits the continent of Europe is willing to own that he has not seen. There is Spain, a third-rate power of Europe and poor besides, with a museum of Fine Arts at her capital, the opulence and extent of which absolutely bewilder the visitor. I will not speak of France or of England, conquering nations, which have gathered their treasures of art in part from regions overrun by their armies; nor yet of Italy, the fortunate inheritor of so many glorious productions of her own artists. But there are Holland and Belgium, kingdoms almost too small to be heeded by the greater powers of Europe in the consultations which decide the destinies of nations, and these little kingdoms have their public collections of art, the resort of admiring visitors from all parts of the civilized world.11

His emotional speech was followed by an enthusiastic but informed talk about art museums and the organizing principles of art collections by George Fisk Comfort, an 1857 graduate of Wesleyan College who had spent nearly five years (1860–1865) in Europe.12 He traveled extensively from Trieste to Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain, Austria, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Great Britain. Not much is known about his travels or about how much time he spent in each country and which universities and museums he visited. However, we know from his letters and notes that he spent years in Germany. In a letter to Reverend John Makan (Allegheny College) in 1866, Comfort stated that he had spent “nearly five years in traveling through most of the classic lands of ancient and medieval art, studying the monuments and museums, and devoting nearly half of my time to formal study in the German universities.”13

10 William Cullen Bryant II, Thomas G. Voss (eds.), The Letters of William Cullen Bryant. Volume V, 1865–1871, New York: Fordham University Press, 1992, pp. 344–45; Charles H. Brown, William Cullen Bryant, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971, p. 486. 11 Smithsonian Archives of American Art: George Comfort Deposit Reel 4276 T 6814 (Microfilm): A Metropolitan Art Museum in the City of New York: Proceedings of a meeting held at the Theatre of the Union League Club, Tuesday Evening, November 23, 1869, New York: Printed for the Committee, 1869, p. 9. 12 Barabara Hall Cruttenden, George Fisk Comfort. A Biography, M.A. thesis Syracuse University, 1956. 13 Smithsonian Archives of American Art: George Comfort Deposit Reel 4274 T 6812 (Microfilm): Letter from George Fisk Comfort to Reverend John Makan, dated April 14th, 1866.





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In his speech, Comfort pointed to the museums in Kensington and Berlin as possible models for the Metropolitan Museum of New York City: The Kensington Museum has been organized within twenty years, and it contains a large number of casts of works of sculpture and architecture and many works of art that are owned by wealthy people in England, left there as loans for the inspection of the public without cost. They may be reclaimed by them or their heirs, but probably the larger portion will be given or bequeathed to the museum. This museum also contains a large collection of works, illustrating the application of the arts to industry. And there are schools connected with the museum – it is an institution of science as well.14

As this passage shows, Comfort favored the connection between the display of artistic work and artistic education. More importantly, he was very concerned with the property rights of the artistic works. And although the Kensington Museum provided some inspiration for the founding of the Metropolitan Museum,15 Comfort’s eyes were fixed on the museums in Berlin and other German cities. He continued his speech with high praise for the museums of Berlin as the largest and most impressive cultural institutions of his day: The foundation of the old museum building was laid in the year 1828; and the building was finished some four years after. The foundation of the new museum building was laid in the year 1852, and was finished two or three years after. This building contains today the largest collection of casts of works of Sculpture of any museum in the world. There is no place where a person can study to more advantage the progress of Sculpture, from its first appearance in Egypt down to its appearance in Greece and through the middle ages, and through the modern times, than he can in Berlin, and by all means of this valuable collection of casts. The casts that are in that museum, if I am rightly informed, cost about 300,000 thalers, which is equivalent to about 300,000 dollars in our present paper money.16

Comfort learned to appreciate both museums during his stay in that city between 1863 and 1865, “where he pursued his studies in the University, the Academy of Fine Arts and the Royal Library. He was received in social circles of leading artists, critics, connoisseurs and the professors of art and archeology of that great literary capital of the world, as Cornelius, Kaulbach, Lepsius, Waagen, Gerhart, Piper, von Ranke and others.”17 In the aforementioned letter to Makan, Comfort pointed out that he had “paid much attention to the organization of academies of art and museums of art.”18

14 Smithsonian Archives of American Art 1869 (as fn. 11), p. 15. 15 Steven Conn, Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876–1926, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998, pp. 195–97. 16 Smithsonian Archives of American Art 1869 (as fn. 11), pp. 15–16. 17 Syracuse University Archive, Comfort Family Papers Box 1: George F. Comfort Biographical Material, Dean Comfort’s Departure. 18 Smithsonian Archives of American Art 1866 (as fn. 13).



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While he studied in Berlin, Comfort visited art museums in Nuremberg, Munich, Leipzig, Dresden, Posen, and Bremen in order to collect information about the organization of art institutions and the objects shown.19 Traveling to these cities, Comfort encountered a rich, cultural urban life which included art museums, private art exhibitions, and art associations. As Manuel Frey pointed out, by 1850 nearly every German city had its own art association (Kunstverein).20 Wealthy citizens founded these associations to organize art exhibitions, support artists, and create art museums independent of royal/ducal control. Within the context of nineteenth-century German society, art associations represented the drive for bourgeois emancipation from a feudal monopoly over art. By establishing their own art scene burghers claimed a leading position within urban society, and by financing artistic endeavors, they proved their economic power and their desire to produce a new culture. Such art associations represented a collective approach to philanthropy, since they could easily bring together several hundred members. The Leipzig Kunstverein, for example, received support from close to one thousand members as early as 1837. Membership in these art associations was often divided into various classes according to social status and the willingness to participate in the funding of the association. In the case of the Leipzig art association two classes had been established: the class of share-holders (Aktionäre) who paid three Taler a year and the class of subscribers (Abonnenten) who paid one Taler and eight Groschen a year.21 Influenced by what he experienced in Germany, Comfort expressed himself as ‘overwhelmingly impressed by the vast gulf, wider and deeper than the Atlantic Ocean, that separated the institutions and conditions of education and culture in continental Europe from those in America’, speaking especially of that time, the early sixties. And he felt impelled to dedicate his life, as far as his circumstances should permit, to awaking a more active interest in higher culture, especially in esthetic and artistic lines, in his native country, particularly by establishing institutions, as schools and museums, for promoting and diffusing artistic education and culture in the people at large.22

19 Syracuse University Archive, Comfort Family Papers Box 1: George F. Comfort Biographical Material, Sketch of my life (handwritten account by George Fisk Comfort). 20 Manuel Frey, Macht und Moral des Schenkens. Staat und bürgerliche Mäzene vom späten 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart, Zwickau: Fannei & Walz, 1999, p. 66; James J. Sheehan, Museums in the German Art World from the End of the Old Regime to the Rise of Modernism, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 101–11. 21 Margaret Eleanor Menninger, Art and Civic Patronage in Leipzig, 1848–1914, Ph.D. thesis Harvard University, 1998, pp. 90–91, 94–99; Anett Müller, Der Leipziger Kunstverein und das Museum der bildenden Künste. Materialien einer Geschichte (1836–1886/87), Leipzig: Nouvelle Alliance, 1995, pp. 44–51, 86–93. 22 Syracuse University Archive, Comfort Family Papers Box 1: George F. Comfort Biographical Material, Biographical Sketch of Dr. George F. Comfort, pp. 4–5.





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His handwritten Address before the Syracuse Chamber of Commerce regarding a Museum of Fine Arts (1897) not only provides some details about what Comfort encountered in Germany but also gives a plan for the establishment of a fine arts museum. In this address, Comfort emphasized the importance of museums for attracting visitors from other countries. He noted that most American travelers after having arrived in Hamburg or Bremen immediately left for Dresden or Munich. Dresden attracted a large number of cultured men because of its famous art galleries. Large colonies of wealthy, transient residents from Russia, Great Britain and the United States sprang up in the capital of Saxony. Comfort reminded his audience that “the possession of Raphael’s Sistine Madonna alone, perhaps the most pleasing and popular picture in the world, gives luster to the fame of the city of Dresden, and adds to the material wealth of the city.”23 Although Comfort was very impressed by the exceptional collection of the Dresden art gallery, he recognized that it would not inspire similar institutions in the United States, since a nobility was absent and wealthy men of his days were little inclined to dedicate enormous amounts of money toward an art museum. In a letter to George P. Putnam, chairman of the organizing committee of the Metropolitan Museum, Comfort suggested several German museums (Gotha, Berlin, Nuremberg) as possible models, but he mentioned the Leipzig museum of art before all others.24 He probably visited the Leipzig museum during his stay in Germany. It was opened to the public in December of 1858 – two years before Comfort arrived in Europe – and displayed the paintings, casts, and statutes purchased by the Leipzig art association. While the museum building had been financed by silk merchant Heinrich Adolf Schletter, the members of the art association donated the art objects displayed in the museum.25 Comfort recommended forming a membership organization, the American version of the German art association, to collect financial and material support from wealthy New Yorkers. At the initial meeting in November 1869, a Provisional Committee of 50 prominent New York citizens was formed. Within this committee a subcommittee of thirteen men under Putnam’s leadership was appointed to prepare the constitution of the Metropolitan Art Museum Association. In May 1870, this association was incorporated and its constitution published. The structure of this new association adopted some features from the German art associations and some features from the social clubs of New York City. Similar to the Union League Club, membership in the Metropolitan Art Museum Association was initially limited to 250. Those who aspired to become members had to be nominated

23 Smithsonian Archives of American Art: George Comfort Deposit Reel 4276 T 6814 (Microfilm): Extracts from the Address of Professor Comfort before the Syracuse Chamber of Commerce regarding a Museum of Fine Arts, p. 15. 24 Howe 1913 (as fn. 9), p. 119. 25 Müller 1995 (as fn. 21), pp. 86–93.



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by the trustees. Only if two-thirds of the members approved the nomination did the aspirant become a member.26 This procedure was evidently copied from the Union League Club to ensure that only New York’s well-established families could gain access. However, the new art association was even more exclusive. While membership in the Union League Club was limited in numbers and restricted to Knickerbocker families, it was sufficient that a new member was proposed by one existing member and seconded by another member. Neither of the two clubs required two-thirds of its members to approve. The nomination and election procedure would ensure the exclusion of newer families from this exclusive art association.27 The founding of an art association, which was in fact an association not of artists but of philanthropists who pledged to support the arts, was reminiscent of Leipzig’s art association, which differed from other German art associations in the social/occupational profile of its membership. While the Dresden art association had a large number of artists among its members, the Leipzig art association was nearly exclusively an organization of wealthy citizens who were interested in the promotion and the funding of art. Less than seven percent of the members of Leipzig’s art association had been artists. With five percent, New York’s art association had an even lower share.28 In Leipzig and in New York City, the primary goal was to establish an art museum and to create a membership organization that would provide the financial basis for running it. Similar to Leipzig, the organizational committee in New York City decided to establish more than one membership class. However, while the Leipzig organizers thought that two classes were sufficient, New York’s organizers insisted on three. For a contribution of $1,000, one could become a Patron of the Museum, for $500 one became a Fellow in Perpetuity, and for $200 one was entitled to be a Fellow for Life.29 While German art associations were intended to provide a platform for bourgeois emancipation from feudal domination and the abolishment of class differences, art associations in the United States reflected the desire of the wealthy to create distinction and status among themselves. German and American art associations were, however, linked by their striving towards cultural domination and the exercising of power over cityscapes and urban populations by the bourgeoisie. While German art museums and their art associations provided the inspiration for the organizational structure of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Kensington

26 Howe 1913 (as fn. 9), pp. 116–17, 125. 27 Fairfield 1873 (as fn. 8), pp. 57–83; Reginald T. Townsend, Mother of Clubs. Being the History of the First Hundred Years of the Union Club of the City of New York 1836–1936, New York: The Printing House of William Edwin Rudge, 1936, pp. 9–24. 28 This number is based on my data bases for the membership of the Metropolitan Art Museum Association for 1876. The 1876 list is the first available membership list. Sixth Annual Report of the Trustees of the Association for the Year Ending May 1, 1876, pp. 86–90. For Leipzig see: Müller 1995 (as fn. 21), pp. 46–47. 29 Howe 1913 (as fn. 9), pp. 129–30.





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Museum provided concepts about what to collect and how to arrange the collections. This becomes evident in the decision to include applied art in the collections of the museum. A pamphlet about the future plans for the Metropolitan Museum published in March 1871 announced: “Officers of the Museum desire[d] especially to begin at an early day the formation of a collection of industrial art, of objects of utility to which decorative art has been applied, ornamental metalwork, carving in wood, ivory, and stone, painted glass, glass vessels, pottery, enamel, and all other materials.”30 While the creation of such collections in Germany was just underway and often resulted in the creation of separate applied arts collections and museums, the founders of the Metropolitan Museum attempted in a catch-all approach to combine the art museum (collection of paintings and busts) with the museum of applied arts (collection of industrial produced objects).31 Comfort’s chief concerns were teaching, collaboration with artistic education and integration of the museum into higher education. The Berlin museum, which was built in close proximity to the Academy of Fine Arts, impressed Comfort deeply. He had very fond memories of his education in Berlin where he could easily “go after the lecture and see the works of which the lecturer has spoken” in the museum, which was built just around the corner. Recalling his experience, Comfort told the individuals interested in founding the Metropolitan Museum of Art in his speech for the first meeting in November 1869: “The Museum of Berlin is used as an appendage to the University and the professors of the University of Ancient and Modern Art take their classes from the University building to the Museum building, and there standing before the work of art can show its good points and the position that it occupies in the History of Art.” Following the Berlin model of connecting museum and university, Comfort suggested locating the Metropolitan Museum of Art “in close proximity to a great university.” Furthermore, he thought that it would be desirable to provide the museum with “a few rooms in which lectures could be given from time to time for the general public.” Sharing the believe that education of the masses would ultimately lead to the betterment of society, Comfort argued that such “an institution […] would also indirectly stimulate and foster an increased interest on the part of our people in favor of a good municipal government.”32

30 Ibid., p. 134. 31 Conn 1998 (as fn. 15), p. 197; Menninger 1998 (as fn. 21), pp. 113–18. 32 Smithsonian Archives of American Art: George Comfort Deposit Reel 4276 T 6814 (Microfilm): A Metropolitan Art-Museum in the City of New York (New York 1869), p. 16.



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The Professionalization of Intercultural Transfer The organizational structure of the Metropolitan Museum of Art became a model for many museums founded in the United States and Canada. New York City, with its museums, occupied a central place within the transatlantic network of urban communities and cultural life. It essentially functioned as a translation and transmission station for the import of museum models from Europe up until World War I. While the transfer of such models was an occupation for wealthy dilettantes, it turned into a professional business after 1900. Museum directors and academics visited selected museums and investigated their architecture, collection principles, and financing schemes. After their return, they delivered a written report to the board of trustees. The prime example of this new approach is the survey of American museums by Adolf Bernhard Meyer, the director of the Royal Zoological, Anthropological, and Ethnographical Museum in Dresden. Meyer was sent by the authorities of the Royal Saxon Collections of Art and Science in 1899 “to visit the museums and kindred institutions of the United States so far as they relate to museum affairs, and to pay special attention to the preservation of the collections from fire.”33 Because of the large number of American museums and the limited time available, Meyer decided to visit only the Eastern part of the country (New York, Albany, Buffalo, Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, and Cambridge). His observations were published after his return to Germany under the title Über Museen des Ostens der Vereinigten Staaten von Nord-Amerika in 1900/01. This volume includes information on architecture and building costs, the size and character of the collections; the financing schemes for the purchase of art objects and for the maintenance of the museums, opening times and entrance fees and concepts of educational schemes targeted at the general population. The educational work organized and carried out by American museums impressed Meyer the most. He admired the concepts regarding the integration of children into museum education – a tradition absolutely alien to Germany. Meyer reported that in “the large museums, a section may generally be found specially adapted to the comprehension of children.” Furthermore, direct “efforts are made to induce pupils of both sexes to visit the museums by offering prizes for essays adapted to the different classes.”34

33 A.B. Meyer, Studies of the Museums and Kindred Institutions of New York City, Albany, Buffalo, and Chicago. With Notes on Some European Institutions, in: Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, Showing the Operations, Expenditures, and Condition of the Institution for the Year nding June 30, 1903, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1905, p. 321. The German version was published as A.B. Meyer, Über Museen des Ostens der Vereinigten Staaten von NordAmerika, Berlin: A. Friedländer, 1900/01. 34 Ibid, p. 325, 326.





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Public lectures to popularize science were an integral part of the educational work provided by American museums, such as the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Summarizing his experience, Meyer emphasized that Americans assign a leading part in the activity of their museums to the exhibition collections, which they arrange for wide circles of the educated, half educated, and uneducated classes. At the same time, they foster the interests even of little children, and try to stimulate the older ones by offering prizes; they make the museums contribute directly to the cause of education by series of lectures, by popular publications, and by lending collections; and they keep the doors of their museums open to everybody from morning till evening.35

The opening times were of particular concern to Meyer. While the Metropolitan Museum of Art was opened at “7, 8, 9, or 10 in the morning till 6,”36 the Green Vault in Dresden, for instance, was open only between 9 and 2.37 Furthermore, while American museums attempted to invite as many visitors as possible and to make the collections accessible to the average person, German museums tended to treat the visitor as intruders and provided little help for understanding the cultural and artistic objects on display. In short, German museums were meant to educate the intellectual visitor while American museums were meant to entertain both the educated and the uneducated person. Obviously, Meyer was very much in favor of the attempts to work with children in museums, but he was also skeptical whether “all this could be adapted to German conditions.”38 This report written in German and intended to provide a material basis for the reorganization of German museums influenced the practical work in museums in Germany less than it did in North America. Four years after Meyer’s report was published in Germany, the Smithsonian Institution included in its Annual Report for 1903 a translation of Meyer’s account on American museums together with an account about European museums, which Meyer had published in 1902.39 These two texts provided the North American reader with a comprehensive survey of American, British, French, and Belgian museums and became a reference point for organizers of museums across the North American continent. However, Meyer’s critical remarks about the state of German museums should not make one believe that Americans could no longer find inspiration in Europe. American museum makers were, even after 1900, still intrigued by the ways their European counterparts created and maintained museums. When the board of trus-

35 Ibid, p. 328. 36 Ibid, p. 348. 37 Thomas Adam, Philanthropic Landmarks in Toronto. The Toronto Trail from a Comparative Perspective, 1870s to the 1930s, in: Urban History Review 30 (2001), p. 8. 38 Meyer 1905 (as fn. 33), p. 328. 39 A. B. Meyer, Über einige europäische Museen und verwandte Institute, Berlin: A. Friedländer, 1902.



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tees of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston decided to construct a new museum building in 1902, it appointed a commission to collect information on architectural aspects of European museums. Samuel D. Warren, Edward Robinson, R. Clipston Sturgis, and Edmund M. Wheelwright spent three months (January 2, 1904 to April 2, 1904) on the continent “to study European museums, and, hopefully, discover excellencies of detail that might be anthologized in the future Boston design.”40 These four Bostonians searched for architectural ideas concerning how to arrange the collection, how to effectively light the exhibitions and how to provide an entrance hall, which invited visitors. They toured ninety-five museums in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, and England, looking at the general character of the museum architecture, exterior landscape, lighting, the size of the galleries, the arrangement of paintings and sculptures, and the technologies of heating and ventilation. However, the board of trustees was also concerned with the tasks and purposes of an art museum regarding the education of the general public and the provision of study collections. To discuss these issues, the board of trustees included in its four-volume report The Museum Commission in Europe articles and essays written by several European authorities on museums.41 This collection included an essay by Ernst Grosse, professor of the history of art at Freiburg University, on the aims and arrangements of German museums of fine arts, and an article written by Alfred Lichtwark, director of the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, about the faults of existing museum buildings and his visions for future buildings.42 The Bostonian observers seemed to be very impressed by the New Grand Ducal Museum in Darmstadt: “In its general features it was found the most suggestive as embodying ideas that had been under consideration in the study of the proposed Boston building.” Evaluating the Darmstadt museum, the Bostonian visitors remarked: “It would appear that the architect had here sought to give expression to the reasonable theories recently advanced by museum authorities, which are based upon the principle that the collections should be arranged upon a system which permits the public to see them with the least confusion of mind and the minimum of fatigue; to this end objects should be grouped in well-defined departments, and each class of objects should have the method of lighting suited to its best display.” The organization of the Darmstadt museum into separate and autonomous departments impressed the visitors very much. The “Mediaeval and Renaissance Department is, in fact, a separate Historical Museum, a diminutive model of that at Zürich, and presents

40 Walter Muir Whitehall, Museum of Fine Arts Boston. A Centennial History vol. 1, Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1970, p. 179. 41 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Communications to the Trustees III (January 1905), The Museum Commission in Europe, 4 vols., vol. 1, pp. 6–7. 42 Ibid., pp. 65–75, 85–88.





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an interesting example of the historic-picturesque arrangement as opposed to the scientific dispositions of the older museums.”43 The architectural plans for the new building of the Museum of Fine Arts followed this concept of departmentalization. The building was divided into “segments to contain departments structurally separate, each constituting a museum complete in itself, with a well-defined circuit for the visitor.” This is captured in Samuel D. Warren’s description of the museum: “The building may be described as a group of museums under one roof, the space in each devoted to collections compactly arranged and two rooms for study being approximately equal to the gallery space […].”44 In the end, the trustees of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts received valuable information regarding nearly all architectural and technical aspects of a museum building. Furthermore, the reports printed and published by the Museum of Fine Arts provided an English translation of the newest German academic and artistic discussions on the purposes and aims of museums. These translations benefited not only the Boston enterprise but also museums in the United States in general.

Conclusion The transatlantic transfer of cultural and intellectual concepts and ideas has never been a one way street. Transfer always occurred in both directions and in some cases involved objects that have been repeatedly exchanged. In this process of multiple transfers, the origin of the objects became obscured and the object gained universality in its application. In 1913, Woldemar von Seidlitz, advisor to the Royal Art Museum in Dresden, published an essay in the German journal Museumskunde in which he provided an overview of Museumsvereine (museum patrons associations) in Germany, France, and Great Britain. These associations were, according to Seid­ litz, phenomena of the late nineteenth century and originated with the Metropolitan Museum Art Association in 1870. Seidlitz’ essay delivered a detailed description of the New York museum association and of subsequent museum associations in Lübeck (1880), Amsterdam (1883), Krefeld (1883), Berlin (1897), Paris (1897), Frankfurt am Main (1899), Celle (1900), London (1903), Munich (1905), Stuttgart (1906), Leipzig (1909), Breslau (1910), Dresden (1911), and Halle (1912).45 The existence of earlier versions of such museum associations and their influence on the emergence of similar institutions in North America was either disregarded by or unknown to Seidlitz. It is the irony of history that Seidlitz looked to the United States for ideas regarding

43 The Museum Commission in Europe vol. 3 (as fn. 41), p. 86. 44 Whitehall 1970 (as fn. 40), p. 221. 45 Woldemar von Seidlitz, Museumsvereine, in: Museumskunde 9 (1913), pp. 36–43.



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the reorganization of Germany’s museums and that he propounded the Metropolitan Museum Art Association as a model for Germans when in fact the New York art association had been inspired by earlier art associations in cities such as Leipzig.



Arnaud Bertinet

From Model Museum to the Fear of the Uhlan Museum Relations between France and Germany during the Second Empire During France’s Second Empire (1852–1876), a museum was seen as “a collection of curiosities, belonging to the fields of natural history, industry, the arts or antiques […] gathered in a public building to be offered to the enjoyment of connoisseurs, to provide intellectual pleasure to all those who cherish arts and science […] and to maintain, amongst the successive generations, the taste for learning, the desire for education and the general passion for work.”1 The origin of this definition dates back to the revolutionary era and refers as much to the notion of national heritage as it refers to the pedagogical will to share an encyclopedic knowledge.2 The ideas it develops can be found in the numerous essays dealing with fine arts and the administration of museums which were proliferating throughout the nineteenth century.3 Even though the supervision ministry of the French museums changed many times – Home Office, Ministry of State, Maison de l’Empereur, Maison de l’Empereur et Beaux Arts – the same man could be found managing these institutions: Count Alfred-Emilien de Nieuwerkerke.4 Director of the national museums from the 25th of December 1849, of the imperial museums in 1852, then Superintendent of the Beaux Arts starting the 30th of June 1863, Nieuwerkerke, who also was a sculptor and a man well versed in the arts, contrary to what was said at the time,5 was the federative

1 Porphyre Labitte, Mémoire sur la bibliothèque et les musées d’Abbeville, Abbeville: Gamain, 1869, p. II. 2 Dominique Poulot, Musée, Nation, Patrimoine 1789–1815, Paris: Gallimard, 1997. 3 For the period of the Second French Empire we can refer to the works of Charles-Ernest Beulé, Causeries sur l’art, Paris: Didier, 1867; Nicolas Boussu, Études administrative. L’Administration des beaux-arts, Paris: Edouard Baltenweck, 1877; Henri Delaborde, Quelques idées sur la direction des arts et sur le maintien du goût public, Paris: Impr. Impériale, 1856; Paul Dupré, Gustave Ollendorf, Traité de l’administration des Beaux-Arts. Historique, Législation, Jurisprudence, 2 vols., Paris: 1885; Émile Galichon, Études critiques sur l’administration des Beaux-Arts en France de 1860 à 1870, Paris: Bureau de la Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1871; Amédée Jullien, Les Beaux-Arts et leur administration, Paris: Dentu, 1868; Charles Timbal, Notes et causeries sur l’art et les artistes, Paris: Plon, 1881; to mention just a few. 4 Le comte de Nieuwerkerke. Art et pouvoir sous Napoléon III, exh. cat., National museum of the Château of Compiègne, Paris: RMN, 2000. 5 There is no doubt that his relation with Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, due to his affair with Princess Mathilde, is at the very origin of his nomination as director of the museums in 1849, but also of the numerous attacks on him. See National Museum Archives (AMN) O30, Personal files of the administrative and scientific staff of the museum.

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figure of a fascinating generation of curators, but also the protector of numerous museum projects.6 The institution of the museum then became a tool destined to provide a better understanding of the national and regional past, the development of archaeology and of local history promoted by learned societies. For the central power, the museum became an essential institution on which it could rely in implementing its desire to enlighten the public, notably within the framework of the development of the industrial arts. The main imperial institutions, as well as various provincial creations and private foundations, testify to this. In 1848, Philippe de Chennevières, in his Rapport sur les musées de Province,7 counted around two hundred public collections and highlights, in an article for the Gazette des Beaux-Arts8 from 1865, the “pullulation” (the “bustle”) of such collections. Parallel to this decentralization, there was a development of transnational exchange between European museum institutions and the imperial central administrative body for museums. The museums sought more information about the various collections throughout Europe and the way the numerous European institutions worked. Meanwhile a large number of articles were published in the French art press9 and travel guide publications grew in number.10 While museums were considered to be “necessary for arts, industry and public wealth, […] necessary for mind development and elevation, and for the progress of civilization,”11 a real competition started between nations, in which individual countries did not hesitate to copy and take inspiration from foreign institutions to develop their own collections. As a consequence, an intense transnational exchange also evolved between France and Germany to the tragic events of 1870.

6 Arnaud Bertinet, La politique artistique du Second Empire. L’Institution muséale sous Napoléon III (1850–1870), Ph.D. thesis Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2011. 7 Philippe de Chennevières, Travaux de M. de Chennevières… Du rapport adressé par M. le directeur des Musées nationaux à M. le ministre de l’Intérieur, sur la nécessité de relier les musées des départements au musée central du Louvre, Paris: Lacour, 1848. 8 Philippe de Chennevières, Les Musées de Province, in: La Gazette des Beaux-Arts XVIII (February 1865), pp. 118–31. 9 The collections of the museums of Amsterdam, Karlsruhe, Madrid, Mainz, Vienna, Copenhagen, Dresden, Wilna, Lisbon, Brussels, Cadiz, Turin, Valence are mentioned in L’Artiste between 1850 and 1872. During the same interval of time, La Gazette des Beaux-Arts became interested in the museums of London – South Kensington Museum, British Museum, National Gallery –, Dresden, Florence, Vienna – Albertina, Belvedere –, Saint-Petersburg, Copenhagen, Stockholm, New York, The Hague, Brussels, Augsburg, Moscow, Kassel, Karlsruhe, Munich. 10 Bayle Saint-John, The Louvre. Or Biography of a Museum, London: Chapman and Hall, 1854. 11 Henri de Triqueti, Les trois musées de Londres: le British Museum, la National Gallery et le South Kensington Museum. Étude statistique et raisonnée de leurs progrès, de leurs richesses, de leur administration et de leur utilité pour l’instruction publique, Paris: 1861, p. 1.





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The Development of Exchange between Institutions The Louvre – through its status as a universal museum and on account of its history –, and the imperial museums – thanks to the profusion of their collections and the accuracy of their catalogues –, were seen as references for foreign museums. The inquiries about how the Louvre and the imperial museums worked increased in number, and a system of cooperation and exchange was set up between the main French institutions and their European counterparts. The largest number of exchanges took place between the Louvre, considered as an inspiring example, and European museums. Their investigations aimed at the museum organization, its management, and its collections. The British institutions, for instance, asked for information on a regular basis. In December 1854, the British ambassador requested a brief summary on the Louvre’s organization; Nieuwerkerke replied by providing organizational charts of the great departments of the museum and of both the conservatory and the administrative staff.12 In December 1856, a similar inquiry was made by the British Museum. At this time Frédéric Villot, who was conservator of the Louvre, answered the English trustees’ questions about display and conservation, and also gave details concerning the heating of the exhibition rooms.13 This very thorough answer about the presentation of the Louvre, the Luxembourg, and the Versailles museum also described the use of glass panels as a means to protect paintings – a method favored by British curators but disapproved of by Villot. In exchange for this information, in 1863, Nieuwerkerke received the livre blanc of the British Museum,14 describing the budget, the transactions made by the museum, and the number of entries per month. Nieuwerkerke did not comment on this document. If England was the first country to solicit information from a French institution, it was surely not the only one. Nicolas Barozzi, the curator of the Venice museum, also enquired about the organization and administration of the imperial museums.15 He was mostly interested in the equipment used and the work-force regulation.16 The French influence on foreign museums sometimes took very different proportions. For instance, the museum of Leipzig,17 inaugurated in December 1858 thanks

12 AMN Z21 Inquiries, December 14, 1854, note from Nieuwerkerke to Vaillant. 13 AMN P1 Organization and origins 1801–1960, December 11, 1856, answer to the inquiries from the London British Museum. 14 AMN K21 Inquiries and diverse matters 1801–1958, December 24, 1863, British Museum white paper. 15 AMN Z2 Administration 1792–1964, all departments, December 17, 1868, letter from Barozzi, sent by Nigra, Italian ambassador to Nieuwerkerke. 16 AMN*1BB17 Official statement from the repository of the Imperial and National Museums, December 21, 1868. 17 James Sheehan, Museums in the German Art World. From the End of the Old Regime to the Rise of Modernism, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 84.



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to Adolf Schletter’s bequest, exhibited a sizable collection of French paintings. As a result, Charles Perrier considered it as what could be “a German avatar of the Luxembourg museum or of the historical gallery of Versailles.”18 The transfer of works between museums was tackled, too. As early as January 1850, Moltke, from the Copenhagen museum, offered to exchange, with the Louvre, a painting by Meindert Hobbema for a painting by Claude Lorrain.19 In September 1851, José de Madrazo, the director of museum of paintings and sculpture in Madrid, the Museo del Prado,20 wrote to the Louvre to put in place a system of exchange between these two institutions.21 He offered paintings by Spanish masters that were not displayed by the museum in exchange for Flemish and French paintings. The conservators did not oppose this project, but wanted to know which paintings were available for exchange. They also expressed some doubts as to the legality of the procedure since “it was absolutely forbidden to alienate, alter or change any of the items registered in the museum.”22 During this session Villot stressed that, if an agreement was reached, the Berlin museums would also be interested in acquiring French paintings. This exchange of original works was not accepted due to the inalienability of French collections. On the other hand, a policy for the exchange of plaster casts was developed. In December 1851, the Louvre asked the museums of Berlin and London for moulages.23 The museums of Mainz and Wiesbaden would provide many pieces which would be allocated to the Imperial Antiques Museum of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. In March 1868, an international convention project was even suggested to “encourage the reproductions of works of art for the interest of all museums.” Then Nieuwerkerke stated that the imperial museums “had always practiced the technics of reproduction, whatever the kind” and that, in his opinion, “there was no objection to do so as long as they were instructive.”24 These exchanges between museums and the members of their administration led to an evolution in the attribution of the works of art. Nine years after the publication of Villot’s first edition of the catalogue of paintings in the Louvre, the critic Théophile

18 Charles Perrier, Galerie de Leipsick, collection de M. Schletter, in: L’Artiste XIV, V (1855), p. 101–04, quoted by France Nerlich, La peinture française en Allemagne, 1815–1870, Paris: Éditions de la maison des sciences de l’homme, 2010, p. 353. 19 AMN *1BB09 Official statement from the repository of the Imperial and National Museums, January 26, 1850. 20 The development of the Spanish museums has also been treated by Pierre Géal, La naissance des musées d’art en Espagne (XVIIIe–XIXe siècles), Madrid: Casa de Velasquez, 2005; Maria Bolaños, Historia de los museos en España. Memoria, cultura, sociedad, Gijon: Ed. Trea, 1997. 21 AMN *1BB10 Official statement from the repository of the Imperial and National Museums, September 27, 1851. 22 AMN *1BB09 (as fn. 19), January 26, 1850. 23 AMN *1BB10 (as fn. 21), December 13, 1851. 24 AMN Z2 (as fn. 15), April 27, 1868, note from Nieuwerkerke to Vaillant.





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Thoré (Thoré-Bürger) considered that it was “one of the best amongst the catalogues of European public collections, along with that of the museum of Berlin, written by M. Waagen.”25 Even if many corrections were deemed necessary, and he noted that “everything related to the description and the origins of the paintings was almost perfect […], one could say that the only thing missing was the facsimile of the signatures.”26 Thoré-Bürger praised the use of the artists’ names in their respective national form, starting from the second edition of the catalogue in 1852. Villot, who valued criticisms and even asked for them, followed the indications provided by French critics such as Claudius Tarral or Jean Cottini, but mostly those provided by the Germans such as Gustav Friedrich Waagen, Johann David Passavant, and Otto Mündler. Villot corrected and reattributed many works of art between the first and the second edition,27 works such as La Vierge, sainte Anne et l’Enfant to Leonardo da Vinci. Every new edition of the Louvre’s catalogue of paintings gave occasion to add new information. The 1864 edition, partly written by the new curator Frédéric Reiset, was published with a revision of the notes. Reiset went further than just comparing the opinions of different critics and presented himself as an expert, just like his friends Waagen and Passavant.28 The opinions were now much more definitive. The author went as far as determining some works of art as copies, and some reattributions happened to be extremely pertinent.29 In Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Alexandre Bertrand proposed to his colleagues the publication of two different catalogues, with all the museum’s collections.30 The first catalogue, a summary sold at a rather low price, would be aimed at the visitors; the second, much more detailed and illustrated with high-quality etchings of the most important items exhibited in the museum, would be aimed at researchers and scholars. Such practice was not new since it was first used by the Romano-Germanic Museum of Mainz. Subsequently, and following Ludwig Lindenschmit’s advice, Bertrand would apply this method only to the French collections. This development in the relations between museums also contributed to the prevention of robberies. After the robbery that took place in December 1852 at the numismatic museum of Kassel, the imperial museums were informed and spread warnings to provincial museums throughout France. For instance, the museum of Lyon was

25 William Burger, Révision du catalogue des tableaux du musée de Paris, in: L’Artiste III, new series (1858), p. 37. 26 Ibid. 27 Richard Dagorne, L’évolution du catalogue des peintures italiennes du musée du Louvre (1849– 1876), Paris: INP, 2011, p. 9. 28 Philippe de Chennevières, Souvenirs d’un directeur des Beaux-Arts, vol. 3, Paris: Arthéna, 1979, p. 90. 29 Dagorne 2011 (as fn. 27), pp. 11–12. 30 AMN *1BB17 Official statement from the repository of the imperial and national Museums, January 6, 1868.



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warned by the prefect in order to prevent any transaction involving possibly stolen items.31 Later, measures of cooperation between big institutions, on a European level, were set up during the Second Empire. In 1858, the Austrian ambassador reported to Nieuwerkerke the theft of Adriaen van Ostade’s painting L’homme lisant un journal from the Imperial and Royal Arts Academy in Vienna.32 He did so to prevent any possible unfortunate transaction by a French institution. Though French museums were considered as models by many foreign countries, they were nonetheless criticized by some of them. For instance Rudolf Eitelberger, the director of the Imperial Museum of Arts and Industries of Vienna, and quoted by Emile Galichon, sternly disagreed with the way French imperial museums were administrated: The organization of the Paris museums has not made any progress. Both experts and the public agreed on the point that both Marechal Vaillant and Senator Nieuwerkerke were not worthy of their task and clearly lacked, for the things of art, the spirit and wiseness which their predecessors, Denon and his colleagues, had shown during the First Empire. But we will come back to this question later and at length. […] French and foreign scholars and industrialists regretted the complete lack of reforms for the collections of Paris. The French were being told about the progressive measures introduced in the organization of museums in England and Germany, while they could only witness the complete indifference on the part of the administrative body for their intellectual and material interests in France. As a consequence they were quite justified in complaining about the present situation in the museums of Paris.33

This comment was harsh and mostly wrong, since the imperial museums willingly sent their staff abroad to study the way other European institutions worked.

The Perception of Foreign Museums by French Museums Even though French curators were proud and enthusiastic about being considered as models by foreign institutions, they tended to be worried about the inquiries these institutions sent them on a regular basis. Galichon stressed that “the progress done by the British during these last few years has alarmed our juries and chambers of commerce, but has not at all been noticed by our government. Berlin, Vienna, Moscow, Munich, Karlsruhe, and many other German cities have followed the example given by

31 Lyon Public Archives (AmL) 78 WP 2 General administration, acquisitions 1804–1899, December 1852, note from the mayor to the curator of the archeological museum. 32 AMN P2 Administration 1794–1961, February 22, 1858, robbery notification sent by the Austrian ambassador to Nieuwerkerke. 33 Quoted by Galichon 1871 (as fn. 3), pp. 157–58.





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London; and everywhere in Europe institutions sought to supersede us on the matter of taste to create new opportunities for industries competing with ours.”34 He also complained about the French lack of response to foreign innovations, especially in the field of industrial arts: “[N]othing, or almost, was made to maintain the supremacy so many foreign nations envy us for.”35 In reality, the management of the imperial museums gathered information on the evolution of the main European museums’ collections. Trips were made by the scientific staff of the imperial museums in order to visit foreign collections. Emmanuel de Rougé, the curator of Egyptian antiques, was sent on missions in 1849, 1850,36 and 185437 to study the German and Italian Egyptian collections. In 1860, Théodule Devéria, in between two trips to Cairo, went to the Egyptian museum of Turin.38 In 1852, Clément de Ris published an article about his visit to the museum of Karlsruhe in L’Artiste, a visit he made with the curator and painter Carl Ludwig Frommel.39 The Frenchman was full of admiration for the architecture of the building, inaugurated in 1846, which had “a monumental staircase the Louvre could be jealous of.”40 But he was not at all impressed by the collections and regretted the lack of a chronological presentation of the various works of art. Starting 1858, Clément de Ris continued visiting the European museums on a regular basis, as an attaché for the imperial museums. A letter of introduction, by Nieuwerkerke to the curator of the Prado Royal Museum, Ribera, allowed him to visit this museum.41 Clément de Ris would share his impressions of the Prado in a work published in 1855.42 But more than just a travel guide in the form of those published by Louis Viardot43 or André Absinthe Lavice44 during the Second Empire, Clément de Ris offered an essay in which he claimed the primacy of the imperial museums’ collections. The issue of competition was clearly addressed in his publication: he asserted that it was “very difficult to settle this question, since the answer was left to everybody’s own opinion.”45 Though, “from a chronological point of view, the Louvre was unique. It offered an important series of documents, all of them

34 Ibid., p. 237. 35 Ibid. 36 AMN O30 (as fn. 5) 1794–…, file 152 – Rougé, Emmanuel de, mission orders for the years 1849 and 1850. 37 AMN *1BB13 Official statement of the Imperial and National museums, June 6, 1854. 38 AMN O30 (as fn. 5) 1794–…, file 166 – Devéria, Théodule, mission order for the year 1860. 39 Louis Clément de Ris, Le musée de Carlsrühe, in: L’Artiste IX, 5 (1852–1853), pp. 161–64. 40 Ibid., p. 161. 41 AMN O30 (as fn. 5) 1794–…, file 140 – Clément de Ris, Louis, May 24, 1858, letter from Clément de Ris to Nieuwerkerke. 42 Louis Clément de Ris, Le musée royal de Madrid, Paris: Renouard, 1859. 43 Louis Viardot, Les musées d’Europe, Italie et Espagne, Paris: Paulin et Lechevalier, 1852. 44 André Absinthe Lavice, Revue des musées d’Espagne, Paris: Renouard, 1864. 45 Louis Clément de Ris, Le musée royal de Madrid. Ecoles espagnoles, in: L’Artiste V, new series (1858), p. 129.



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unique for history, thanks to the numerous productions of masterworks from all painting schools, dating from the twelfth century to today. No establishment could, in any way, be pretentious enough to pretend to be able to compete with the Louvre.”46 But in his letter to Nieuwerkerke Clément de Ris appears to be much more anxious about the actual dominance of the Louvre over the Prado. Indeed, to Clément de Ris, the Prado was “incredible in its richness” and “the only thing it missed in standing up to our museum, at least concerning the paintings, was a management like yours. If the paintings were organized in a systematic and orderly fashion, and, most of all, if the catalogue was not in such an appalling state of negligence, it […] would be much difficult for us to rival with.”47 Nonetheless, the Louvre managed to keep its rank thanks to the “variety of masterworks and its way of dealing with the organization of its collections.”48 On October 5, 1860, a letter from Clément de Ris to Nieuwerkerke, sent from the city of Kassel, confirmed this preoccupation with the Louvre’s position compared to its European counterparts. In this correspondence, Clément de Ris recounted his five week-long tour of the German, Dutch, and Belgian museums, during which he visited the institutions of Munich, Vienna, Dresden, Berlin, Brunswick, Kassel, Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, Hanover, and Brussels. Clément de Ris took note of the very high artistic quality of Dresden’s collections, and also of the numerous documents from which “the French critics, far more lucid than the German critics, could strongly benefit for the study of the origins of art in Flanders and Germany.”49 He also noted that “for studies on the Gothic style, the German museums […] outdid the Louvre, at least on this point.”50 Even though Clément de Ris confirmed the primacy of the Louvre, which presented “the richest and most varied collection that existed,” he also pointed out that “regarding the general organization, German museums, especially those in Munich and Dresden, […] seemed to be far superior to ours.”51 According to him this superiority was justified, for the German museums, as opposed to the French, “are located in buildings assigned with a specific role, and where the architect was given free rein for gathering the best conditions of light and exposure.”52 He even thought that French architects responsible for the buildings dedicated to holding exhibitions of various art collections should have a look at the way the museums of Munich and Berlin were designed. Indeed, Clément de Ris considered that, for instance in the case of sculptures, “one could not possibly apply more judicious and enlightened care than

46 Ibid. 47 AMN O30 (as fn. 5) 1794–…, file 140 – Clément de Ris, Louis, May 24, 1858, letter from Clément de Ris to Nieuwerkerke. 48 Ibid. 49 AMN O30 (as fn. 5) 1794–…, file 140 – Clément de Ris, Louis, October 5, 1860, letter from Clément de Ris to Nieuwerkerke. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid.





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what has been undertaken for the embellishment of the Munich Glyptothek’s rooms, and for the rooms of the Berlin museum.”53 While architecture caught his attention, he also envied the Berlin collection of majolica, which was ten times larger than the Louvre’s. German and Austrian museums also fascinated Clément de Ris, who stated that “in Dresden one comes to admire; whereas in Vienna one comes to learn.”54 Paul Both de Tauzia, assistant curator in the department of drawings since 1861, joined the investigations Clément de Ris had started abroad. The lack of documentation and catalogues on the Italian and German collections was at the very basis of his enterprise. Its goals were to define the precise status of the collections of the visited museums, to find out if catalogues had been published or not, and finally to determine what measures had been taken to deal with the restoration of the works of art. In September 1865, Both de Tauzia went to Venice, Padua, Treviso, Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, and Florence. He stopped for a while in Prague and Vienna, but also visited a number of German cities such as Stuttgart, Augsburg, Munich, Nuremberg, and Dresden.55 Back from this trip, Both de Tauzia submitted a catalogue to Nieuwerkerke in which he gave detailed information on the works of art worthy of interest that were located in the cities he visited, commented on their state of conservation as well as on the creation and development of the museums visited “in the Louvre’s interest.”56 As for Alexandre Bertrand, he combed Europe with the objective of developing the collections of the Imperial Museum of Antiques. In 1868, he went to visit the museums of Trier, Wiesbaden, Bingen, Mannheim, and Mainz, all of which he considered as being “extremely rich and perfectly well-kept.”57 In 1869, he returned to Mainz, then went to Copenhagen, Hanover, Schwerin, and Hildesheim58 to find items worthy of being cast and displayed in the collection of the museum of Saint Germain. Although these inspections had had no, or hardly any, influence on the collections of Versailles, the Louvre, and the Luxembourg, or on the way these museums were managed, they had allowed the authorities to gain valuable knowledge about foreign institutions. Indeed this knowledge would play a significative role in the foundation of the Imperial Museum of Antiques of Saint-Germain-en-Laye which, as

53 Ibid. 54 Louis Clément de Ris, La galerie du Belvédère, à Vienne, in: L’Artiste I, new period (1862), p. 244. 55 National Museums Central Library, manuscript O125 report from Both de Tauzia to the count de Nieuwerkerke about missions in Germany and Italy. 56 AMN O30 (as fn. 5) 1794–… Both de Tauzia, Paul, April 17, 1870, letter from Nieuwerkerke to Both to Tauzia. 57 AMN *1BB17 Official statements of the Imperial Museums Repository, June 29, 1868. 58 These are the travel expenses accounts of Bertrand, available at the National Museums Archives. AMN O30 Scientific staff files, 175 – Bertrand, Alexandre.



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a matter of fact, reproduced the way the works of art were shown, and the themes treated, by the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum (Romano-Germanic Museum) of Mainz.59

The 1870 Impact On Monday, August 29, 1870, on the brink of the Sedan disaster,60 Count de Nieuwerkerke was summoned to the Tuileries: “The Empress would like to speak with him now.”61 During this meeting, the decision was made to evacuate a portion of the Louvre’s collections. The following day, Marechal Vaillant, in a letter entitled “absolutely confidential,” informed Nieuwerkerke that, following the decision made by the cabinet, “the most valuable paintings should be taken from the imperial museums and stored in safety.”62 The unprecedented decision to put the most valuable artistic collections of the nation in a safe location during an armed conflict was made during the last remaining days of the Second Empire. Though the catastrophic situation of the French army, which locked itself in Sedan on the 30th of August, may have been implicit, no reasons were given to explain the decision made by the cabinet. The fear of Prussian looting, akin to the revolutionary and imperial spoliations that took place at the beginning of the century, could be seen as a reasonable explanation. The fear, though unconscious and never clearly mentioned, of seeing the enemy act as the French did, probably led to such a decision. Indeed this idea was reinforced by the general discretion and the unusual amount of precautions taken to carry out the evacuation order. During the years following the war of 1870, many German scholars became interested in the fate of the manuscripts and works of art that had not been returned by France in 1815, and they were willing to draw up an inventory of these collections.63 Following the first Prussian victories, a committee was summoned by the German headquarters to make a list of the items looted by the French revolutionary and imperial armies, and still located in France.64

59 Bonnie Effros, She Thought Like a Man and Smelt Like a Woman. Hortense Lacroix Cornu (1809–1875) and the National Museum of Antiques de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in: Journal of the History of Collections 23 (2011), pp. 1–19. 60 Éric Anceau, Napoléon III, Paris: Tallandier, 2008, p. 529. 61 AMN P12 Transfers between museums and new locations, August 29, 1870, letter from the count de [?] to Nieuwerkerke. 62 AMN P12 (as fn. 61), August 30, 1870, letter from Vaillant to Nieuwerkerke. 63 Bénédicte Savoy, Patrimoine annexé. Les biens culturels saisis par la France en Allemagne autour de 1800, vol. 1, Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’Homme, 2003, p. 280. 64 Ibid., p. 282.





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The discovery of this commission, along with the fear of a bombing of Paris,65 similar to the one that destroyed the art museum of Strasbourg the 24th of August, were at the root of the evacuation of the Louvre’s collections. In only a few days, a tremendous task was completed in great secrecy by the staff of the imperial museums. However, a certain number of letters, telegrams, and notes, preserved in the archives of the national museums, testify to the chronological events that took place between the 31st of August and the 4th of September 1870. Only the Louvre was concerned in the first order of evacuation. The decision was made to give priority to the drawing and painting collections, since they were easier to transport. The location for their storage would be the Brest Military Arsenal, offering the protection of the French navy as well as the possibility to evacuate the collections in case the Prussians tried to lay siege on the city. The port admiral overseeing the defense of the arsenal thought that “it would be in our best interests not to act with too much secrecy. […] the content of the freight cars would be immediately unloaded onto barges and then loaded into the Hermione. The warehouse would not take any part in this operation. It would be wise for the boxes to be labelled: ‘To Gabon’ written in large letters.”66 Nieuwerkerke chose Both de Tauzia to leave with the first shipment, to make contact with the naval authorities, to check and sign for the following shipments arriving at the Brest train station and to look after the paintings “as long as the war lasted.”67 The choice made sense. Both de Tauzia had made many trips to museums all over Europe for Count de Nieuwerkerke and had also taken part in the difficult transportation, from Italy, of Bernardino Luini’s frescos bought by the Louvre in 1867.68 The first shipment was sent on the 31st of August 1870.69 From Brest, Both de Tauzia reported to Nieuwerkerke that he had safely arrived.70 When, following the fall of the imperial regime, Reiset gave the order to stop the evacuation, 75 boxes with 293 paintings had been evacuated to Brest in four days. This was half of the paintings inventoried as being the most “valuable” in the Louvre. The exact list of the works of art was kept in two copies along with 130 notes written – probably by Reiset – at the moment of the packing71 and an inventory dated from their return.72 The evacuation

65 Chennevières 1979 (as fn. 28), vol. V, p. 53. 66 AMN P12 (as fn. 61), September 2, 1870, letter from the port admiral to the Minister of the Fleet. 67 Chennevières 1979 (as fn. 28), vol. V, p. 53. 68 AMN P6 Orders and purchases 1794–1953, October 14, 1866–January 6, 1868, transaction files of the Luini’s frescos. 69 AMN P12 (as fn. 61), September 1, 1870, letter from Reiset to Nieuwerkerke. 70 Ibid., August 31, 1870, telegram from Both de Tauzia to Nieuwerkerke. 71 AMN Z2 (as fn. 15), 1870–1871 Evacuation of the paintings from the Louvre to the Brest Arsenal, 130 notes kept in a small red box. 72 AMN P12 (as fn. 61), September 7, 1871, Inventory of the paintings and drawings sent to the Brest Arsenal and of those boxed and still at the Louvre.



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process was definitively stopped by the new political regime. However, the works of art remained in Brest. If, during the war, the evacuation had kept the same rhythm, over 700 paintings from the Louvre would have been sheltered. With the Louvre’s paintings hidden in a warehouse at the Brest Arsenal, Both de Tauzia was on his own, waiting for the French political and military situation to stabilize. In March 1871 a project to bring the works of art back to the Louvre was mentioned by the curators. But first an inventory of the boxes containing the paintings had to be made.73 This latency period prevented the re-expedition of the paintings when, on the 18th of March, the Paris Commune broke out. The order was finally given on the 31st of August 1871.74 On September 7, 1871, more than a year after their evacuation, the seventy boxes containing the Louvre’s paintings were safely returned to their place of origin.75 But while such a homecoming had been welcomed with festivities during the Revolution, for the works of art that had been seized from all over Europe, this one was made in the greatest discretion in a Louvre closed to the public. With the exception of Alfred Darcel76 and Maxime Du Camp,77 who in their articles on the damages done during the Commune discussed the evacuation of the Louvre, the press remained silent and did not seem to notice the symbolic impact of such a return. Even though the Journal amusant presented a few of these boxes,78 it also displayed an illustration captioned “in the haste, a copyist had been packed along with the antiques” – a proof that nothing concerning the evacuation had leaked out since only the paintings had been evacuated. For more than a year, half of the Louvre’s collections of paintings remained in Brest, safe from the bombings that took place during the siege of Paris, safe from the potential “curiosity” of the invaders, and safe from the fires during the Commune. This unprecedented event remains little known today, though the awareness it raised on the value, from the point-of-view of heritage, of the Louvre’s collections, and the necessity to preserve them in a time of political turmoil, is essential for illustrating the importance European society could give to its cultural heritage. Apart from the possible fear of being judged by history, what is highlighted here is the moral obligation for a nation to protect such a heritage. The silence surrounding these events is all the more surprising given the fact that regional museums also tried to protect their collections. The destruction of the museum of Strasbourg was the main point raised

73 AMN*1BB20 Official statements from the Imperial and National museums, March 8, 1871. 74 AMN P12 (as fn. 61), August 31, 1871, letter from Blanc to Reiset. 75 AMN P12 (as fn. 61), September 7, 1871, exceptional convoy from Brest to Paris Montparnasse train station. 76 Alfred Darcel, Les musées, les arts et les artistes pendant le siège de Paris, in: La Gazette des Beaux-Arts IV, 2nd period (1870–1871), pp. 285–06, pp. 414–29. 77 Maxime Du Camp, Les convulsions de Paris, vol. 3 (Les sauvetages pendant la Commune), Paris: 1878–1880. 78 Journal amusant, October 28, 1871, p. 3.





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by another unpublished document dealing with the protection of collections in the history of provincial museums. Indeed, at the beginning of September 1870, fearing the imminent arrival of the Uhlans, the instructions of a note79 sent by Arsène Houssaye, the Provincial museum inspector during the Second Empire, were put into effect in Montpellier. Though the note was not kept, making it impossible for us to know if it dates from the end of Second French Empire or from the birth of Third Republic, one copy was found in the Municipal Archives of Bordeaux. The document here was dated January 1871. Houssaye told the curators of the French museums and libraries that “the fire that destroyed the museum of Strasbourg” taught the lesson that any staff was able to “detach the paintings of a whole gallery from their frames to take them to safety, and this in only a few hours.” He continued: “The vaulted basements were the safest places, for they could bear the weight of a collapsed building, […] but to protect them more efficiently from the fire, the doors had to be sealed and walled.” And finally, Houssaye called the curators’ attention to their responsibilities, stating that their museums were not only “the property of a city, but the property of the human mind.”80 These protective measures were followed by a large number of institutions, by the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon for instance.81 The sending of this note as well as the evacuation of the Louvre make clear that the first organized attempt to protect the public French collections in their entirety did not take place in 1940, but at the end of the Second Empire during the FrancoPrussian conflict. The museum institutions in France, considered as models by many countries, agreed to take inspiration from foreign institutions with the aim of setting up true transnational exchanges. These exchanges did develop, but were brutally interrupted by the war of 1870. Nevertheless, the situation triggered an unprecedented event between French and German intellectuals. Indeed, the museums of Strasbourg, Colmar, Mulhouse, and Metz became German and, even though these kinds of changes initiated numerous national conflicts over the collections of these museums, they also were an opportunity to create new and numerous transnational exchanges that would take place between 1870 and 1914. Notable examples were the appointment of Wilhelm Bode as curator of the new museum of Strasbourg, or the remarkable work the archeologist Johann Baptist Keune conducted in Metz. Translated by Benjamin Brémaud Billand

79 Montpellier Municipal Archives, 2R3-12 Musée Fabre, Administration, collections’ installation, lending, pictures, October 8, 1870, letter from Laurens to the mayor of Montpellier. 80 Bordeaux Municipal Archives, 1434R8 Bordeaux Museums, correspondence 1870–1875, January 1871, note from Arsène Houssaye to the curators of France museums. 81 Lyon Municipal Archives, 78WP2 Palais Saint-Pierre, Beaux-Arts museums, general administration, acquisitions, 1804–1899, October 30, 1870, letter from Martin-Daussigny to the mayor of Lyon.



Lieske Tibbe

Admiration and Fear The Reports of Marius Vachon on Museums of Industrial Arts in Europe

French Industry under Threat Throughout the entire nineteenth century, French interior design set the artistic benchmark for other countries, drawing the most attention and receiving the most praise at international exhibitions. Initially, the advent of mass-produced crafts did not pose a threat. Refined artisan handicrafts, although expensive, were still much sought-after by members of the higher social strata.1 France seemed to have established itself as a leader in this arena, but in the 1880s and 90s all was not well behind the façade of the French luxury industry. The industrial revolution was slow to take hold in France, with clothing and furniture largely being produced by independent craftsmen or family-owned businesses. The result: high-quality and high-priced products. The export of these goods – traditionally one of the country’s main economic pillars – began to plummet and import began to soar. Imported goods were often mass-produced imitations of French designs, much cheaper than the originals and so available to a new public. To stay afloat, artisans were forced to work more economically, in other words producing faster, cheaper or more and working longer hours.2 The French furniture and interior design industry began to stagnate. People were forced to work quickly and methodically, often under great division of labour, in order to compete with industrial mass production. This situation left little room for experimentation and innovation.3 During the last quarter of the nineteenth century it became increasingly clear that England and the German countries were quickly developing industrial sectors that focused on designing cheaper, mass-produced objects. Moreover, a new style was

1 Whitney Walton, France at the Crystal Palace. Bourgeois Taste and Artisan Manufacture in the Nineteenth Century, Berkeley and Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press, 1992, pp. 9–15 and pp. 117–28. 2 Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, The Petite Bourgeoisie in France, 1850–1914. In Search of the “juste milieu”?, in: Geoffrey Gossick and Hans-Gerhard Haupt, Shopkeepers and Master Artisans in Nineteenth-Century Europe, London and New York: Methuen, 1984, pp. 95–154. 3 Rosella Froissart-Pezzone, L’Art dans tout. Les arts décoratifs en France et l’utopie d’un art nouveau, Paris: CNRS, 2004, p. 63.

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threatening to develop that deviated from the celebrated French tradition. Was it possible that French artisan crafts were in danger of being eclipsed? This danger was signaled by art historian and critic Marius Vachon (1850–1928) after visiting the Paris World’s Fair in 1878. The French furniture industry, he wrote, had not progressed since the last World’s Fair in 1867. Originality and innovation had given way to reproduction and imitation. The French were stagnating while the British were marching onwards.4 This “onwards march” was characteristic of Vachon’s jargon, who tended to describe competition from other countries in martial terms. A battle had erupted in which the opponents began using weapons that France itself had neglected. New developments, innovations and experiments were being seized from France as refugees and exiled workers fleeing the Paris Commune were welcomed with open arms in London and Berlin. These cities – increasingly becoming fierce competitors of Paris – were all too happy to utilize their knowledge and experience.5 Industrial art schools and museums were beginning to crop up all over Europe as new, powerful and young industries were being born. France, however, was paralyzed by a chauvinism and self-love, according to Vachon. He backed up these observations with statistics that showed a decline in the export of French products.6 According to Vachon, the French had plenty of work to do to turn the tide: transport needed to be improved, harbors and fleets needed to be expanded, trade agreements and industrial safety measures needed to be implemented, education needed to be updated and, above all, Paris needed to create a Musée municipal d’études d’art industriel modeled after those in Munich and Berlin.7 Actually, there existed an industrial museum in Paris. Founded in 1794, the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers was intended as a dépot public for tools, machines, models, drawings and instructional books for all areas of the arts and trades. The core collection was formed during the ancien régime. This institution also included an industrial school and a public lecture program.8 The Conservatory primarily focused on the natural sciences and technological innovations and apparently did not meet Vachon’s expectations: he did not include the institution in his reports. The new era demanded an instructive collection of artistic objects. As mechanical production began to advance, fundamental knowledge of the decorative principles became far more important than mastery of crafts and techniques. Paris had taken certain steps towards founding a museum specifically for the arts industry, such as the foundation

4 Marius Vachon, Les industries d’art au Champ de Mars, in: Gazette des Beaux-Arts vol. 18, 20 (1878), II, p. 795, p. 810. 5 Id., Rapport sur les musées et les écoles d’art industriel en Angleterre, Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1890, p. 2. 6 Id., Nos industries d’art en péril. Un musée municipal d’études d’Art industriel, Paris: Librairie d’Art, n.d. [1882], pp. 1–26. 7 Ibid., pp. 35–48. 8 See: Alain Mercier, Un conservatoire pour les Arts et Métiers, Paris: Gallimard, 1994.





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of the Union centrale des Beaux-Arts appliqués à l’Industrie in 1864 (renamed Union centrale des Arts décoratifs in 1877), an association for artists and entrepreneurs aimed at maintaining France’s international position in the world of industrial arts. The Union centrale was able to bring together a library and a collection of old and new industrial arts, but failed to find a permanent location for them.9 To Vachon, the successive temporary museums of the Union centrale did nothing to stimulate the art industry but served as a centre for mundane collectors. The budget was largely spent on antiquarian objects, baubles and curiosities.10 With this goal in mind – to create an efficient museum of industrial arts – Vachon embarked on a series of research trips from 1881 to 1896 to investigate art institutions at home and abroad, commissioned by the Ministry of Education and Arts. This commission was motivated by a government survey from 1881 in which more than 150 industrial leaders unanimously protested the poor state of the country’s industrial arts education, an area in which England and Germany had made vast progress.11 They were right: various countries were developing design programs with connections to instructive museums for the industrial arts, often along the lines of the London South Kensington Museum and School of Design. This museum, which built on existing collections and on acquisitions from the Great Exhibition of 1851, drew much international admiration and imitation, primarily in the German states. An extensive report by Hermann Schwabe entitled Die Förderung der Kunst-Industrie in England und der Stand dieser Frage in Deutschland (1866) offered a detailed explanation of the South Kensington system and a recommendation to start something similar in Prussia, at any cost.12 Something similar had happened several years earlier in Austria: based on the findings of art historian Rudolf von Eitelberger, the K.K. Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie was founded.13 The Dutch also sent people to South Kensington to investigate. The French government, however,

9 Marius Vachon, Pour la défense de nos industries d’art. L’instruction artistique des ouvriers en France, en Angleterre, en Allemagne et en Autriche, Paris: A. Lahure, 1899, pp. 201, 213. The attempts of the Union centrale to found a museum of industrial arts are described in: Debora L. Silverman, Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siècle France. Politics, Psychology, and Style, Berkeley and Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1989, pp. 109–20, and Yvonne Brunhammer, Le Beau dans l’Utile. Un musée pour les arts décoratifs, Paris: Gallimard, 1992. 10 Vachon 1899 (as fn. 9), pp. 201, 213; Silverman 1989 (as fn. 9), pp. 109–20. 11 Vachon 1899 (as fn. 9), p. 3. 12 Hermann Schwabe, Die Förderung der Kunst-Industrie in England und der Stand dieser Frage in Deutschland, Berlin: I. Guttentag, 1866; Barbara Mundt, Die deutschen Kunstgewerbemuseen im 19. Jahrhundert, München: Prestel, 1974, pp. 40–43 and p. 238. See Vachon on the German system in: Vachon 1899 (as fn. 9), pp. 202–03. 13 Mundt 1974 (as fn. 12), pp. 39–40. See Vachon on the Austrian system in: Marius Vachon, Rapports à M. Edmond Turquet, sous-secrétaire d’État, sur les musées et les écoles d’art industriel et sur la situation des industries artistiques en Allemagne, Autriche-Hongrie, Italie et Russie, Paris: Quantin, 1885, p. 106.



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until than had not done so. It was typical that Vachon would conclude his trips with a report on England, the country where others began.

A Background on Vachon Reporter and inspector Marius Vachon was already known for his art history publications, particularly in the field of French Renaissance architecture. He viewed the art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance as being the most characteristic of France (an opinion shared by most North European countries in response to the more internationally-oriented Classicism). His stylistic preference is clearly laced with nationalist sentiments; a nationalism that was further fueled, even to the point of Germanophobia, by the destruction of several important monuments during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871.14 Vachon’s ideal France was a republic, consisting of a democratically elected government supported by free, independent citizens with equal rights. A collective system of values, solidarity and entrepreneurship were more important than a centralized government that prescribed laws and regulations from Paris. Décentralisation and Liberté were terms he frequently used in his writing. As regards the revival of the French industry, he expected more from local and regional civil initiatives than from government regulations. But this required a revival of French morals. In this respect, Vachon’s nationalism and republicanism were far from progressive; they tendered, rather, to the traditionalist and corporatist. His ideal stemmed from a bygone era in which, to his estimation, public responsibility, morality and vitality had reigned supreme. This explains why he sought the revival of French industry in the recovery of French artistic tradition instead of in the creation of a new, contemporary style. He also had little sympathy for socialist ideals to improve the position of artisan workers: rebellious sentiments could never lead to improved quality of work. On the contrary! Skill, creativity and taking pleasure in one’s work could only be restored through educational reforms, which would lead to satisfaction with society and one’s place in it. To him, class struggles posed a threat to national unity. He wanted nothing to do with such ideals as “Art for the People and by the People,” as proposed by Ruskin and Morris. While he included their contributions in his report on the revival of the industrial arts in England of 1890 as an antidote for the haughty aloofness of independent artists and the academy, he later went on to rebuke their principles as a “mystico-philosophical” mix of Proudhon, Taine, the Bible, Lassalle, Tolstoy, Ibsen, Schopenhauer and Marx; in total opposition to the clarity, logic and equilibrium of the French spirit.15

14 ‘Vachon, Marius’, http://www.inha.fr/spip.php?article3193 (accessed April 25, 2012). 15 Vachon 1890 (as fn. 5), p. 185; Marius Vachon, La Guerre artistique avec l’Allemagne. L’Organisation de la victoire, Paris: Payot, 1916, pp. 183–84 and p. 249. 



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From 1881 to 1889, Vachon embarked on six research trips through Europe. From 1896 to 1897 he took a similar tour of the French industrial centers. As he explained, he visited every key industrial arts centre and found out as much as he could about the local situation and its educational organization and operation. He visited local authorities and officials, chambers of commerce, patron and artist trade meetings, factory directors, studio heads, artists and anyone with any connection at all to the industry.16 He compiled his observations in five reports: the first covered parts of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia (1885),17 the second covered Switzerland and the German Rhineland (1886),18 the rest Belgium and the Netherlands (1888),19 the Scandinavian countries (1888),20 and England, followed by a Résumé general (1890).21 His report on France was published in 1897 and caused quite a stir in the press and political arena. He then went on to write another Résumé (1894, for a conference of the Union centrale des arts décoratifs)22 and a book (Pour la défense de nos industries d’art, 1899) in which he outlined the key findings from his national and international journeys and issued warnings and recommendations. The numerous summaries in all his travel accounts and concluding reports have led to a great many repetitions in his writing. To which areas did Vachon pay particular attention during his travels? Firstly, to the interior design or the method of presentation of the museums: architecture, decorations, display cases, available walking space and, most importantly, the ordering of objects. Because he was an advocate of linking education to instructive museums, he assessed these museums primarily on their educational qualities. In addition to an instructive way of exhibiting – preferably in systematically arranged series – this also involved museum-organized activities such as guided tours, lectures, library maintenance and a reproduction collection. A second point of consideration was

16 Vachon 1899 (as fn. 9), p. II. 17 Vachon 1885 (as fn. 13). 18 Marius Vachon, Rapports à M. Edmond Turquet, sous-secrétaire d’État, sur les musées et les écoles d’art industriel, et sur la situation des industries artistiques en Suisse et Prusse rhénane, Paris: Quantin, 1886. 19 Marius Vachon, Rapports à M. le Ministre de l’Instruction publique et des Beaux-Arts sur les Musées et les écoles d’art industriel et sur la situation des industries artistiques en Belgique et Hollande, Paris: Quantin, 1888. 20 Marius Vachon, Rapport à M. le Ministre de l’instruction publique et des beaux-arts sur les musées et les écoles d’art industriel, et sur la situation des industries artistiques en Danemark, Suède et Norvège, Paris: Quantin, 1888. 21 Vachon 1890 (as fn. 5) is combined with: Résumé général de l’Enquête en Europe sur les musées et  les écoles d’art industriel et sur les associations qui ont pour but le développement de l’art et de l’Industrie. 22 Marius Vachon, Résumé de rapports de missions sur les institutions d’enseignement industriel et artistique à l’étranger, adressé aux membres du congrès organisé par l’Union centrale des arts décoratifs, Paris: May et Motteroz, 1894.



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the museum’s organization, including its daily management but also its governing body. This is where his socio-political preferences for civil initiatives come into play. A third point of consideration, often in conclusion to the first two, was to what extent a museum played a role in the trade competition that proved so threatening to France, and to what extent this could serve as an example for French initiatives. Here, Vachon’s nationalistic sentiments resonate throughout his observations. As regards museum layout and design, Vachon’s ideal was pretty clear from the start. As previously mentioned, he neglected to include the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, but he did offer his opinion on two Parisian museums in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts: the Musée de Cluny and the Musée de sculpture comparée. According to Vachon, the Musée de Cluny was ghastly: it was suffocating in a cramped building, the rooms were overcrowded and even the darkest corners were filled with objects. The depots were crammed with items and no room to display them. Vachon mentioned several exceptional pieces and collections that did not receive due exposure; everything was mixed in together.23 He denounced the Musée de Cluny as an abomination in his reports. He spoke more highly of the Musée de sculpture comparée. In his descriptions, Vachon drew on the three of his favorite themes: firstly, the museum had been designed by Viollet-le-Duc, under the auspices of the Commission des monuments historiques and without the interference of the Ministry of Fine Arts, so without governmental support! Secondly, it was extremely well organized and catalogued: not only could visitors track the chronological development of – mostly architectural - sculpture – in the various artistic centers, they could also analyze the stylistic differences between these centers by comparing methodically arranged objects. As a third, aspiring artists could draw on an unprecedented wealth of French artistic expression, superior in terms of style and execution. In addition to his national pride, Vachon also reveals his frustrations: this museum of reproductions was a long-held French concept, but it was snatched up by other countries. London, Vienna, Berlin: they beat France to it. France was an extraordinary country with revolutionary ideas and ground-breaking inventions, but their application was largely enjoyed abroad.24 Nonetheless, he

23 Marius Vachon, L’État actuel du Musée de Cluny, in: Gazette des Beaux-Arts vol.16, 19 (1877) II, pp. 387–88. 24 Marius Vachon, Le Musée de la sculpture comparée au Trocadéro, in: Gazette des Beaux-Arts vol. 21, 22 (1880) II, pp. 87–90. See for the conception of the Musée de Sculpture comparée: Dominique de Font-Réaulx, The History of the Musée de Sculpture Comparée as Founded by Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. A Nationalist Creation, in: Ellinoor Bergvelt et al. (eds.), Museale Spezialisierung und Nationalisierung ab 1830. Das Neue Museum in Berlin im internationalen Kontext/ Specialization and Consolidation of the National Museum after 1830. The Neue Museum in Berlin in an international Context, Berlin: G + H Verlag, 2011 (Berliner Schriftenreihe zur Museumsforschung vol. 29), pp. 227–39.





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was certainly proud to encounter reproduction collections abroad, inspired by the museum in Paris, such as those in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum (fig. 14).25

Fig. 14: Cast Court of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, c.1890

Travel Results His review of these two Parisian museums had set the tone. Generally speaking, Vachon distinguished between two types of museums for the industrial arts: he labelled one a musée historique or a musée rétrospective, which included cultural history museums such as the Musée de Cluny and what we now know as antiquity rooms. The second, and in his eyes better, version was the musée technique. To him,

25 Vachon 1888 (as fn. 19), pp. 113–14. The cast court of the Rijksmuseum was still under construction at the time of Vachon’s visit; it was to open at 1891.



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the retrospective museum was utterly unsuitable as an instructive tool for the working class. Although often quite picturesque, it did not encourage analysis or comparison  – on the contrary, these museums were best suited to scholars, collectors and snobs. Masterpieces, to which these museums were often devoted, were also not the most suitable objects for analysis. Often obtained from royal collections, these works gave the casual observer the wrong impression about everyday objects from our past.26 Such valuable pieces required proper storage, while the more common pieces were openly displayed and could even be touched. In general, Vachon seemed to have been in favor of putting collection pieces to use, in the literal sense of the word. He quoted a curator in Sankt Gallen who was pleased when books or objects showed signs of wear because this meant they were fulfilling their intended purpose. He also quoted the director of the Berlin museum that regularly lent earthenware and glass pieces to the province, who remarked: ‘Objects in a museum like ours were designed to be broken!’27 A real “working” museum for the working class could easily get by displaying reproductions, photos, electroplated art and cast moulds with a well-stocked library to boot. This was also much cheaper. The famous 36-piece Lüneburger silver collection in Berlin’s Kunstgewerbemuseum, for instance, was a fine series of examples in its own right.28 The museum had acquired the collection for FF 825,000 (666,000 Reichsmark), while reliable electroplated replicas were selling for a mere FF 17,000. These replicas lent themselves perfectly to educational purposes.29 The museum in Berlin also boasted a vast number of copies, roughly 2500 pieces at the time of Vachon’s visit.30 Vachon also encountered a large number of replicas in Munich, which observers were free to sketch at will. They could even have the object moved to a special sketching room in order to examine it in peace.31 The small Museum of Industrial Arts in Haarlem, which consisted largely of copied material, was praised for managing to achieve so much with so little financial means.32 The best solution was perhaps a combination of museums or presentations, one of which would show the chronological development of arts and crafts, while the other would display comparative series of similar objects. That was the case in

26 Vachon 1885 (as fn. 13), p. 73. 27 Vachon 1886 (as fn. 18), pp. 40–41. 28 Marius Vachon, Le Musée des arts industriels à Berlin, in: Gazette des Beaux-Arts vol. 27, 25 (1883) II, p. 164. 29 Vachon n.d. (as fn.  6), p. 46. See for the acquisition of the “Lüneburger Ratsilber” also: Das Kunstgewerbe-Museum zu Berlin. Festschrift zur Eröffnung des Museumsgebäudes, Berlin: Reichsdr., 1881, pp. 24–25. 30 Vachon 1883 (as fn. 28), p. 165. 31 Vachon 1885 (as fn. 13), pp. 90–91. 32 Vachon 1888 (as fn. 19), pp. 125–26.





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Munich, but, according to Vachon, the section technique drew far more visitors than the section historique, which only attracted simple sightseers.33 In Vachon’s opinion, the Museum für Kunst und Industrie in Vienna was the most systematically organized: surrounding a spacious and richly decorated courtyard were rooms that each housed one of the handicrafts. Vachon did criticize the arrangement in some of the rooms: the artistic branches were usually arranged in chronological order, but sometimes genres and styles were anachronistically ordered. This was probably done to liven up the displays, but he found it completely misleading.34 In general, he disapproved of ensembles and harmonious combinations: they reminded him too much of ‘Cluny’. Nevertheless, he deemed the Vienna museum one of the best in Europe. Like its forerunner, the South Kensington Museum in London, this was a centre of industrial promotion for the entire Empire.35 But even better was the Orientalisches Museum in Vienna, situated at the first floor of the Exchange Building. This museum, emanating from the 1873 Vienna World Fair was to be merged with the Oesterreichisches Handelsmuseum in 1886.36 Vachon referred to it several times in his various reports as ideal. He had never come across anything like it before. The museum boasted every imaginable product from antique and contemporary to industrial and artistic, and from Turkey, Persia and India to Japan and China. It was a place of inspiration for artists, designers and artisans, but it also gave insight into the import and export of oriental goods. Each object was accompanied by a label with information on the price, means of production, sales channels, packaging and payment. The museum had several rotating exhibitions, was a prominent art lender (at the time of Vachon’s visit all of the glasswork was on display at an exhibition in Prague), published a magazine (Oesterreichische Monatsschrift für den Orient) (fig. 15), had an information center and was affiliated to an Austrian-Asiatic trade agency, which Vachon believed would threaten French trade.37 According to him, France should establish a similar agency by merging the unused Chinese collection in the Palais de Fontainebleau, the Cernuschi collection, and impending acquisitions from the new French colonies.38 Of all of his many preferences – practical replicas of originals, flexibility in the collections, technical and commercial information provision – one might infer that the ideal museum as he saw it would hardly be ideal by today’s thinking. Yet he was

33 Vachon n.d. (as fn. 6), pp. 45–46, and Vachon 1885 (as fn. 13), pp. 87–88. 34 Vachon 1885 (as fn. 13), p. 97. 35 Ibid., p. 106. 36 Herbert Fux, Japan auf der Weltausstellung in Wien 1873, exh. cat., Vienna: Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst, 1973, pp. 19–20. See also: F.X. von Neumann-Spallart, Die Bedeutung des Orientes für die Errichtung eines Handelsmuseums, in: Oesterreichische Monatsschrift für den Orient 11, no. 12 (1885), pp. 257–58. 37 Ibid., pp. 18–24 and p. 108, and Vachon 1890 (as fn. 5), p. 234. 38 Vachon 1885 (as fn. 13), p. 77.



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Fig. 15: Page of Oesterreichische Monatsschrift für den Orient, edited by the Orientalisches Museum at Vienna





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also someone with vast art historical knowledge, as evidenced in his publications and descriptions of exceptional pieces included in some of his reports. In private, he was in fact the erudite visitor to the musée rétrospective whom he describes with such contempt in his reports. It is also interesting to note that there was one particular type of museum with ensembles and interiors that received a positive review by Vachon: the relatively new ethnographic open-air museums in the Scandinavian countries. He found these lively and beautiful, a ‘microcosm’ of social life in Scandinavia. The furniture, everyday objects and fabrics were fresh, original and diverse. Art industry in Denmark, Sweden and Norway was presumably oriented towards the national market and virtually untouched by German imports. This was where France could begin gaining ground and where French industrialists could draw inspiration.39

Disappointment in France After his experiences abroad it comes as no surprise that Vachon discredited the industrial art museums in his own country. During his tour of 25 French cities40 he saw countless ‘Cluny’s’; poorly housed and badly neglected museums with few public amenities. Most provincial museums were merely repositories for abandoned historical objects and donations bequeathed from a sense of self-love; there was no hint of a systematically organized collection or a consistent series of objects. In many locations, plans for launching or improving these museums had been abandoned years ago. Several industrial centers (Tarare, Le Puy, Vierzon, Tours, Calais, Besançon) did not even have such a museum. As a Ville Porte de l’Orient, shouldn’t Marseille be expected to have an institution like the Orientalisches Museum in Vienna?41 Local authorities were not convinced that a museum should be part of the economic and social life of the city, and should be considered a public service like drinking water, gas and public transport. They did not realize it required management, qualified staff and a budget in order to function properly. The museum was considered a luxury, similar to the opera but of a lower status.42

39 Vachon 1888 (as fn. 20), pp. 7–8, pp. 37–38, pp. 67–72. See for the origins of the folklore and open air museums, and especially the Scandinavian contribution to it: Ad de Jong, Dirigenten van de herinnering. Musealisering en materialisering van de volkscultuur in Nederland 1815–1942, Nijmegen: SUN, 2001, pp. 165–316. 40 Marius Vachon, Les industries d’art, les écoles et les musées d’art industriel en France, Nancy: Imprimerie de Berger-Levrault, 1897. His tour included: Lyon, Tarare, Saint-Étienne, Le Puy, Marseille, Nice, Nîmes, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Limoges, Vierzon-le Berry, Tours, Angers, Nantes, Rennes, Quimper, Rouen, Saint-Quentin, Lille, Roubaix, Tourcoing, Calais, Reims, Besançon, Nancy. 41 Ibid., p. 120. 42 Vachon 1899 (as fn. 9), p. 134.



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The idea that museums could be used as educational tools was also overlooked in France, partly due to the centralized nature of education at the time. Many schools were national institutions with a uniform curriculum. According to Vachon, this uniformity was the main reason for the disastrous state of arts education, which no longer had ties to local industry.43 Unions were also beginning to deteriorate: the labour unions were weakened by class struggle and the patrons’ unions were suffering from a lack of funds and members and from mutual strife.44 The central organization for the industrial arts – the aforementioned Union centrale des arts décoratifs – was ruled by dilettantes, sceptiques et désoeuvrés according to Vachon. The number of union members actually working in the industry was plummeting. Vachon found that the fall of the Union centrale was a typical sign of decay of notre race in both the public and private sector – and all this while other countries, particularly Germany, were enjoying flourishing industrial organizations with the involvement of artists, artisans, entrepreneurs and traders.45 Gewerbevereine were the hub of artistic and industrial recovery. Throughout all of Germany and Switzerland Vachon encountered museums run by city councils, companies and corporations. He counted 37 museums for the industrial and applied arts in the German countries, and a large amount of exhibitions, competitions, conferences and library foundations.46 Vachon’s corporatist leanings meant he ascribed less importance to the role that national governments and royalty played in the foundation of industrial art museums.47 Even the South Kensington Museum and its subordinate local museums, a public organization under the direct auspices of the Department of Science and Art48 in his opinion remained a system of Décentralisation and Liberté all the same. He stressed that the local museums could function very independently and flexibly and were supported by local governments, industrialists and citizens. He was struck by the strong sense of community these islanders shared.49 In Belgium and the Netherlands, he saw a powerful artistic revival which he associated with civil political and social movements. In Belgium, which had quickly become prosperous through industrialization, the Flemish emancipation movement led to an increased interest in the style flamand from the Middle Ages and native Renaissance periods. In Holland, people seemed to be awakening from a long stupor in which they

43 Ibid., pp. 51–77. 44 Ibid., p. 165. 45 Ibid., pp. 138–41, pp. 171–87, p. 209. 46 Ibid., p. 202, p. 213. See for the role of the Gewerbevereine: Mundt 1974 (as fn. 12), pp. 27–29. 47 Vachon 1883 (as fn. 28), pp. 165–66; Vachon 1885 (as fn. 13), pp. 109–10. 48 Vachon 1890 (as fn.  5), pp. 1–21; for the establishment of the South Kensington Museum see: Anthony Burton, Vision & Accident. The Story of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London: V&A Publications, 1999, pp. 41–54. 49 Vachon 1890 (as fn. 5), p. 163, pp. 184–89; Vachon 1899 (as fn. 9), p. 252.





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nostalgically cherished their own illustrious past. They began founding and visiting industrial and trade schools, organizing exhibitions and competitions and erecting local museums.50 In his Résumé of 1890, Vachon listed the most important and therefore most ‘dangerous’ museums as follows: the South Kensington Museum was in first place followed by the industrial art museums in Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Nuremberg, Hamburg, Birmingham, Rome, Stockholm, Dusseldorf and Amsterdam. Next came the museums in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nottingham, Glasgow, Salford, Sheffield, Manchester, Budapest, Haarlem and Krakow.51

The Tide Cannot be Turned Vachon clearly demonstrated how it should be done. In 1889, with the support of the local industry and trade unions, he was given the opportunity to transform the Musée de Fabrique in his hometown of St. Étienne into an updated Musée d’Art et d’Industrie. St. Étienne had two main industries that were, essentially, polar opposites: the weapons industry and the rubannerie, or silk ribbon industry. Nestled among the coal mounds, anvils and furnaces lay a feminine, graceful industry of Italian origin, “like the visit of Venus to Vulcan in the fire pits of Etna.” Vachon hereby paints an ideal picture of an industrial provincial town of yesteryear.52 As a militant nationalist, the weapons industry, which included the manufacture of artillery, did not shock Vachon. He proudly explains the steps he took to quickly transform the museum: by purchasing items from the 1889 World’s Fair, including Japanese swords, and acquiring a collection of antique firearms. To obtain artistic examples for the ribbon industry, he borrowed flowered tapestries and earthenware objects from the Garde-Meuble and the studios of Gobelins, Beauvais and Sèvres. In just a few short years the collection grew to 6000 objects. He also began developing an information system and a library.53 In 1891 he organized an industrial exhibition in St. Étienne to allow the regional industry to present itself. The exhibit was memorialized in a photo album.54 Despite his efforts, the museum was not a success: fierce opposition from the city council forced him to retire. His successors neglected the initiative and by the end of

50 Vachon 1888 (as fn. 19), pp. 5–9, pp. 89–90. 51 Vachon 1890 (as fn. 21), p. 232. 52 Vachon 1897 (as fn.  40), p. 63, and Marius Vachon, L’Exposition de Saint-Étienne, St. Étienne: Théolier, 1891, pp. 9–10. See also: Nadine Besse, Construire l’art, construire les moeurs. La function du musée d’art et d’industrie selon Marius Vachon, in: Stéphane Michaud (ed.), L’Édification: morales et cultures au XIXe siècle, Paris: Créaphis, 1993, p. 54, http://books.google.nl/books?id=39xECYfnjOcC &lpg=PP1&dq=Michaud (accessed April 25, 2012). 53 Vachon 1897 (as fn. 40), pp. 63–90; Vachon 1899 (as fn. 9), pp. 146–53. 54 Vachon 1891 (as fn. 52).



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the century the museum was only open twice a week, the library had been closed, the textile collection had turned to dust and, to save money, the once-active curator of the weapons department had also been appointed curator of the art museum and frequented the Salons, and so, wrote Vachon, transformed into an armurier-esthète.55 Another disappointment for Vachon was the emergence of a new artistic style that he could not appreciate: the Art Nouveau.56 Vachon did not see Art Nouveau as typically French; it was born in Belgium and raised in Germany and now threatened to take over France and Europe. Worst of all was that the illustrious traditions of French industry were being threatened by those outside influences (“empoissonnée par un exotisme barbare”). One example was the turning down of robust, solid woods reaped from French soil – mainly walnut and oak – whose natural beauty only grew over time. Several stunning examples of these could be found in castles and museums throughout France. However, this feeble and neurotic generation longed for pale, exotic woods with no strength, no nerve; whose pallor had to be covered with thick layers of varnish.57 The threat was particularly evident at the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris: he interpreted the German pavilion at the Rue des Nations along the Seine – a mix of German Rococo and Art Nouveau – as a demonstration of power, with its imposing size and 75 meter high towers, colossal stairs of Bavarian marble flanked by enormous candelabras and paintings of Germanic myths. In the art department of the Esplanade des Invalides, the German entrance contained a colossal rock depicting the imperial eagle on the verge of ravaging a dragon – to Vachon this was a striking allegory of suppressing and crushing Pan-Germanism.58 When the Union centrale des arts décoratifs finally opened the official Musée des arts décoratifs in the Louvre Pavillon de Marsan in 1905, Vachon must have been equally disappointed: his ideal of a “working” museum for the art industry could not have been further from what had been created here. Period rooms have earned the museum its fame, but it is precisely what Vachon denounced as the “Cluny method.” Moreover, it certainly was a museum with rare and valuable masterpieces; a real haven for collectors and connoisseurs. It was also a source of inspiration for the furniture industry, however, just not in the way Vachon had hoped: the French Art Nouveau was well represented in the Musée des arts décoratifs.59 And so Vachon’s reports did not prove a good indication of future trends. Since the 1870s, at the time of Vachon’s travels, a shift could be perceived in decorative art museums throughout Europe from systematic to more evocative displays. Compara-

55 Vachon 1899 (as fn. 9), pp. 154–55. 56 Ibid., pp. 76–80. 57 Vachon 1899 (as fn. 9), p. 7. 58 Vachon 1916 (as fn. 15), pp. 10–13 and p. 149. 59 Brunhammer 1992 (as fn. 9), pp. 52–66; Silverman 1989 (as fn. 9), pp. 142–58.





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tive series remained the principal focus, but were being increasingly substituted for ensembles or whole interiors. Vachon deemed this an outdated “Cluny-esque” form of presentation, but it was in fact quite innovative. The decorative arts museum began to focus less on the working class and more on the higher social strata as their goals shifted from “instruction” to “aesthetics formation” or consumer education. As the mechanization of the arts developed and artisan training programs became less specific, the position of the museum of industrial arts began to change. These developments paralleled those of interior design: Art Nouveau had no use for examples from the past.60 Vachon, who rejected these developments, never lost his fighting spirit. In publications during and after the First World War he called for a guerre artistique et industrielle against Germany. In the darkest hours of war he was offering his experience gained a quarter of a century earlier. He reworked his 30-year-old findings into two publications that incorporated his ideas on the reformation of art education and museums and his arguments for a corporatist society and against centralized industrial directives.61 Yet despite his impassioned pleas, the battle for a systematic museum had truly ended. His reports, however, are still an excellent source of information for a comparative analysis of European systems of industrial promotion.

60 See Lieske Tibbe, Taxonomie und Didaktik oder Chronologie und Ästhetik. Entwicklungen im Kunstgewerbemuseum des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, in: Bernhard Graf and Hanno Möbius (eds.), Zur Geschichte der Museen im 19. Jahrhundert 1789–1918, Berlin: G + H Verlag, 2006 (Berliner Schriften zur Museumskunde vol. 22), pp. 74–78. 61 Vachon 1916 (as fn.  15); Marius Vachon, La Préparation corporative à la guerre artistique et industrielle de demain avec l’Allemagne, Paris and Mâcon: Imprimerie de Protat Frères, 1918.



Roland Cvetkovski

Cosmopolitan Scholar, Servant of Art Transnational Contexts of Igor Grabar in Early Twentieth-Century Russia In Russia, museological thought was neither all too widespread nor particularly sophisticated at the turn of the twentieth century. It constituted a knowledge field still in its fledgling stages and was primarily practiced by a handful of historians, ethnographers, and archaeologists who nevertheless invested much effort in establishing scientific standards for defining what museums and museology were exactly about. Unfortunately, these few protagonists also lacked official backing, since the tsarist bureaucracy showed no real interest in museum matters except in the case of prestigious institutions like the Hermitage or the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg where the autocracy could boast of its engagement both in collecting European art and in preserving the national heritage. So it was not until the October Revolution in 1917 that the museums suddenly started attracting the state’s attention: for the new authorities, museums now represented an extraordinary hub where the public could be broadly confronted with the regime’s new concept of society. In the end, the display of the new state of affairs – its historical genesis as well as its future projection – quite obviously turned into an arena for the ideological forging of reality. Yet this very impulse effected an incredibly fast development of museology, which started to flourish as early as the 1920s and which even produced initial results that in some ways set the agenda for international museum work. As the major aim of the new regime was to install a new way of life and thinking in general, the development of a genuine Soviet museology decisively different from its “bourgeois” counterpart was a logical consequence. Although intellectual contacts with non-Soviet scientists were certainly not forbidden (but could be dangerous), the political regime still expected that the specificity of the Soviet approach should evolve from within: distinction marked all Soviet endeavors, which at some point would achieve legitimacy by finally surpassing the work of Western rivals. But the intellectual resources promoting this progress, at least during the 1920s, could not really be Soviet: as in other fields, the new experts had to be recruited from the scientific elite of the late tsarist period, and this meant that the early Soviet state rested heavily on the experience of those whose scientific education as well as practice had frequently been oriented internationally. The artist Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar (1871–1960) was one of these protagonists who, upon the overthrow in 1917, straddled two eras, with one foot in the imperial past and one in the communist future. Even though he is probably not well known in Western scholarship, Grabar was one of Moscow’s leading artistic figures both in imperial and Soviet Russia. In the prerevolutionary period, his paintings, for which he became famous, were principally

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characterized by a Russophile sentiment and they were highly influential in the formation of an autonomous Russian artistic identity. But he simultaneously showed an unceasing and insatiable interest in Western European art. He lived abroad for many years, traveling around the continent, even continuing his journeys during the Soviet period, and he unrelentingly strove to assert the presence of Russian art in Western Europe. Grabar’s impact on Russian academic life was enormous, but what is more, he was knowledgeable in several disciplines including museum affairs, in which he was involved rather on the sidelines and by chance – a phenomenon typical for the development of pre-revolutionary and early Soviet museology. Grabar’s intellectual career, as well as his artistic and, later on, museological positions, was deeply rooted in the stimuli he had received abroad. His biography, especially the seminal years around 1900, reveals a person of great curiosity, always in motion and absorbed in anything of interest.1 As the impressive inventory of his widespread correspondence shows, his international embedment did not even come to an end in the 1920s.2 This cosmopolitan approach was, as we shall see further on, absolutely formative for Grabar’s emphasis on the existence of a genuine Russian art, even though his argumentation tended to accentuate national features. A simplistic rejection of Western developments was certainly never his point; on the contrary, Grabar’s world of ideas was guided by the wish to make the Russian components within it visible in a positive way. He thus understood himself as a kind of agent between the cultures, taking on the role of a cultural intermediary. His broad erudition, openmindedness, and European interconnectedness were a categorical condition for understanding as well as contextualizing the Russians’ role in art. It was in such open contexts that he picked up ideas, modeled them, and finally applied them in Russian and Soviet environments, respectively. Grabar’s individual experience and his biography in general provide us with a catalyst in the study of the interplay of influences over a longer period of time on both the macro- and micro-level. They also help to make clear that national framings, too, inevitably had to do with transfer situations as well as with supra-national “movements, flows and circulation.”3

1 The individual in motion and its impact on identity building, which is not our major issue here, has recently been conceptualized through a transnational lens, see: Desley Deacon, Penny Russell, Angela Woollacott (eds.), Transnational Lives. Biographies of Global Modernity, 1700-Present, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010; Rosamund Dalziell (ed.), Selves Crossing Cultures. Autobiography and Globalisation, Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2002. With regard to museums, see the recent publication: Daniel Oakman, Student Sojourners. Museums and the Transnational Lives of International Students, in: National Identities 12, no. 4 (2010), pp. 397–12. 2 Grabar’s correspondence is kept in the archive of the Tretyakov Gallery, see: Gosudarstvennaia Tret’iakovskaia galereia. Otdel rukopisi (further GTG OR) f. 106, op. 2–6. 3 See AHR Conversation: On Transnational History. Participants: C.A. Bayly, Sven Beckert, Matthew Connelly, Isabel Hofmeyr, Wendy Kozol, and Patricia Seed, in: American Historical Review 111, no. 5 (2006), pp. 1441–64, quot. p. 1444.





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Art is at the very core of the transformation processes which we will investigate below and in which Grabar was involved; the museum, however, acted as a powerful medium to express as well as process Grabar’s specific contextualization of art. It was like a passage in which his concepts, which previously had already been developed within multiple international relationships, were absorbed, took shape, changed, and from which they left again, once more crossing national boundaries. The following sections attempt to briefly trace this long-term trajectory spanning the time from the turn of the century until the 1930s, reflecting the transnational contexts of Igor Grabar.

Art, History/Art History Born to Russian parents, Grabar’s father, an elected deputy of the parliament in Budapest from the mid-1860s onwards, had to emigrate in 1876 due to his critical attitude towards the Hungarization of Slavs in Austro-Hungary; four years later the rest of the family joined him and they took up residence in Moscow. Once resettled, they changed their last name from Khrabrov to Grabar, which obviously had been their original Russian name, in order to emphasize their Russian ancestry.4 In 1893, after Igor had graduated from St. Petersburg University in law, he turned away from jurisprudence, and, in 1894, started to study painting at the capital’s Imperial Academy of Arts, pursuing what had been his main interest since his early teen years. Dissatisfied with the academic approach there, he left St. Petersburg in 1896 and went to Munich where he enrolled in the private art school of the renowned Slovenian teacher Anton Azhbe (1862–1905);5 at the same time he began to publish his first critical essays in art and was soon very successful. In 1901, he left Munich and finally returned to Moscow to work as a painter and art critic, but he continued making journeys abroad. Again back in Russia, he soon began to engage in art history and edited, as well as co-wrote, a multivolume project on the history of Russian art whose completion, however, was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War.6 Meanwhile, in 1913, he had been appointed curator of the Tretyakov Gallery, whose director he finally became in 1918, and which he headed until 1925. Regularly publishing on art history as well as on museum practice, he additionally addressed another discipline which, however, first had to be established: restoration. He founded and led the Moscow workshops for

4 See Igor’ Grabar’, Pis’ma. 1891–1917 [Correspondence. 1891–1917], Moscow: Nauka, 1974, pp. 36–37 and p. 327, note 6 (1893) and note 1 (1894). 5 For Azhbe, see Katarina Ambrozić, Wege zur Moderne und die Ažbe-Schule in München/Pota k Moderni in Ažbetova šola v Münchnu, Recklinghausen: Bongers, 1988. 6 Six volumes appeared covering the period from Byzantium up to Peter I, see Igor’ Grabar’, Istoriia russkogo iskusstva [The History of Russian Art], Moscow: Knebel’, 1910–1913.



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conservation and restoration from 1918 to 1930, and although he held several other positions – among others he became a full member of the Academy of Sciences in 1943 and director of the Institute of Art History of the Academy of Sciences one year later – he still continued to be a productive painter.7 On September 17, 1895, during his first extended journey through Europe, Igor Grabar wrote from Naples to his elder brother Vladimir that he “need[s] only art, art and nothing else.” He was expressing a maxim which would remain valid for his whole life.8 Indeed, with the field of law left behind, art had finally become the pivot aligning all of Grabar’s activities. His five-year stay in Munich, where he moved in July 1896 after disappointedly dropping his studies at St. Petersburg’s Academy of Arts, was certainly crucial for his development. Here, he wished to become more closely acquainted with Western art, to intensify his painting as well as to advance it beyond ossified academism, and to generally absorb the inspiring atmosphere of one of the artistically most exciting cities at that time. Alongside his frequent travels in Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain and France to visit exhibitions and museums, he earned his living writing about contemporary art in the periodical Niva. Later, he also became correspondent-in-residence for the avant-garde journal Mir iskusstva, reporting regularly on current expositions all over Europe.9 His intense preoccupation

7 A biography has been written by Ol’ga I. Podobedova, Igor’ Ėmmanuilovich Grabar’. Zhizn’ i tvorcheskaia deiatel’nost’ [I.E. Grabar. Life and Work], Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1964. For further reading, see: Elena N. Evstratova, Igor’ Grabar’, in: Prepodavanie istorii v shkole no. 2 (2004), pp. 2–10; Natalia V. Egorova, Igor’ Grabar’, Moscow: Trilistnik, 2001; E. Basni, Esteticheskie vzgliady I.E. Grabaria (k voprosu o “zhivopisnom realizme”) [Aesthetic Views of I.E. Grabar (On the Question of “Realism in Painting”)], in: Esteticheskie vzgliady khudozhnikov sotsialisticheskoi kul’tury [The Aesthetic Views of Artists in Socialist Culture], Moscow: Nauka, 1985, pp. 214–44; G.G. Pospelov, I.Ė. Grabar’ i nekotorye momenty sovremennogo iskusstvovedeniia [I.E. Grabar and Some Aspects of Current Art History], in: Sovetskoe iskusstvoznanie 1982. Tome 2, Moscow: Sovetskii Khudozhnik, 1984, pp. 234–51; A. Sidorov, I.Ė. Grabar’ – vydaiushchiisia deiatel’ sovetskoi kul’tury. K 100-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia [I.E. Grabar. Distinguished Character of Soviet Culture. On Occasion of his Centenary], in: Iskusstvo no. 3 (1971), pp. 34–41; Ol’ga I. Podobedova, Igor’ Grabar’. K istorii sovetskogo iskusstvoznaniia [Igor Grabar. On the History of Soviet Art History], in: Iskusstvo no. 6 (1966), pp. 43–50; Igor’ Ėmmanuilovich Grabar’. O deiatel’nosti v oblasti iskusstvovedeniia [I.E. Grabar. On his Activity in Art History], in: Voprosy istorii no. 6 (1960), pp. 221–22; S. Druzhinin, Khudozhnik i uchenyi. K 80-letiiu so dnia rozhdenija i 60-letiiu tvorcheskoj deiatel’nosti I.Ė. Grabaria [Artist and Scholar. On Occasion of his 80. Birthday and his 60. Jubilee of his Artistic Activity], in: Iskusstvo no. 4 (1951), pp. 30–36; V. Lobanov, Igor’ Ėmmanuilovich Grabar’. Narodnyi khudozhnik RFSFR [I.E. Grabar. National Artist of the RFSFR], Moscow-Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1945. 8 Quotation in: Grabar’ 1974 (as fn. 4), p. 56. 9 The Mir iskusstva [World of Art] was a small but heterogeneous group of artists whose journal (1899–1904) was highly influential for the Russian art community in the first years of the 20th century. Its representatives – amongst others Aleksandr Benua (Alexandre Benois), Konstantin Somov, Dmitry Filosofov, Leon Bakst, Evgeny Lansere (Eugène Lanceray) and particularly Sergei Diaghilev – opposed to academic painting just as to the artistic simplicity of the influential “Wanderers” (peredvizhniki).





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with European art led Grabar to general considerations about its historical contexts: during his Munich apprenticeship as art critic, he learned to deal with his subject historically and started to address art history methodically. After his return to Russia, he deepened this knowledge, “intensified [his] historical studies” particularly to “close the gaps left after the systematic investigations in Munich,” as Grabar stressed in his autobiography.10 Accordingly, the fruits of his efforts soon became visible. In 1906, a huge exhibition on Russian art took place in Paris in the Salon d’Automne. Curated by the famous impresario Sergei Diaghilev, it was the first time that a show offered a detailed view of the history of – mainly – eighteenth and nineteenth century Russian art. Grabar embraced the opportunity and published an instructive article in 1907, and in referring to the Paris exposition he gave a succinct overview of Russian art history as well as a precise evaluation of Russian art against the European background.11 This small work, a preparatory study for the subsequent, above-mentioned multi-volume project on Russian art history, would probably not be so noteworthy, if the article had not appeared in a major German journal proffering a fresh and actually challenging view on the relation between Russian and European art. Grabar was in the process of developing a systematic reading of “the historical development of Russian art” for a German and European public respectively. Given the uproar this exhibition caused in an enthusiastic audience that soon labeled it a sheer “revelation,” it stands to reason that Grabar considered this retrospective to be “breaking new grounds.” Indeed, it was precisely these last two centuries, as he claimed in his article, which actually constituted Russia’s “whole art history.”12 Basically, his description of the historical development of Russian art did not reveal anything new, it was rather his line of argumentation and his attempts of con-

Instead they advocated the artistic individualism of Art Nouveau in order to escape, as Benois put it, “Russian provincialism and to turn to the civilised occident”, for quotation see Aleksandr N. Benua, Vozniknovenie “Mira iskusstva” [Origins of the “Mir iskusstva”], Leningrad: Komitet populiarizatsii khudozhestvennykh izdanii pri Gosudarstvennoi akademii istorii material’noi kul’tury, 1928, p.  21. Grabar placed more than 20 articles in this magazine, dealing with international expositions, contemporary European art as well as art history, including lengthy disquisitions about single artists such as Hans Thoma, Félicien Rops, Hans von Marées, Ferdinand Hodler, Arnold Böcklin, Paul Cézanne or Paul Gauguin. For the group itself, see Janet E. Kennedy, The “Mir iskusstva” Group and Russian Art, 1898–1912, New York and London: Garland, 1977; Evgeniia N. Petrova, Sinisalo Soili (eds.), “Mir iskusstva”. On the Centenary of the Exhibition of Russian and Finnish Artists 1898, Düsseldorf: Palace Editions, 1998. 10 Quotations: Igor’ Grabar’, Moia zhizn’. Avtomonografiia. Etiudy o khudozhnikakh [My Life. Automonograph. Etudes on Artists], Moscow: Respublika, 2001, p. 166. 11 Igor Grabar, Zwei Jahrhunderte russischer Kunst, in: Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst 42 [= N.F. 18] (1907), pp. 58–78. 12 Quotations Grabar 1907 (as fn. 11), p. 58–59. The Salon d’Automne presented 750 works spanning the periods from Byzantium to contemporary Russian art; in November of the same year, the exhibition was reinstalled at Schultes Kunstsalon in Berlin, see Grabar’ 1974 (as fn. 4), p. 390.



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textualization which made his essay remarkable. Grabar was largely arguing that the course of Western European art history with its particular achievements should not be applied to Russia as an unalterable point of reference: Russia’s specificity has to be evaluated on its own terms. Of course, his point was certainly not to deny the European impact on Russian art: the Russian painters of the eighteenth century were undoubtedly influenced by French, Italian and German artists, but nonetheless they had also succeeded in emancipating themselves – especially since the second half of the eighteenth century – by integrating European technical and stylistic features into a broader cultural, Russian framework. For Grabar it was crucial to strengthen those idiosyncrasies of Russian art history which resulted particularly from this emancipation process, and his interpretation of this history manifested in a narrative which was somewhat nationally aligned. Especially the works of the Mir iskusstva-group served him as an excellent, though not single, example for demonstrating that Russian art could in no way be considered inferior or uncivilized – a common cliché used to position Russian culture in general within the European context – but that it had a high quality of its own. So on the whole, for Grabar, history was a tool with which to attest to specific and, above all, inherent features of Russian art history, and with which to tie together all Russian artistic masterpieces irrespective of their place of origin. Yet Grabar’s essay not only was introducing an ignorant public to the treasures of Russian art: it should also be read as a response to Western European arrogance. Interestingly, only shortly before this, a three-volume work about nineteenth century painting by the German art historian Richard Muther had appeared. With the help of, nota bene, Alexandre Benois, a member of Mir iskusstva, Muther had – for the first time – included the history of Russian art in a survey of Western European art. It is amazing to which degree Muther’s and Grabar’s texts were parallel in structure as well as in argumentation.13 Even though Muther had devoted one chapter to making Russian art accessible to the German-speaking public, he also conveyed, much to Benois’ chagrin, a subtext stigmatizing it as backward and underdeveloped. According to Muther, Russian art neither fit into the Western European narrative of linear historical progression nor had it achieved a stylistic virtuosity comparable to its Western counterparts. In his article, Grabar opposed Muther’s contention by likewise applying the national paradigm that his colleague had used, but also by drawing on ideas he had formulated during his early time in Munich, especially in his 1897 article “Decline or Renaissance?”14 In this essay, the reader could literally feel his enthusiasm

13 Richard Muther, Geschichte der Malerei im 19. Jahrhundert, 3 vols., Munich: Hirth, 1893–94. For the interconnection between Muther and Grabar, see: Adrienne Kochman, Fitting Russian Art into the Western European Canon. Igor Grabar’s Response to Richard Muther in the Article “Zwei Jahrhunderte Russische Kunst”, in: Centropa 8, no. 3 (2008), pp. 244–56. 14 Igor’ Grabar’, Upadok ili vozrozhdenie? Ocherk sovremennykh techenii v iskusstve [Decline or Renaissance? Survey of Trends in Contemporary Art], in: Ezhemesiachnoe literaturnoe prilozhenie k zhurnalu „Niva“ no. 1 (1897), col. 37–74 and no. 2 (1897), col. 295–314. See also Kochman 2008 (as





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for Western art resulting from the strong impressions he had received when acquainting himself with the European masterpieces on his travels in various museums. For Grabar, the importance of Western art was (and remained) beyond question, and in this early essay he even held that it was essentially just the avant-garde which nurtured national art: only the vanguard as a movement not yet subjected to and constrained by institutions was endowed with the freedom to build on the past on the one hand, and simultaneously to experiment with the new on the other. In Gabar’s view, artistic innovation and progress was possible only between the poles of heritage and future vision. Thus, the emergence of the avant-garde was a positive and necessary development within any national artistic evolution. In obviously advocating the so-called “decadent” tendencies of his time, he was thus provocatively emphasizing that “[o]ur times were not the days of decline […] but days of a bright renaissance, days of hope and confidence.”15 But, in Grabar’s view, since at that time in Russia official art was academically patronized – and that meant by the state – real innovation comparable to that in the West was actually not possible. Nevertheless, in 1907, when the Mir iskusstva-group was at its peak, the situation had completely changed and Russia actually had its own non-academic vanguard movement. Grabar applied his former argumentation, which had originally only fit to the Western avant-garde, unconditionally to Russia. In so doing, he validated the uniqueness of Russian art as an original contribution, even though he himself was actually applying Western standards. Nonetheless, this milestone, at the latest, signaled Russia’s arrival upon the scene of European modernism. Hence, the contexts of the 1907 article are threefold, at the least, and all have to do with certain states of deficiency: first, in respect to content, the article obviously was necessary, as the exposition in the Salon d’Automne had clearly shown, and was basically intended to inform the Western public about Russian art, its historical development and its coherence. In this context, we obviously are dealing with a quite simple transfer of information about art from East to West – information which had up to that point been lacking. Second, the text was intent upon refuting the misconceptions about the supposedly poor standards of Russian art. Grabar’s reference point was Richard Muther’s multi-volume publication, which set the Western developments as benchmarks for artistic evolution in general. Grabar availed himself of this approach but, as it were, reversed the perspective and, instead, championed the uniqueness of Russian art without excluding it from the European context. In this way, he meant to virtually decolonize views on art. Third, the text is strongly marked by Grabar’s early experiences as a young art critic in Munich. The impressions he gathered when visiting exhibitions all over Europe had a particular influence in

fn. 13), p. 259; Podobedova 1964 (as fn. 7), pp. 69–75; Kennedy 1977 (as fn. 9), pp. 84–92; Basni 1985 (as fn. 7), pp. 223–27. 15 Grabar’ 1897 (as fn. 14), col. 314.



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shaping his positive attitude towards the Western avant-garde. The appearance of Mir iskusstva finally legitimized Russian art as an autonomous entity, a status which had previously applied solely to Western art. This third context is thus characterized by a basic transfer of structural ideas from West to East. All of these positions later reappeared, were re-processed and finally were molded into another cultural shape – this time, however, not in response to a deficiency but as an affirmative expression of national accomplishment – when Grabar finally set about to reorganize the Tretyakov legacy, Moscow’s and even Russia’s most famous collection of art.

Art, Museum/Art Museum If he could have foreseen the difficulties and even intrigues ensuing from his unexpected appointment to the curatorship of the Tretyakov Gallery in 1913, Igor Grabar reminisces, he would certainly not have accepted the offer. Moreover, as this post was on a voluntary basis, he did not intend (and could not afford) to hold the office longer than one or two years; but, as is known, things turned out differently.16 The gallery’s origins go back to the year 1851, when the entrepreneur Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov and his brother Sergei Mikhailovich acquired a building on the right bank of the Moskva river. Here, they installed their new offices. The edifice’s second floor became the repository for accommodating their collectors’ passion, the fruits of which would soon evolve into one of the most splendid collections of contemporary Russian art. When Sergei Mikhailovich died in 1892, this collection – by now consisting of nearly 1,300 paintings, more than 500 drawings, and several sculptures – was entrusted, with the consent of Pavel Mikhailovich, to the hands of Moscow’s municipal administration, which made it broadly accessible and transformed the formerly private showroom into a public institution. After Pavel deceased in 1898, the municipal duma of Moscow now had sole responsibility for the gallery but was bound to Pavel Mikhailovich’s will, which stipulated, on the one hand, that the collection should not be enlarged, and, on the other, that the hanging of the paintings should not be changed.17 Grabar, however, had a clear conception of his future work with the entrepreneurs’ legacy and had perspicaciously made sure, before accepting his post, that in the case of an appointment he would be allowed to reform the gallery, which indeed would be necessary, as he was soon to recognize. When embarking upon his work

16 Grabar’ 2001 (as fn. 10), p. 240. 17 For a brief history of the Tretyakov Gallery see S.N. Goldshtein, Kratkii istoricheskii ocherk Tret’iakovskoi gallerei [Brief Historical Sketch of the Tretyakov Gallery], in: P.I. Lebedev (ed.), Sto let Tret’iakovskoi gallerei. Sbornik statei [100 Years Tretyakov-Gallery. An Essay Collection], Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1959, pp. 9–47.





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at the museum in 1913, he did find an immense artistic treasure, considered to be a national symbol, but he was also confronted with the catastrophic circumstances making up the gallery’s everyday reality: almost no scientific staff, little money, little space, no inventory, no catalogue, no secretary, not even a typewriter for official correspondence. And what was worst in Grabar’s eyes was that the exhibit not only did not follow any concept, it did not even reveal any sensible idea of order but instead was in terrible state of chaos. All his life, Pavel M. Tretyakov has been purchasing masterpieces, arbitrarily stuffing them into the showrooms, irrespective of aesthetic features and regardless of a possible systematization according to artist or periods – the presentation of the collection resembled a motley amassment of superb works of art, including those of Karl P. Briullov, Aleksandr A. Ivanov, Il’ia E. Repin, Mikhail A. Vrubel and many others. The paintings assailed and confused the visitor’s eye by completely covering the walls, one next to the other, from the bottom up to the ceiling, hardly leaving space in between. So, Grabar first aimed at decreasing this super-­ abundance of paintings in order to create a more easeful atmosphere and to facilitate contemplation in general. But more importantly, he set out to eliminate the haphazard hanging as it was left by Pavel Mikhailovich and to give the exhibit a “museological guise.” To him, particularly the aesthetic jumble prevailing in the exhibition was highly annoying – as for example in the second room which simultaneously contained works from the late eighteenth and the early twentieth century. Similarly, it was deplorable that if one wished to view the œuvre of one certain painter, one had to look for the individual paintings all over the gallery: only after a long search could the paintings of say Perov or Riabushkin be found, dispersed in galleries A, 7, 12, 23 and 24. Thus, Grabar’s reforms initially attempted to introduce a sensible aesthetic arrangement following a principle of “architectural rigor,” as the council responsible for the gallery called it, by strictly applying “exterior-geometric” as well as “interiorcoloristic” features to the display of the artworks. But most significantly, Grabar set out to supply the collection with a narrative, based on the tenet of linearity.18 He was the first curator in Russia to arrange works of art according to the principle of historical progression.19 His pivotal idea was to break up history into characteristic units revealing the highlights of Russian art and in particular its evolution. Whereas Pavel M. Tretyakov had simply intended to display the masterpieces of Russian art, Grabar

18 Quotations GTG OR f. 106, op. 7, d. 15.855, sheet 1–3. 19 Against the background of Pavel M. Tretyakov’s testamentary dispositions, the reorganization of the gallery was echoed by harsh polemics in Moscow’s daily press, especially in 1913 when the restructuring started and in 1915/16 when the new hanging was finished and it opened to the public. If by then Grabar was perceived positively as an artist as well as an art historian, he now, due to his museum activities, even became famous and a persona non grata at the same time. For the first public debate in Russia on museological matters, see the dossier in Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva [Russian State Archive of Art and Literature] (RGALI) f. 822, op. 1, d. 1.502, sheet 1–66.



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instead put the emphasis on the specific ways in which and conditions under which Russian art had developed and evolved in different stages.20 To achieve this effect, he, of course, drew on the chronological principle, but additionally – as can be clearly observed – he modeled the mechanics of display after those of a book. Grabar was very lucky to have at hand the gallery’s “huge amount of historical-artistic material,” which he intended to use in completing his “History of Russian Art,” with which he was very occupied at that time.21 But the procedure of constructing a written narrative highlighting the autonomous as well as modern character of Russian art in particular choosing the historical approach, merged with the restructuring of the gallery’s exhibition. Not very surprisingly, his concepts for reforming especially the gallery’s visible surface in the showrooms developed parallel to the process of writing the book. As one could read in the minutes of the museum commission in charge of the remodeling, the “new hanging strives to tie the pages together into a harmonious book of Russian art history,” so that “all the materials of the gallery are arranged in such a way that the visitor can acquaint himself with the complex process of the organic development of Russian art by walking from the left to the right.” Hence, the “pages of the book […] are now put in the right order, and by identifying the most important passages, we will make reading easier.”22 Of course, the intention to instruct the visitor was logical in its pedagogical claim and certainly in line with the general museum practice of the nineteenth century. But it is still noteworthy that Grabar’s principles of restructuring the museum exhibition were so close to his considerations and experiences in writing a book – the first book – about Russian art history (to say nothing of the double role of beholder and reader into which the museum visitor was now squeezed). Against the background of the striking idea that the new hanging should work like and have a similar effect as a book, it was evident that the new Tretyakov galleries fully corresponded to Grabar’s theoretical unfolding as well as to the positioning of Russian art which he had previously undertaken in his article of 1907 and later again in his multivolume project. So, Gabar’s early involvement in European painting and his consequential insistence on the idiosyncrasy of Russian art within the Western context fundamentally shaped the formation of Russia’s unofficial national art museum. The background of his reform is thus as ambivalent as was his previous article: oscillating between an emphatically European context and a categorical national statement, it was evidently Grabar’s very experience which was decisive for the actual implementation of the restructuring. Obviously, the process of transfer and long-term adaptation had commenced with Muther’s considerations on Russian art, had been continued formally

20 G.A. Nedoshivin, Nauchnaia rabota Tret’iakovskoi gallerei [Scientific Work in the Tretyakov Gallery], in: Lebedev 1959 (as fn. 17), pp. 48–72, here p. 52. 21 Grabar’ 2001 (as fn. 10), quot. p. 240. 22 Quotations GTG OR f. 106, op. 7, d. 15.855, sheet 2 and 4.





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in Grabar’s response with his exact reversal of Muther’s statement, and, for the time being, had finally been modified by the translation of these new results into another cultural – the museological – mode. But this trajectory actually did not stop at that point: the museological conditions themselves now led to a further treatment of the artworks and led to – among other things – restoration work.

Conservation, Art/Conservation Art On March 18, 1929, an exposition opened in Berlin focusing on masterpieces of early Russian painting. The show was organized by the Commissariat of Education (Narkompros) in cooperation with the German Society for the Study of Eastern Europe (Deutsche Gesellschaft zum Studium Osteuropas). It displayed 131 icons from the twelfth to the eighteenth century and was the first exhibition to reveal in such breadth the far-reaching historical origins of Russian culture to a Western audience. Indeed, in view of the enormously positive reverberations the exhibition produced, it did not seem an exaggeration to consider this exceptional event (which, apropos, again took place in several German, Austrian, British, French, and finally Italian cities) a “European sensation,” as did Friedrich Schmidt-Ott, an important politician of Wilhelmine Germany and the Weimar Republic, a science policymaker, and head of the German Society for the Study of Eastern Europe.23 It thus seems plausible that the hosts of the exhibit had high expectations. In the words of the historian and vice-president of the society, Otto Hoetzsch, in his opening speech: “this extraordinary product of Russian art” was crucial “for understanding both Russian art and cultural history.”24 Igor Grabar, together with the painter and restorer Evgeny Ivanovich Briagin, supervised the exposition, overseeing the selection of the paintings and their scientific handling. Grabar’s involvement with icon painting stemmed in part from his long-term commitment to early Russian art which had evolved during his extended travels in northern Russia immediately after his return from Munich in 1901. But it was also particularly due to his official capacity as head of Moscow’s famous workshops for the restoration of early Russian monuments. In June 1918, the “All-Russian Restoration Commission” (Vserossiiskaia restavratsionnaia komissiia) was founded at the Commissariat of Education, renamed several times, and finally titled “Central State Restoration Workshops” (Tsentral’nye gosudarstvennye restavratsionnye masterskie) in 1924. From its very beginning, Igor Grabar

23 Grabar mentioned this to his wife Valentina Mikhailovna in a letter from the opening day, see Igor’ Grabar’, Pis’ma. 1917–1941 [Correspondence. 1917–1941], Moscow: Nauka, 1977, quot. p. 183. 24 Denkmäler altrussischer Malerei. Russische Ikonen vom 12.–18. Jahrhundert. Ausstellung des Volksbildungskommissariats der RSFSR und der Deutschen Gesellschaft zum Studium Osteuropas in Berlin, Köln, Hamburg, Frankfurt a.M., Berlin: Ost-Europa-Verlag, 1929, quot. p. 3.



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was in charge of this new institution and remained its head until 1930. Under his auspices, the workshops attained an authoritative position, also internationally, particularly because of their excellent achievements in restoring old masterpieces of art. His curiosity about the material quality of paintings as well as about questions of attribution was once again rooted in his time in Munich, where he studied the production of paint, its application, and the techniques of the old masters.25 This study was actually the origin of Grabar’s keenness for the preservation and restoration of early art. His enthusiasm was not only congruent with the new state’s particular interest in keeping the Russian cultural-aesthetic traditions visible and in itemizing as well as monitoring them, but particularly with his obligations at the Tretyakov Gallery, where he had simultaneously started to extend and to display the icon collection. When Grabar assumed his post at the workshops, he already enjoyed a fine reputation as an expert in the field of restoration. He assembled important ikonniki, i.e. historians of icon painting, amongst whom Aleksandr Ivanovich Anisimov probably was the most exceptional,26 as well as experienced restorers like Dmitry Fedorovich Bogoslovskii and Grigorii Osipovich Chirikov.27 To Grabar, restoration was a kind of necessary “museological therapy”28 to clean the masterpieces of the impurities which in the course of time overlaid the works in several layers, to finally “‘uncover’ (raskryt’) them [i.e. the pieces of art, R.C.] down to their original coat or, in other words, to restore them.”29 Thus, restoration did not mean the reproduction of the original, but

25 He referred to his intense reading on this subject in a letter to his painter-colleague Dmitry Nikolaevich Kardovskii on September 1, 1898, see Grabar’ 1974 (as fn. 4), pp. 106–09. 26 After Anisimov was suspected of ideological misbehavior at the end of 1920s, finally leading to his death sentence in 1937, he fell into oblivion, although his works on early Russian art had played a significant role in promoting scholarship on icons, see Irina L. Kyzlasova, Aleksandr Ivanovich Anisimov (1877–1937), Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo gornogo universiteta, 2000; Gerol’d I. Vzdornov, Restavratsiia i nauka. Ocherki po istorii otkrytiia i izucheniia drevnerusskoi zhivopisi [Restoration and Science. Survey of the History of the Rediscovery and Scholarship of Old Russian Painting], Moscow: Indrik, 2006; Shirley A. Glade, Anisimov and the Rediscovery of Old Russian Icons, in: Jefferson J.A. Gatrall, Douglas Greenfield (eds.), Alter Icons. The Russian Icon and Modernity, University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010, pp. 89–111; and recently Erika Voigt (ed.), Aleksandr Anisimov. Erforschung der Ikonenmalerei. Begleittext zur Ausstellung: “Denkmäler altrussischer Malerei” in Deutschland 1929, Frankfurt on the Main: Peter Lang, 2011. 27 For the changing staff see: P.A. Semechkin, Otdel po delam muzeev i okhrany pamiatnikov iskusstva i stariny Narkomprosa RSFSR. Izmeneniia v sostave tsentral’nykh restavratsionnykh organizatsii v 1918–1934 [Department of Museum Affairs and Preservation of Art and Ancient Monuments of Narkompros RSFSR. Fluctuations within the Staff of the Central Restoration Organizations, 1918– 1934], in: Grabarevskie chteniia 5 (2002), pp. 52–63. 28 Quotation after A.N. Luzhetskaia, K voprosu o postanovke khraneniia i restavratsii v Tret’iakovskoi galleree [On the Formation of Preservation and Restoration at the Tretyakov Gallery], in: Lebedev 1959 (as fn. 17), pp. 216–52, here p. 229. 29 Igor’ Grabar’, Novye metody okhrany i izucheniia pamiatnikov iskusstva. (Po povodu vtorogo vypuska sbornika “Voprosy restavratsii”, M. 1928) [New Methods of Preservation and Scholarship





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rather the rescue, the prevention of further decay and degeneration. Penetrating into the genealogy of the object’s mutations by removing all the layers down to the lowermost stratum also engaged the archaeologist’s curiosity and sense of purposefulness. History thus took its place beside aesthetics as a crucial feature of paintings in general.30 The efforts the Soviet restorers undertook in this direction were amazing: in the first decade of their activities, apart from their activity in the workshops in Moscow, they organized no less than 15 extended expeditions all over Russia for the restoration of architecture, frescos, and, above all, old paintings. At the same time, the ingenuity and virtuosity they developed in restoring paintings was simply astonishing.31 In view of these achievements, the Berlin exposition of early Russian art also dedicated a section to “the technical procedures and recent methods of repair (Reparatur) and the uncovering (Aufdeckung) of the original paintings.” Even though it was of interest only for “experts of museology,” as Grabar assumed, this section would serve as a distinctive platform where specialists could exchange views on a “subject which was not only complicated but demanded much responsibility.” By encouraging a scientific approach and more sophisticated methods, they also helped avert the dilettantism, if not vandalism, that had been common only a few years before.32 It was quite

on Works of Art. (On Occasion of the Issue of the Second Tome of “Voprosy restavratsii”, M. 1928)], in: Igor’ Grabar’, O drevnerusskom iskusstve [On Old Russian Art], Moscow: Nauka, 1966, pp. 366–69, quot. p. 366. 30 In a way, this approach roughly complied with Georg Dehio’s dictum: “Preservation, not restoration” (Konservieren, nicht restaurieren), for this see: Christoph Friedrich Hellbrügge, “Konservieren, nicht restaurieren.” Bedeutungswandel und Anwendungspraxis eines Prinzips der Denkmalpflege im 20. Jahrhundert in Deutschland, Bonn: 1991; Jan Friedrich Hanselmann, Die Denkmalpflege in Deutschland um 1900. Zum Wandel der Erhaltungspraxis und ihrer methodischen Konzeption, Frankfurt on the Main: Peter Lang, 1996; Ingrid Scheurmann (ed.), ZeitSchichten. Erkennen und Erhalten – Denkmalpflege in Deutschland. 100 Jahre Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmäler von Georg Dehio, exh. cat., München: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2005. 31 The results had been published in two volumes, see: Voprosy restavratsii [Questions of Restoration], vol. 1, Moscow: Izdanie Tsentral’nykh Gosudarstvennykh Restavratsionnykh Masterskikh, 1926, and Voprosy restavratsii, vol. 2, Moscow: Izdanie Tsentral’nykh Gosudarstvennykh Restavratsionnykh Masterskikh, 1928. For more details see: Grabar’ 2001 (as fn.  10), pp. 265–70; Podobedova 1964 (as fn. 7), pp. 176–95; Vzdornov 2006 (as fn. 26), pp. 139–217; Igor’ Grabar’, Restavratsiia v sovetskoi Rossii [Restoration in Soviet Russia], in: Igor’ Grabar’, O russkoi arkhitekture. Issledovaniia. Okhrana pamiatnikov [On Russian Architecture. Research. Preservation of Monuments], Moscow: Nauka, 1969, pp. 378–82; S.I. Gorelova, Istoriia restavratsionnykh masterskikh Gosudarstvennogo Russkogo Muzeia, 1917–1941 [History of the Restoration Workshops of the Russian State Museum, 1917–1941], in: Khudozhestvennoe nasledie. Khranenie, issledovanie, restavratsiia [Artistic Heritage. Preservation, Research, Restoration], tome 5 (35), Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1979, pp. 139–82. 32 Quotations from Grabar’s brief introduction to the exhibition catalogue, see Denkmäler altrussischer Malerei 1929 (as fn.  24), p. 12. See also V.V. Zverev, Concerning the Question of the Formation of Scientific Restoration, in: Heinz Althöfer (ed.), Das 19. Jahrhundert und die Restaurierung. Beiträge zur Malerei, Maltechnik und Konservierung, München: Callwey, 1987, pp. 299–301.



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natural that Grabar, in his capacity as the exhibition’s co-organizer, but particularly as an uncontested luminary in restoration matters, was requested to give lectures on this subject. And indeed, since 1922, he had been lecturing regularly at Moscow State University on the theory and practice of restoration. The subject consisted roughly of two parts: the first part covered the actual restoration work dealing with the character of outside influences which art works were subjected to over the course of time, and included the various theoretical approaches and practical applications of contemporary restoration. The second part, on the other hand, benefited the most from his above-mentioned Munich experiences and focused on the techniques of painting and on a historical survey of painting in several European regions.33 Meanwhile, art historians, archaeologists, and museologists abroad, especially in France and Germany, were attentively observing the developments and progress of Soviet restoration work. Soon Grabar was requested to publicize the workshops’ accomplishments to a nonRussian audience, and, from the mid-1920s onwards, several publications appeared, providing insight into their activities.34 So when Grabar arrived in Berlin, early in 1929, German academia was well informed and received him enthusiastically, and his lectures, held in always crowded auditoriums, frequently ended “in sustained applause even turning into standing ovations.” The German scholars virtually besieged him and, as he put it, addressed “him unceasingly: friends and strangers, concerning questions of exhibition, of art history, of expertise in general, and actually of anything.” Although Grabar was well aware of his renown and of the esteem in which the scholars held him, he still was astonished at the intensity of the exhibition’s (and also his own) “unexpected [and] exceptional triumph.”35 But while in Germany the academic public showed greater interest in art historical issues, the French audience in Paris, where he arrived in May of the same year (the icon exhibition itself was to be shown there in the autumn of 1929), was mainly attracted by his achievements in restoration. His reception at the Sorbonne, on May 22, 1929, by the renowned Byzantinist

33 The first 16 lectures given during the summer term 1922 can be found in GTG OR f. 106, op. 1, d. 1.123, sheet 1–38. An extended and more elaborate adaptation from 1927 is available in a printed version, see: Igor’ Grabar’, Lektsii po restavratsii, chitannye na pervom kurse otdeleniia izobrazitel’nykh iskusstv I MGU v 1927 godu [Lectures on Restoration Given for the First Course at the Department of Fine Arts of Moscow State University I in 1927], in: Grabar’ 1966 (as fn. 29), pp. 291–56. 34 Igor Grabar, Die Freskomalerei der Dimitrij-Kathedrale in Wladimir, Berlin: Metropolis, 1925; idem, Die Entdeckung der altrussischen Malerei, in: Ost-Europa 4, no. 7–8 (1929), pp. 449–52; idem, Denkmäler altrussischer Malerei. Russische Ikonen vom 12. bis 18. Jahrhundert, in: Denkmäler altrussischer Malerei 1929 (as fn. 24), pp. 7–12; idem, Die Malerschule des alten Pskow, in: Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst 63, no. 1 (1929/30), pp. 3–9; idem, Sur les origines de l’évolution du type iconographique de la Vierge Eléousa, in: Charles Diehl (ed.), Études sur l’histoire et sur l’art de Byzance. Mélanges Charles Diehl, vol. 2, Paris: Leroux, 1930, pp. 29–42; idem, Nouvelles methodes appliquées à l’étude des œuvres d’art, in: Mouseion 11, no. 11 (1930), pp. 117–27. 35 Such was his wording in the letters to his wife in February/March 1929, see: Grabar’ 1977 (as fn. 23), quot. pp. 186–88.





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Gabriel Millet was extraordinary: welcoming him amidst other recognized scholars – Grabar estimated their number at 35 to 40 – Millet emphasized the particular significance of the Central State Workshops for Restoration and the enormous impact they had had on art historical research – his own included – during the last ten years, all over Europe. He had even written an article about them soon to be published, and the well-known art historian Louis Réau, too, gave Grabar two copies of an essay which honored the accomplishments of his Moscow workshops.36 Restoration and its achievements for medieval as well as early modern paintings had clearly made its way from East to West. It had virtually closed the circle whose first stroke was drawn at the turn of the century in Germany when Grabar seriously engaged in Western art history, painting, and art criticism, and started acting as an intermediary between the cultures. Thus his devotion to preservation and restoration certainly was rooted neither in some unchangeable national conception of art history that he strictly advocated, nor in an ideological intention to hold a competition between different cultural and artistic traditions, but in his deep affection for artistic expression in general. Restoration was a logical museological extension of the lengthy process of Grabar’s continuous dealing with art – it is thus beyond question that for him what was worth preserving was not a political system but, above all, the flow of art.37

Conclusion Biographies always leave something open, and they actually rely on the movement and transition which determine life’s turnarounds and passages decisively; otherwise probably nobody would bother to record a biography so meticulously as Grabar did when publishing his autobiography in 1937, 23 years before his death.38 Like many

36 Gabriel Millet, Les “ateliers de restauration”, in: L’art byzantin chez les Slaves. L’ancienne Russie, les Slaves catholiques. Deuxième recueil dédié à la mémoire de Théodore Uspenskij. Première partie, Paris: Paul Greuthner, 1932, pp. 51–53; Louis Réau, Les fresques de la cathédrale Saint-Dmitrij à Vladimir, in: ibid., pp. 68–76. For Grabar’s stay in Paris see: Grabar’ 2001 (as fn. 10), pp. 300–01; Grabar’ 1977 (as fn. 23), pp. 227–30; Podobedova 1964 (as fn. 7), p. 193. 37 Yet it should not be forgotten that especially with regard to political power after 1917 he obviously acted savvily, particularly as it is striking that his interests always coincided with those of the state. And indeed, he never was accused of ideologically suspicious behaviour and, in contrast to many of his close colleagues, survived the purges in the 1930s undisturbed, see: A.N. Krylova, I.E. Grabar’ i okhrana pamiatnikov. Chetyre etapy ego zhizni: svobodnyi chelovek, svobodnyi khudozhnik, obshchestvennyi deiatel’, gosudarstvennyi sluzhashchii [I.E. Grabar and the Preservation of Monuments. Four Stages in his Life: Free Man, Free Artist, Social Agent, Government Employee], in: Grabarevskie chteniia 5 (2002), pp. 10–19. 38 Grabar’ 2001 (as fn. 10).



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of his contemporaries who had experienced the world’s demise in 1917, his life was affected first and foremost by changes in circumstances and conditions. His actions and performance, however, displayed a certain uniformity regardless of personal developments and irrespective of political overthrows, since they unwaveringly revolved around art. His twelve-year art museum experience between 1913 and 1925, although unintentionally, seem to have consolidated all the influences which he was exposed to. The institution, with its unique nature, obviously was a force that drove him to combine his artistic genius, his commitment to art historical theory, and his administrative skills. Thus, his rich, but in this respect not really changeful, life as a protagonist and mediator of art could easily be read through the prism of his museum activities. On the one hand, they absorbed and virtually materialized what he had experienced as an art critic as well as an art historian. On the other, Grabar developed ideas from the institution itself: preservation and restoration, two of the museum’s important functions, were not only his personal interests which he had been pursuing all along, but were part of his museological obligation to make (early) art accessible, historically comprehensible and, in the end, to make it come alive. As it were, the museum as a distinct place of cultural practice clearly rendered visible the absorption, processing, and radiation of ideas about art on a larger scale. It also documented how deeply Grabar was involved in the circulation of these ideas, since it was he who had actually acted as permanent conduit of transfer. On the surface, it seems that the trajectories of Grabar’s ideas followed the lines of national boundaries, but these were actually only the outcome and manifestation of structural restraints prevailing in that period. In his case, as we have seen, even the national orientation was at least partly due to the model of European art history by Muther, who had merely juxtaposed separate national histories. As is well known, the microscopic, biographical view on individual experiences makes large historical categories such as nationalism appear more complex and heterogeneous than initially thought, and sometimes they seem even to dissipate. Our investigation of Grabar’s occupation with art shows that structural settings obviously had to go through human passion. From this perspective, cross-border cooperation and entanglements were certainly not the result of Grabar’s activities, but the very condition for these.



Reforming the Museum – A Supranational Project

Susanna Avery-Quash, Alan Crookham

Art Beyond the Nation

A European Vision for the National Gallery The reconstitution of the National Gallery within the wider European context is an important topic because it sheds light on an intriguing facet of British museum history which would have profound implications for broader reflections on museum display and museum architecture as well as for debates about theoretical approaches to art history. An analysis of the structure and management of the National Gallery during the early years of its existence and the reforms which took place at the Gallery in the 1850s reveals the importance of international influences on the debates and enquiries which led to those reforms. It also highlights the key figures involved in these debates and the extent to which they acted as conduits for international ideas, notably Sir Charles Eastlake, who became the National Gallery’s first Director after its reconstitution in 1855 (fig. 16).

Fig. 16: Photographic portrait of Sir Charles Eastlake, c.1855–1865

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The Early Direction of the National Gallery from 1824 The National Gallery was established much later than many similar institutions on the continent. It was brought into existence in 1824 when the Government purchased 38 paintings from the estate of the financier John Julius Angerstein for display in his London town-house. Even at this formative stage, the Gallery’s existence owed much to a response to developments across Europe. While there was certainly a didactic element to the foundation of a National Gallery, its establishment also sprung from a sense of national pride, with many public figures believing that the growth in public art collections across Europe was something that should be emulated in Britain.1 And yet the Government did not engage in any meaningful contemplation of what exactly the National Gallery should be. This lack of strategic direction manifested itself in a number of interrelated concerns about the Gallery’s management, collecting, display and site. These concerns would recur, with increasing frequency, as criticisms of the Gallery over its first 30 years. After Parliament approved the establishment of the National Gallery, it was left to the Treasury to sort out the details of how it should be managed. No constitution was drawn up, only a Treasury minute and a paltry one-page set of broad regulations.2 The Treasury appointed the picture dealer William Seguier as the Keeper with responsibility for the day-to-day business of the Gallery along the lines of the regulations while both he and the Gallery were to be superintended by a committee which would evolve into the Gallery’s governing body known as the Board of Trustees. The problem was that it was not clear who was responsible for what, or even if the Gallery was an independent body or simply an annexe of the British Museum.3 The regulations only dealt with access (the principle of free access being the cornerstone); there was no guidance on governance, display or acquisitions. The opaque nature of the management structure had a negative impact on collecting policy and display. The Board of Trustees consisted of an elite group of aristocrats and public figures and they developed the collection with a number of choice yet conservative purchases – following much the same line as they did in their own private art collections.4 There was no strategic overview of acquisitions nor was there any policy for the arrangement of pictures. They were densely displayed from floor to ceiling with no distinctions made between their place of origin and date. In fact their display mirrored the way that art had traditionally been shown in private collections

1 For a detailed account of the Gallery’s establishment, see Gregory Martin, The Founding of the National Gallery in London, in: The Connoisseur 185–186, nos. 745–754 (April–December 1974). 2 National Gallery Archive (NGA) NG5/3/1 and NG5/4/2. 3 See David Wilson, The British Museum. A History, London: British Museum Press, 2002. 4 See Christopher Whitehead, The Public Art Museum in Nineteenth-Century Britain. The Development of the National Gallery, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005, pp. 3–4. Many Trustees were collectors in their own right, for example Sir George Beaumont, George Agar Ellis and Sir Robert Peel.





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as well as in temporary displays at auction houses and academy exhibitions.5 The haphazard arrangement of the pictures was compounded by the issue of the site. As the collection grew, it was moved, in 1838, to William Wilkins’s purpose-built gallery in Trafalgar Square but dissatisfaction remained, both with the design and look of the new building as well as the still restricted space available to hang the collection. Consequently the early author of guide-books, Mrs Jameson, could note in 1842 that any comparison with European picture galleries “would be invidious and absurd.”6 Radically, in her Companion to the Most Celebrated Private Galleries of 1844 she went on to argue that public displays, in distinction to private galleries, should be based on “a certain system of classification and chronological arrangement,”7 and she cited the Munich and Berlin galleries as optimum examples. Arguably, her notions were influenced by the work of her friend Charles Eastlake who as early as 1835 had written a philosophical tract, How to Observe (an Essay Intended to Assist the Intelligent Observation of Works of Art), where he argued that there were two ways of viewing works of art and that while the connoisseur had a knowledge, based on “a familiarity with the characteristics of epochs, schools, and individual masters” which “assists the exercise of the judgement,” the amateur’s looking tended “to kindle the imagination,” i.e. it was a more emotional response.8 It was this acknowledgement of various ways of seeing that would lead to debates about the display of art in public institutions. In order that new audiences for public art galleries might properly appreciate what they were looking at, it came to be believed that pictures should be clearly visible and also that a rudimentary knowledge of the story of art should be taught and that the simplest way of doing this would be by presenting the pictures by school of origin and date; something that had been put into practice in those German galleries praised by Anna Jameson.9

The Example of Germany on the Road to Reform The concerns about the management and arrangement of the Gallery, and calls to find solutions, would rise to the surface periodically, most publicly in a host of debates in

5 See Francis Haskell, The Ephemeral Museum. Old Master Paintings and the Rise of the Art Exhibition, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000, pp. 6, 25. 6 Anna Jameson, A Handbook to the Public Galleries in and near London, London: John Murray, 1842, p. 13. 7 Anna Jameson, A Companion to the Most Celebrated Private Galleries of Art in London, London: Saunders and Otley, 1844, p. 384. 8 Reprinted in Charles Lock Eastlake, Contributions to the Literature of the Fine Arts, 2nd series, London: John Murray, 1870, p. 212. 9 For further discussion of the new museological themes of visibility and observation, see Whitehead 2005 (as fn. 4), pp. 8–16. 

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the House of Commons and in parliamentary select committees which mushroomed from the mid-1830s, dominating the British art-historical landscape for a generation. These debates (some about museums in general; others specifically focused on the National Gallery) were echoed outside Parliament, especially from the 1840s, in the publication of pamphlets and letters to the press which gained weight largely on account of the important status of many of the protagonists, including Prince Albert; the politicians, Disraeli, Palmerston and Gladstone; and the burgeoning breed of artadministrators, such as Eastlake (who served as the second Keeper of the National Gallery from 1843 to 1847) and those stemming from the Schools of Design in South Kensington: William Dyce, Richard Redgrave and John Charles Robinson.10 For those of a reformist disposition, there was a general dissatisfaction with the nature of both arts education and arts institutions in Britain. It was not just that the original arrangements for the Gallery were inadequate but at the same time there was a growing awareness of new forms of academic discipline with regard to art history and a new more disciplined approach to museum administration, particularly influenced by German schools of thought. A new discipline of art history was developing in Europe, spearheaded by a number of Italian and German critics.11 In terms of museological debate, England looked abroad to the practices of sister institutions in France and especially in Germany, the latter seen to represent a northern European state comparable to England and a place where similar debates had been thrashed out to positive effect earlier in the century. In particular German museums were seen as models of good practice in terms of their architecture, internal spaces and display of collections.12 Not surprisingly, a number of foreigners were asked to give evidence at various select committees. Chief among those to draw attention to such ideas was Gustav Waagen, who had been appointed Director of the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin in 1832 and who was responsible for implementing many of the pioneering reforms there.13 He knew British private and public collections well from his surveys of the 1830s and 1840s, and was a close friend of Eastlake, whose wife Elizabeth (née Rigby) first translated Waagen’s work into English.14 Certainly Waagen’s appearance before various parliamentary enquiries on the

10 Ibid., p. xv. 11 Important art-historical texts in the 1820s started to promote ideas about schools and chronology, notably Luigi Lanzi’s Storia pittorica dell’Italia and Friedrich von Rumohr’s Italienische Forschungen, which in turn influenced the pioneering research into individual artists of the kind undertaken by J. D. Passavant and Gustav Waagen. 12 See Whitehead 2005 (as fn. 4), pp. 12–13, 135. 13 For Waagen, see bibliography supplied in ibid., p. 18, n. 18. 14 Lady Eastlake translated Waagen’s Treasures of Art in Great Britain (3 vols; London, 1854) and Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain (London, 1857); see Susanna Avery-Quash, Julie Sheldon, Art for the Nation. The Eastlakes and the Victorian Art World, London: National Gallery Company Ltd., 2011, pp. 128–29, and also pp. 58–59, 76, 89, 120, 190, 191, 192, 205.





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arts bears witness to his reputation among the British establishment.15 During his first visit to England in 1835 Waagen gave evidence to a select committee on the topic of Arts and Their Connexion with Manufactures, in which he advocated, in line with his approach in the Berlin Gallery, a holistic and historical approach to public art collections.16 Committed to educate the eye of the people, he promoted the adoption of carefully thought-out displays of art using historical arrangements, to be supplemented by labels, catalogues and lectures. To give one instance of a statement from this committee which would influence policies on purchase and display for British museums in general and the National Gallery in particular, Waagen noted that “in order to understand and appreciate the great masters [of the High Renaissance], you must commence with those who immediately preceded them and who taught them.”17 Waagen might be said to represent a reformist opinion but certain voices preferred to defend the status quo. Foremost among these was the artist and dealer John Morris Moore,18 who was particularly vitriolic in his attacks on the Gallery, and he was joined by others, for example the collector William Coningham.19 In 1850 the Government sought to address the concerns about the Gallery’s management, picture cleaning and accommodation by establishing a select committee specifically to investigate the National Gallery.20 Waagen, again in England, gave evidence but the committee’s re­commendations were equivocal and did not ultimately resolve many of the questions it had sought to address.

The Parliamentary Select Committee of 1853 Dissatisfaction with the outcome of the 1850 enquiry did not take long to materialise. One member of the 1850 select committee, Colonel Rawdon, wrote what amounted to a diatribe against the inefficiency of the current trustee system in 1851,21 while Ralph Nicholson Wornum, a future Keeper of the National Gallery, published an open letter in the Art Journal of 1 February 1851, discussing (in line with German galleries) how

15 See Giles Waterfield, Florian Illies, Waagen in England, in: Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 37 (1995), pp. 47–59. 16 NGA NG15/3 Report of the Select Committee on Arts and Their Connexion with Manufacturers, 1836, paras. 1–98, pp. 7–15. 17 Ibid., para. 84, p. 11. 18 On Moore, see David Robertson, Sir Charles Eastlake and the Victorian Art World, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978, pp. 81–82, 92, 96–99, 130–31, 158–61, 173. 19 See Francis Haskell, William Coningham and his Collection of Old Masters, in: The Burlington Magazine, CXXXIII (1991), pp. 676–81. 20 NGA NG15/8 Report of the Select Committee on the National Gallery, 1850. 21 Letter to the Trustees of the National Gallery by Colonel Rawdon, M.P. (London, 1851); for further details, see Whitehead 2005 (as fn. 4), pp. 130–31.



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interiors should reflect an acquisition policy and a display programme directed to showing the whole history of western European painting.22 At the end of 1852 attacks on the National Gallery’s cleaning policy began once again in the press, spearheaded by Moore. These attacks found a sympathetic ear in the Member of Parliament Francis Wemyss Charteris (later Lord Elcho), who, on 28 December 1852, called for a new select committee into the management of the National Gallery.23 Moore had succeeded in getting Parliament to investigate the Gallery but it was those advocating reform who seized the initiative in promoting their own vision for the National Gallery in the lead-up to the select committee. This was strategic because Members of Parliament were developing an inquiry fatigue as far as the National Gallery was concerned and it was hoped that the forthcoming investigation would settle matters. Although Waagen did not give evidence on this occasion, he did publish an influential two-part article in the Art Journal in April and May 1853.24 Stating that “no one acquainted with the galleries of Paris, Florence, and Dresden, can deny that the National Gallery of England is very far from competing with any one of them,”25 Waagen identified problems with the site, hang, arrangement of pictures, acquisitions and conservation. The article encompassed his fully-stated vision of an ideal progressive museum and his ideas would inform much of the ensuing debate. Waagen was joined by the artist William Dyce, who, in early 1853, published a pamphlet outlining his ideas for a way forward: The National Gallery: Its Formation and Management, Considered in a Letter Addressed, by Permission, to H.R.H. Prince Albert.26 This pamphlet gained a wide readership when it was reviewed in the Art Journal later that year.27 Dyce, lamenting the fact that no real changes had been made at the Gallery despite the recommendations of earlier select committees, called for the new committee of inquiry “to obtain such information of a preliminary kind, as would afford data for the construction of a proper and efficient machinery for the formation and permanent management of the collection.”28 While Waagen and Dyce may have differed slightly in their visions for the National Gallery, both embodied the new principles of art historical thought and museum administration emanating particularly from Germany. On 8 March 1853 a select committee was instigated “to inquire into the management of the National Gallery; also to consider in what mode the collective monuments

22 Ibid., pp. 131–32. 23 The Times, 29 December 1852. 24 Gustav Waagen, Thoughts on the New Building to be Erected for the National Gallery of England, and on the Arrangement, Preservation, and Enlargement of the Collection, in: Art Journal (1853), pp. 101–03 and pp. 21–125. 25 Ibid., p. 101. 26 NGA NG15/7. 27 Art Journal (1853), pp. 99–100. 28 NGA NG15/7, pp. 73–74.





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of antiquity and fine art possessed by the nation may be most securely preserved, judiciously augmented, and advantageously exhibited to the public.”29 The committee, consisting of 17 members, gathered evidence from numerous witnesses at a total of 25 sittings between 26 April and 29 July 1853. The interventions of Waagen and Dyce effectively set the terms of reference for the committee and also provided the answers. This can be seen not only in the repeated references to Waagen’s authority but also in the committee’s choice of questions on various subjects ranging from the provision of a fixed purchase grant to the arrangement of the collection by schools.30 Further questions and answers were supplied by another native voice: Eastlake. He wrote a paper entitled Suggestions Respecting the Future Management of the National Gallery in May 1853.31 Interestingly, although Eastlake did not submit his Suggestions until after the committee had started its work, he assured people that his opinions predated those of Dyce and others. Presumably he was referring to the fact that he had already addressed the shortcomings of the Gallery as early as 1845 in an open letter to the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel. Arguably, this letter of 1845 is one of Eastlake’s most important interventions and it was immediately published in The Builder.32 He had made clear the need for an extended consideration of the architectural requirements of a picture gallery, noting almost in summary: “Every specimen of art in a national collection should, perhaps, be assumed to be fit to challenge inspection, and to be worthy of being well displayed.”33 Christopher Whitehead in his seminal book, The Public Art Museum in Nineteenth-Century Britain, has shown how Eastlake’s letter of 1845 proved profoundly influential and was quoted more or less directly in later writings of John Ruskin and Layard among others, and that it “furnished the raison d’être for an intense debate on the correct architectural features of the picture gallery.”34 Eastlake had also voiced his opinions to some extent in the 1850 select committee when he spoke up boldly for the need to fill the gaps in the collection.35 He expanded on this in his Plan for a collection of paintings illustrative of the history of art that gave a definitive genealogy of artists by school and date, which was printed as an Appendix to the Report of 1853 select committee.36 The Plan, which was conceived of by Prince Albert and produced with assistance from Wornum, reflected Waagen’s ideas on the subject,37 and later assisted the Gallery to know what gaps it had to fill in its

29 NGA NG15/10 Report of the Select Committee on the National Gallery, 1853, p.iii. 30 Ibid., para. 5296, p. 356 and para. 5308, p. 357. 31 Ibid., Appendix XVI, pp. 787–90. 32 Charles Lock Eastlake, The National Gallery. Arrangement of Picture Galleries Generally, in: The Builder (1845), pp. 282–84. 33 Ibid., p. 282. 34 See Whitehead 2005 (as fn. 4), p. 11. 35 NGA NG15/8 (as fn. 20), paras. 333–28, pp. 23–36. 36 NGA NG15/10 (as fn. 29), Appendix XVII, pp. 791–28. 37 For further details, see Whitehead 2005 (as fn. 4), p. 20.



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picture collection.38 The select committee’s examination of wider European practices as a benchmarking exercise should also be noted. This can be seen most clearly in an appendix, where, for the first time, facts replaced hitherto generally vague comment. The committee stated that it had “procured from abroad, in answer to queries transmitted through the Foreign Office, much valuable information relative to the constitution and government of the principal European museums of antiquity and fine art.”39 Further appendices included a letter on picture cleaning in Italy from Giambattista Cavalcascelle, a report on the Uffizi Gallery by the art dealer William Blundell Spence, and an essay by Leo von Klenze on L’établissment d’une galerie nationale de beaux arts.40 This is not to say that European ideas were universally accepted – opposing voices were heard too, notably those of Coningham and Moore again. The debate between those for and against Waagen’s ideas is clearly illustrated by two of the antagonists: Eastlake and Coningham. When discussing the preferred hang of the Gallery, Eastlake advocated a chronological approach, stating: “I think the arrangement of the gallery at Berlin is the best […] there is no selection of the finest works […] I would recommend that the finest works should be in their order, and that the chronological order should comprehend them.” Coningham’s view of Berlin was different: “I should say that Berlin could not be quoted as a specimen of good management. […] I came away with a very unfavourable impression indeed with regard to the treatment of the pictures, and of the purchases which had been made, particularly those made by Dr Waagen.”41 On 4 August 1853 the committee issued its report and made recommendations on the Gallery’s constitution, management, picture cleaning and the site question. The overwhelming direction of the report was towards reform, i.e. towards the spirit and ideas of a German-inspired scholarship exemplified by Waagen, Dyce and Eastlake. In the aftermath of its publication a few tentative changes occurred to Gallery administration. Most significantly perhaps, the third Keeper, Thomas Uwins, redisplayed

38 Eastlake did much to assist the development of modern connoisseurship: as he battled to “[smash] a false name” (quoted in C.  E. Smith (ed.), Journals and Correspondence of Lady Eastlake, vol. 2, London: J. Murray, 1895, p. 25) during continental tours to purchase genuine art for the nation, and as he advised countless friends and institutions on attributional matters, he was helping to shape the canon of western European art. 39 NGA NG15/10 (as fn. 29), p. xv and Appendices VII and XXII, pp. 753–57 and pp. 833–41. 40 Ibid., Appendices VIII, IX, XV and XX, pp. 758–67, 784–87 and 830–31. For further details, see Whitehead 2005 (as fn. 4), p. 137. 41 NGA NG15/10 (as fn.  29), paras. 6513–14, pp. 458–59 and para. 6891, p. 486. Similar but more involved discussions were held in Berlin in the 1830s between Waagen’s historical and Humboldt’s aesthetic perspectives; for a bibliography regarding this debate, see Whitehead 2005 (as fn. 4), p. 32, n. 70.





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the pictures according to schools – but he was unable to make it strictly chronological owing to a lack of space.42 Those against the proposed reforms continued to fight their corner. Coningham and 17 others published a pamphlet in 1854 entitled Protest and Counter-Statement against the Report from the Select Committee on the National Gallery.43 The authors included one who signed himself “an Englishman” – in all likelihood Moore. They were a disparate group who essentially disliked one another,44 but who nevertheless found a common voice in their mutual disagreement with everything in the 1853 select committee’s report, concluding that it was “unworthy of confidence, …inimical to art and… a fraud upon the nation.”45 However, the protest’s contorted reasoning, hectoring tone and lack of any alternative proposal meant that it had little real impact.46 Despite such opposition, the Government finally acted (at least partially) on the recommendations of the select committee, when it issued a Treasury minute dated 27  March 1855 “reconstituting the Establishment of the National Gallery.”47 The minute was nothing less than a complete museological guide for the Gallery including new policies for management and acquisition. Furthermore, it reprinted Eastlake’s Suggestions that had first been published as an appendix to the committee’s minutes. Indeed many of the writings of Waagen, Dyce and Eastlake that had initially influenced the select committee proceedings, and that had then been incorporated into its Report, finally found a voice in the Treasury Minute initiating the reform of the Gallery; much of what Eastlake had written in his Suggestions can be seen in the new management structure of the reformed Gallery. From now on the power of the Trustees was dramatically curtailed, while the new role of Director was invested with ultimate power which included administration of an annual purchase grant and control over a purchasing policy defined as collecting art which would assist the Gallery to be a comprehensive survey collection. Two other posts were established: a Travelling Agent who would assist the Director in hunting down masterpieces abroad (this job went to Otto Mündler, a Bavarian picture dealer), and a Keeper-cum-Secretary one of whose duties was to compile an extensive catalogue based on agreed tenets of modern connoisseurship (Wornum was asked to fill this role).48 The position of Director went to Eastlake at a time when he had already been President of the Royal Academy for five years. It is an interesting question why Eastlake rather than anyone

42 See Whitehead 2005 (as fn. 4), p. 22, 140. 43 NGA NG15/11. 44 On Coningham’s antagonistic relationship with Moore, see Robertson 1978 (as fn. 18), pp. 96–99. 45 NGA NG15/11, p. 118. 46 A point made by Whitehead 2005 (as fn. 4), p. 144. 47 NGA NG5/118/1. 48 For Wornum’s and Mündler’s appointments, see Robertson 1978 (as fn.  18), pp. 140–43. For Mündler, see also Jaynie Anderson, Introduction to the Travel Diary of Otto Mündler, in: The Walpole Society LI (1985), pp. 7–64.



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else was appointed to this prestigious position. And in that connection it is useful to re-assess Eastlake’s influence in relation to other contemporaries in re-establishing the Gallery along the lines of German museums.

Sir Charles Eastlake as Director (1855–1865) By the time that the Gallery was reconstituted Eastlake appeared to many as the man for the job. For one thing he had greater first-hand experience of museums in general and of the National Gallery in particular, than any of his native contemporaries. During his time as a young art-student, resident for the unusually long period of 14 years in Rome from 1816, and ever since, he had spent time visiting many private and public art collections in Europe to familiarize himself with their contents. From the jottings he made in his travel notebooks, which he kept from 1828, we know that from the 1850s he became particularly assiduous in reporting on the architecture and arrangement of such collections.49 In a similar vein he had helped Dyce in giving advice to the architect C.R. Cockerell regarding lighting of the new Randolph Galleries at Oxford in October 184050 and in December 1848 he wrote to Peel, reporting on the new arrangements in the Louvre, Paris.51 In relation to the National Gallery, Eastlake, after a year in post as Keeper, had written his letter of 1845 to Peel about how he thought the Gallery might be effectively reformed, drawing on his own experiences. Once Eastlake was elected President of the Royal Academy he became, ex-officio, a Trustee of the Gallery – and was a very active one to boot. Furthermore, Eastlake knew how to conduct himself in high office and had the ear of several important political figures. Despite multiple refusals to accept positions in the art world, after his return from Italy in 1830, his abilities as a critic and connoisseur soon brought him to the attention of men influential in the Victorian art world, notably Prince Albert and Peel.52 It was Peel who persuaded a reluctant Eastlake to become Secretary of the Fine Arts Commission in 1841, of which Prince Albert was President, with a remit to find artists to decorate scenes from British history and literature in fresco in the new Houses of Parliament. And it was Prince Albert who made the Queen write to ensure that Eastlake was asked to become President of the Royal Academy, where for 15 years he led the primary institution invested with the duty of training the country’s young artists. When it came to appointing Eastlake as Keeper

49 See Susanna Avery-Quash, The Travel Notebooks of Charles Eastlake, in: The Walpole Society 1, LXXIII (2011), pp. 219, 485, 489, 617, 672. 50 See Robertson 1978 (as fn. 18), p. 49. 51 Letter from Eastlake to Peel, 6 December 1848, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge: Peel Volume MS.2 – 1949 (78). 52 See Avery-Quash, Sheldon 2011 (as fn. 14), pp. 91–93.





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of the Gallery, Peel was quick to contact the Treasury with his suggested candidate (Eastlake), simultaneously writing to Eastlake that he was convinced that there was no one better qualified.53 During the 1853 select committee Eastlake was described as “the alpha and omega of the whole system”54 and after his active witness statements and helpful suggestions recorded in the Appendix it would seem that he was indispensable. In fact other names had been thought of for the Directorship, but none wanted it. The historian, James Dennistoun, was approached but he declined, remarking that “no man, at least no Englishman” had the requisite qualifications and suggested that Waagen was the only figure to come close.55 Yet the possibility of a major public post in the British art world being filled by a foreigner was unthinkable as was pointed out by the Art Journal.56 (There was anti-German feeling in certain quarters, bound up with a fear that Queen Victoria’s German spouse was promoting German ideas and patronising fellow countrymen and Englishmen sympathetic to Germanic views.)57 Less well known is the fact that in February 1853 Dyce was also rumoured to be in the running for the Directorship but he refuted the suggestion in the pages of the Observer.58 In sum then, Eastlake’s appointment may have been the result of several factors, including his requisite knowledge and experience, and the fact that he was British and had the ear of those who mattered. But to think of his appointment, as his enemies did, as the result of mere jobbery, is unfair. In the literature about Eastlake, from David Robertson’s Sir Charles Eastlake and the Victorian Art World to the recent biography of Eastlake and his wife by Susanna Avery-Quash and Julie Sheldon, his reputation rides high. Generally, he is portrayed as the greatest Director of the Gallery; for instance, one of his successors, Charles Saumarez Smith, in his recent account of the institution dubbed him “the greatest hero of the story.”59 More to the point, in recent books about the history of museology, Eastlake’s name occurs. In Whitehead’s book Eastlake is represented as one of a few key players, while Frank Herrmann in The English as Collectors goes so far as to state: “Similar though [Dr Waagen and Eastlake] were, Eastlake was in every respect

53 See Robertson 1978 (as fn. 18), p. 79. 54 Hansard, 3rd series, 8 March 1853, vol. 124, pp. 1307–08; quoted in Avery-Quash, Sheldon 2011 (as fn. 14), p. 116. 55 Dennistoun to Mure, 5 March 1853, National Library of Scotland, Mure papers, MS 4953, f. 21, quoted in Whitehead 2005 (as fn. 4), pp. 141–42. 56 Art Journal (1854), p. 219, cited in Waterfield, Illies 1995 (as fn. 15), p. 59. 57 Eastlake was certainly associated with the German camp – on one occasion Moore asserted that Eastlake was guided only by “eminent German friends, German handbooks, German twaddle of every description”; quoted in Robertson 1978 (as fn. 18), p. 92. 58 Letter, discovered by Alan Crookham, from Dyce in The Observer, 27 February 1853. 59 Charles Saumarez Smith, The National Gallery. A Short History, London: Frances Lincoln, 2009, p. 172.



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Fig. 17: Engraving of a new room at The National Gallery. From Illustrated London News, June 15, 1861

the greater man and possessed a more forceful and outstanding personality.”60 Whether we precisely agree with Herrmann’s glowing assessment, the record clearly shows Eastlake’s abiding commitment to gallery reform. During a decade in office,

60 Frank Herrmann, The English as Collectors, London: John Murray, 1999, p. 302.





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Eastlake transformed the fortunes of the National Gallery so that at his death it was an institution with a collection rivalling the best in Europe, and which was also one with a workable management structure and a developed policy for acquisitions and display largely derived from continental models. It was under his Directorship that object labels appeared in 1856 and also that a new style of scholarly catalogue was published;61 both matters which Waagen had promoted 20 years before in his evidence before the 1835 committee.62 Eastlake also thought hard about the arrangement of pictures in chronological and scholastic lines, making several attempts to order some of the galleries (fig. 17), even though his efforts were only temporary for a continued lack of space meant that whenever there was an influx of acquisitions a logical ordering had to be abandoned in favour of a more pragmatic approach.63 The work diary of Wornum is further testament to the experimentation in relation to lighting and wall colour at the Gallery.64 Eastlake’s reputation was confirmed for posterity in an obituary written by Mündler for the Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, where the former’s scholarly catalogues were singled out for particular praise. Waagen noted that they far exceeded anything in Europe and consequently should be taken as exemplars.65

European Influences on Eastlake’s Vision for the National Gallery The reconstitution of the National Gallery was affected by ideas on art, art-history and museology in Europe. Such ideas were promoted through the publication of seminal art-historical texts concerned with establishing the chronology of various schools of painting, and through pamphlets and witness statements at British Government select committees which argued for a new rationale for museum architecture and picture hangs along the lines of those seen in continental galleries, especially those in Germany. Various European voices made themselves heard, including von Klenze and Cavalcascelle, but most dominant was that of Waagen. Emblematic of this Eurocentric vision is the figure of Eastlake, who was well versed in such matters and some

61 See Avery-Quash, Sheldon 2011 (as fn. 14), pp. 173–74. 62 NGA NG15/3 (as fn. 16), paras. 1–98, pp. 7–15. 63 See Avery-Quash, Sheldon 2011 (as fn. 14), pp. 166–69. 64 NGA NGA2/3/2/13. For further details, see Whitehead 2005 (as fn. 4), pp. 11–12. 65 Otto Mündler, Charles Lock Eastlake, in: Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst 4 (1869), p. 99, where Mündler noted that Eastlake’s catalogues put their European equivalents “to shame.” This is a prime instance of the boomerang effect, whereby an initial idea from a certain quarter is lauded as exemplary, developed in another place, and then subsequently promoted, in its newly developed state, as a model in its place of origin.



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of whose writings were regarded as influential, even original, and informed those of others in the field. The degree to which Eastlake was the principal conduit of these ideas is an interesting one. It must be acknowledged that Eastlake was not a witness at several select committees that investigated many of the issues that would eventually become enshrined in the Gallery; that Prince Albert and Peel were both in their different ways an active presence, and that there were other vociferous native champions of museum reform, like Dyce and Wornum, who were also, to some extent, Eurocentric in their views and who likewise were on occasion assiduous followers of or conduits for Waagen’s theory and practice about museology. Such contextualisation and comparisons suggest that much else of what Eastlake said in the debate under consideration was either derivative from such sources as Waagen or were similar to comments of other native contemporaries. Bearing this in mind, is it possible to pinpoint where precisely Eastlake’s contribution to the Gallery’s reconstitution lay? Perhaps more than Dyce or Wornum, because of his virtual monopoly on important public roles within the Victorian art world and his close relations with some of the most influential individuals in public and political life of his day – namely Prince Albert and Peel – whatever Eastlake said, either original or repeated, was taken very seriously indeed. Arguably, Eastlake’s true significance and lasting legacy lay in making foreign thinking (about both art and about museum theory and practice) comprehensible to a native audience and, moreover, acceptable as a practicable basis on which to re-establish the National Gallery.



Andrea Meyer

The Journal Museumskunde – “Another Link between the Museums of the World” In January 1905, the periodical Museumskunde was launched. It started off with an article by Wilhelm Bode, whose name ranks among the most prominent in the museum history of Berlin up to the present day.1 The editor of the journal, Karl Koetschau (1868–1949), entrusted the very first pages to Bode for his account of the Kaiser Fried­ rich Museum, which had been opened to the public just a few months before. Yet Bode did not proceed to describe the new building and the display of the exhibits for which he, as the director of the most recently founded museum in the German capital, was responsible. Instead, his introductory remarks pertained to the exemplary character of existing institutions as models for subsequent museum projects at home and abroad. Bode explained how the French provincial museums were oriented towards the palatial architecture of the Louvre in the same way as the exhibition venues in England followed the design of the National Gallery in London.2 According to Bode, Leo von Klenze’s Alte Pinakothek in Munich was accepted as a typical model for gallery architecture on either side of the German borders. Finally, principles of order and hanging, even the furnishings of the Victoria & Albert Museum, were copied – “in our country, as a matter of fact,” as Bode added.3 Bode’s statements plainly show his close study of the international museum landscape. Indeed, his opening article drew attention to a substantial principle of European museum culture: to the fact that its evolution was based on the imitation and adoption of already existent models beyond local and national boundaries. In this sense, Bode’s report had a programmatic character for Koetschau’s Museumskunde, which was meant to inspire or intensify dialogue among museum representatives.4

1 Wilhelm Bode, Das Kaiser Friedrich-Museum in Berlin. Zur Eröffnung am 18. Oktober 1904, in: Museumskunde 1 (1905), pp. 1–16. The literature on Bode and the Kaiser Friedrich-Museum, now Bode Museum, is rich, see e.g. Alexis Joachimides, Die Museumsreformbewegung in Deutschland und die Entstehung des modernen Museums 1880–1940, Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 2001, pp. 53–98; Thomas W. Gaehtgens, Barbara Paul (eds.), Wilhelm von Bode, Mein Leben, 2 vols., Berlin: Nicolai, 1997; Thomas W. Gaehtgens, Peter-Klaus Schuster (eds.), Kennerschaft. Kolloquium zum 150sten Geburtstag von Wilhelm von Bode, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 28 (1996). 2 See Bode 1905 (as fn. 1), p. 1. 3 Ibid. This quotation and the ones following in this chapter were translated by the author. 4 See for example Koetschau, Die Wiener Verhandlungen über die Erhaltung von Kunstgegenständen, in: Museumskunde 1 (1905), pp. 53–56, p. 55, an article in which Koetschau explicitly states that he “presses for international cooperation in the Museumskunde.” Letters by Koetschau to Bode document the value the editor attached to winning Bode as first contributor to the new journal, see NL Bode 3000/1, Zentralarchiv, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, SPK.

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Even more, as I will argue below, issue after issue vigorously reflected the transborder exchange of ideas and experience among museum staff members. So far, the transnational dimension of the Museumskunde has hardly come into focus. To be sure, Kenneth Hudson and Werner Hilgers have mentioned its “international coverage,” and – in this volume – Christina Kott calls it an “international professional journal,” yet there has been no further elaboration of the subject.5 The periodical more frequently serves as a source for museum studies than it is an object of examination itself. Exceptions are a few articles that, for example, Wolfgang Klausewitz and Hilgers have published on the occasion of the anniversaries of the Deutsche Museumsbund (German Council of Museums) and its official organ. These offer valuable information on the history of the periodical, its contents and purposes, down to the present day.6 Under Koetschau’s aegis, from 1905 to 1924, the Museumskunde. Zeitschrift für Verwaltung und Technik (Journal for Administration and Techniques) was released quarterly. A total of 68 issues was published. During World War I, though, two issues were occasionally merged, and, in the aftermath of the war, no year’s publication ever consisted of four issues as had been customary during the German Empire. Simple and lucid in layout, each octavo issue cost twenty marks and thus was quite expensive compared to other journals of the period (fig. 18). The price of a single issue of Kunst und Künstler (Art and Artists) – a periodical that promoted Impressionism, published by Bruno Cassirer – came to only 2.50 marks. A wide variety of subjects was tackled by the Museumskunde.7 Basically all the tasks making up the daily routine of museum employees were covered, from conservation and restoration, over security measures against fire and theft, through to the actual presentation of the artifacts through the use of lighting, the choice of show-

5 Kenneth Hudson, Museums of Influence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 14; Werner Hilgers, 100 Jahre – 69 Jahrgänge. Zum Jubiläum der “Museumskunde”, in: Museumskunde 70 (2005), pp. 7–17, p. 11. Usually, though, the journal Mouseion is considered to be the first international organ of museology. See for example Marie Caillot, La revue Mouseion (1927–1946). Les musées et la cooperation culturelle international, Thèse pour le diplôme d’archiviste paléographe, Ecole nationale des chartes, 2011, http://theses.enc.sorbonne.fr/2011/caillot (accessed November 11, 2012). Mouseion is subject of Alessandra Galizzi Kroegel’s contribution in this volume, too. 6 Wolfgang Klausewitz, 66 Jahre Deutscher Museumsbund, Cologne: Rheinland Verlag, 1984, pp. 10–14; Hilgers 2005 (as fn. 5). See also 75 Jahre Museumskunde written by the editorial team of the Museumskunde 45 (1980), p. 105; Urte Gärtner, “Kunst soll man nur so lange sehen, als man sie genießen kann” – Zum Gedenken an den Kunsthistoriker und Museologen Karl Koetschau, in: Dresdener Kunstblätter 54 (2010), pp. 41–52, p. 44–45. A record of the main articles is offered in the online archive of the Deutsche Museumsbund at http://www.museumsbund.de/de/publikationen/ museumskunde/museumskunde_archiv/. The full texts of only few volumes are accessible online at the open library at http://openlibrary.org/works/OL13113446W/Museumskunde_Zeitschrift_für_ Verwaltung_und_Technik_öffentlicher_und_... . 7 See Klausewitz (as fn. 6), p. 11–13; Hilgers 2005 (as fn. 5), p. 11; Gärtner 2010 (as fn. 6), p. 45.





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Fig. 18: Cover of the first issue of the journal Museumskunde, 1905

cases, or the furnishings of the museum spaces. Furthermore, administrative structures and questions touching upon cultural policy, such as the competition between major museums and provincial institutions, were discussed. With this thematic profile, the Museumskunde was to become the central voice of German museology even before the actual professional association, the Deutsche Museumsbund (German Council of Museums) was founded during World War I in 1917 in Frankfurt am Main – again Koetschau played a significant role as one of the initiators – and declared the journal its organ. However, this status was not officially confirmed until 1929, when the Museumsbund resumed publication of the periodical under a new editor, and added a second subtitle: Amtliches Organ des Deutschen Museumsbundes (Official Organ of the German Council of Museums). From the very beginning, Koetschau’s Museumskunde distinguished itself by transnational reporting. The mere fact that numerous articles were published in English is a clear indication of its internationality. In this regard, the numerous photographs of the exteriors and interiors of museums as well as the manual-like diagrams and graphics, which gave a lively impression of the themes being debated, are also noteworthy (fig. 19). The different sorts of illustrations are of eminent value for research today, since visual documentation of historic exhibition situations and of presentation techniques is rare. But even more important is the fact that at that time the “visual text” was comprehensible to all readers – regardless of their mother 

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Fig. 19: Page with diagrams from Francis Arthur Bather’s article on the Northern Museum in Stockholm, published in the Museumskunde in 1908





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tongue. Apart from these features, it is important to take into consideration the column “museum chronicle,” with its short items, focusing, for instance, on museums in the planning stage or on newly published museum guides – alongside the main articles, this column had a global outreach. Only a systematic investigation of the journal’s entire coverage will bring to light a representative picture of its discourses and hence an appreciation of the importance of the vital role that both the Museumskunde and its initiator play for an examination of the transnational networking of the museum scene around 1900.

The Initiator Karl Koetschau For years, the art historian and archaeologist Koetschau held leading positions in museums of different types in Coburg, Dresden, Weimar, Berlin, and Düsseldorf.8 Even though he is regarded as an important representative of the museum reform movement in early twentieth-century Germany, his activities have not, as yet, been thoroughly explored based on archival documents.9 After taking office as director of the art and antiquities collections of the Veste Coburg in 1897, Koetschau was eager to establish reform principles in each of his various realms of responsibility: for example, the division of the holdings into public and study collections, the exclusion of all but “masterworks” of highest aesthetic quality for public display, the most favorable presentation of objects through the use of appropriate lighting, the choice of background and surrounding exhibits.10 His exertions for transforming the museum into an institution contributing to the education of a broader public become apparent not only in his comprehensive reorganization within the collections themselves: Koetschau was also always anxious to communicate his concepts, for example, during his time at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, in practice-oriented courses for future museum employees. Above all, it was the Museumskunde that served as a forum for Koetschau in which he could give an account of his own work and propagate his convictions. In his articles for the journal, he defended his rearrangement of the Grand Ducal museums in Weimar – a project which was left incomplete because of his move to Berlin –, gave readers a look into his museum courses, commented on the foundation of the Council of Museums and its conferences, and drafted obituaries for colleagues like Justus Brinckmann, Alfred Lichtwark, and Karl Ernst Osthaus, to whose merits

8 For a recent detailed account of his career see Gärtner 2010 (as fn. 6). 9 Ibid., p. 41. 10 His reforms are described in detail ibid. See Joachimidis 2001 (as fn. 1) for more information on the German museum reform movement and for Koetschau’s reorganization of the picture gallery in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum between 1933 and 1936, ibid., pp. 228–29.



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he paid great respect.11 On the other hand, Koetschau did not refrain from uttering harsh criticism. In a 1907 issue of the journal, he recommended that the newly established General Commission of the Bavarian museums be abolished immediately. He suggested appointing a general director, following the Berlin model, since the “art commission’s nuisance” was in his opinion but a “curse.”12 Tellingly, he brought into play the heated debates on the purposes and administration of the London Chantrey trust, which had been creating a stir in the English public since 1903.13 To express his preference for an autonomously acting official heading the museums, Koetschau quoted Sir Martin Conway, one of the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery, who in the course of the Chantrey affair had declared: “You must have a man!”14 Time and again, Koetschau referred to voices outside of Germany as a means of either expressing his criticism of the German museum landscape or to give fresh impetus to museum reforms within national borders. In the same year’s issue of the Museumskunde in which he published his attacks on the Bavarian bureaucratic machinery, he, for instance, introduced the Handbook of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which had been published shortly before. His review was published under the rubric “museum chronicle.”15 According to Koetschau, this new type of guide deserved a paramount rank in museum literature. Through its illustrations, reproducing characteristic exhibition pieces of each department, the visitors would become acquainted with the artworks from the very start, could easily locate them in the museum galleries, and were provided with a useful memory aid. The captions were formulated – “with great aptitude” – for the “average visitor.”16 Koetschau evaluated the text on the history of the collection, the structure and administration of the museum, as being extremely clear and informative. He found that the ground plans mapped out on the cover to offer a convenient orientation guide. Moreover, Koetschau appreciated the handy size of the guidebook, which cost $ 0.25. Nowhere in Germany

11 See Koetschau, In eigener Sache: Die Neuordnung der weimarischen Museen, in: Museumskunde 9 (1910), pp. 60–64; Koetschau, Museumskurse, in: ibid., 12 (1916), pp. 31–35; Koetschau, Der Deutsche Museumsbund, in: ibid., pp. 134–140; Koetschau, Die zweite Tagung des Deutschen Museumsbundes in Würzburg, am 29. u. 30. Mai 1918, in: ibid., 14 (1918), pp. 49–56; Koetschau, Justus Brinckmann, in: ibid., 11 (1915), pp. 38–41; Koetschau, Karl Ernst Osthaus, in: ibid., 16 (1923), pp. 53–55; Koetschau, Alfred Lichtwark zum Gedächtnis, in: ibid., 10 (1914), pp. 55–57. 12 Koetschau, Die Generalkommission der Kunstsammlungen des Bayerischen Staates, in: Museumskunde 3 (1903), pp. 137–40. Koetschau was not the only critic of the Bavarian committee, see for example Artur Seemann, Der Erwerb von Kunstwerken für Bayern, in: Kunstchronik 19 (1908), pp. 545–52. 13 See Gordon Fyfe, The Chantrey Episode: Art, Classification, Museums and the State, c1870–1920, in: Susan Pearce (ed.), Art and Museums, London: The Athlone Press, 1995, pp. 5–41. 14 Koetschau 1903 (as fn. 12), p. 137. 15 Koetschau, Boston. Handbook of the Museum of fine Arts, Boston 1906, in: Museumskunde 3 (1907), pp. 47–48. 16 Ibid., p. 47.





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could one acquire “a similarly richly endowed booklet” for this moderate price, he concluded, in the final line of his outright panegyric.17 Koetschau gave a similarly exuberant review of an article written by Francis Arthur Bather, geologist and paleontologist at the natural history department of the British Museum and president of the British Museums Association at that time.18 As usual, Koetschau argued, Bather knew how to “master even dry subjects” in The Functions of Museums, his contribution to the Popular Science Monthly. Koetschau dwelt in detail on Bather’s suggestions for the division of the collection holdings according to the visitors’ needs, sketched out under the slogans “investigation,” “instruction,” and “inspiration.” Each museum institution should create a department for researchers, a second one for students and serious amateurs, and a third one for the broader public in order to promote its taste for and understanding of culture. Hence, as Koetschau continued to explain, Bather in principle argued in favor of the separation of a public collection – “brought together with most diligent accuracy and most mature taste”  – from a study collection.19 It surely is no coincidence that Bather’s opinions were presented elaborately because they espoused models of ordering that the reviewer himself strongly advocated. These few examples of Koetschau’s contributions may suffice to show that he deliberately directed his gaze beyond national boundaries in order to introduce innovative solutions for core museum tasks such as creating exhibitions and conveying a message. In times of an increasing orientation of the institution towards the public, these functions gained significantly in importance, alongside the traditional functions of collection, preservation, and research. The references to foreign viewpoints and achievements allowed Koetschau to forcefully articulate his own ambitions in the field of museum reform.

The External Gaze However, not only Koetschau’s articles testify to his close observation of the international museum scene. His inclusion, as editor of the journal, of numerous contributions by foreign authors and correspondents is also significant proof of his transnational orientation. In fact, he kept the international exchange going during the crisis-ridden times of World War I, when the reciprocal perception of museum col-

17 Ibid., p. 48. 18 Koetschau, Bather, F.A., The Functions of Museums: a resurvey, from: Popular Science Monthly, vol. LVIV, January 1904, p. 210–18, in: Museumskunde 1 (1905), p. 62. 19 Ibid.



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leagues in Europe was severely clouded.20 In a 1915 issue, Bruno Adler, for instance, blatantly addressed the bloody conflict in and around divided Poland in his article on the Polish National Museum in Rapperswil, Switzerland. It had been inaugurated in 1870 on the initiative of Władysław Plater. Delineating the history of the museum, Adler’s text drew attention to the continuing pursuit of political independence and unity by Polish emigrants and activists.21 Alongside the many articles dedicated to the portrayal of one specific institution like the Polish National Museum, the journal contains regional and international surveys of museums by both native and foreign authors. In the first year’s volume, Hans Dedekam, a librarian and assistant in the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in Oslo, appointed director of the museum later in 1920, provided detailed information on different installations of exhibits, lighting conditions, and wall linings that he had observed on his travels of several months across Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, England, and Germany.22 With this report, he joined the ongoing debates on modes of display in museums of applied arts, a discussion which gained particular attention in the eighties and nineties.23 Dedekam was not only familiar with many museums but with the writings of his European colleagues as well. For instance, he quoted Justus Brinckmann from Hamburg, who championed the cultural-historical installation of exhibits as being preferable to the organization of collections based on the material nature of the objects.24 In contrast, Dedekam himself preferred the latter model, as his criticism of the Gewerbemuseum (Museum of Industrial Arts) in Nuremberg documents: “In an early nineteenth-century interior, a hat and an umbrella lie on a chair. On a secretary, there is paper, a pen, and so on. To exhibit inartistic objects like pens and to try to give the spaces the appearance of interiors which human beings had inhabited and used by way of similar petty instruments might be adequate in palaces

20 See Hilgers 2005 (as fn. 5). The influence of WW I on the work of museum staff is for example discussed by Christina Kott, Die deutsche Kunst- und Museumspolitik im besetzten Nordfrankreich im Ersten Weltkrieg – zwischen Kunstraub, Kunstschutz, Propaganda und Wissenschaft, in: Kritische Berichte 2 (1997), pp. 5–24, pp. 6–7. 21 B. Adler, Das Polen-Museum in Rapperswil. Ein „nationales“ Museum auf fremdem Boden, in: Museumskunde, 11 (1915), pp. 76–85; on the museum in Rapperswil see Karoline Kaluza, Reimagining the Nation in Museums. Poland’s Old and New National Museums, in: Simon J. Knell, Peter Aronsson, Arne Amundsen et al. (eds.), National Museums. New Studies from around the World, London/New York: Routledge, 2011, pp. 151–62. 22 Hans Dedekam, Reisestudien, in: Museumskunde 1 (1905), pp. 75–91, pp. 153–66, pp. 229–31. 23 Lieske Tibbe, Taxonomie und Didaktik oder Chronologie und Ästhetik: Entwicklungen im Kunstgewerbemuseum des 19. Jahrhunderts, in: Bernhard Graf, Hanno Möbius (eds.,), Zur Geschichte der Museen im 19. Jahrhundert. 1789-1918, Berlin: G + H Verlag, 2006, pp. 69–80; Joachimides 2001 (as fn. 1), pp. 40–41. 24 Dedekam 1905 (as fn.  22). On Brinckmann’s concept of cultural historical display see David Klemm, Das Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg. Vol. 1: Von den Anfängen bis 1945, ed. by Wilhelm Hornbostel, Hamburg: Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, 2004, pp. 108–09.





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or other historic sites that really had been inhabited […] in a museum of applied arts it is completely out of place.”25 Furthermore, Dedekam was critical of the furnishings of the Bavarian National Museum in Munich, which he felt was panopticon-like and artificial. The wooden elements of the vitrines, for example, in his opinion looked like stone ornaments hewn in relief.26 Dedekam was convinced that this material camouflage would cause the visitor to question the authenticity of the precious stone objects on display. Hence he advised: “Let the museums leave the presentation […] of sensational historical scenarios to the arrangers of world fairs and to stage designers.”27 Among the international authors’ contributions, Dedekam’s series of articles is particularly striking because it reveals that the gaze of the Museumskunde was not solely directed outward but took aim from the outside to the inside. While Dedekam instructed the German museum professionals on the standards of museum practice abroad, at the same time he confronted them – through the eyes of the “stranger” – rather unflatteringly with the museographic developments within their own national borders.

Coalitions with Foreign Museum Professionals – Francis Arthur Bather Some of the international correspondents participated quite regularly in the discussions of the journal. Francis Arthur Bather, to come back once more to this prominent museum specialist from England, was repeatedly asked for articles. It is more than likely that the editor, Koetschau, pursued a particular strategy here: by publicly demonstrating solidarity with the president of the British Museums Association, which had already existed since 1889, he set a signal for the museum officials to form a lobby in Germany as well. Like Bode and Dedekam, Koetschau had won his English colleague as an author for the first issue of the Museumskunde.28 In his article, which had been published in English, like all of his contributions, Bather expressed his desire for the journal “to become another link between the museums of the world.”29 With that he offered the Museumskunde a motto which Koetschau surely must have welcomed. Moreover, the editor presumably enjoyed Bather’s critical approach to the subject

25 Dedekam 1905 (as fn. 22), pp. 80–81. 26 Ibid., p. 81. 27 Ibid. 28 F. A. Bather, Museum Reports: A suggestion, in Museumskunde 1 (1905), pp. 38–40. Bather’s article is reprinted subsequent to Hilgers 2005 (as fn. 5), pp. 18–20. 29 Ibid., p. 18, also quoted by Hilgers 2005 (as fn. 5), p. 11.



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of his article, museum reports. Bather complained that most reports amounted to nothing more than dry statistics and that they over-emphasized the significance of donors. He pleaded for more instructive information on curators’ scientific proceedings and on their display practices: „[…] instead of merely saying that a collection of shells has been arranged in some new cases, the writer might give us a description of the cases, and might mention any novel details in his method of mounting the specimens. Museum curators are always improving the methods of installation; but, as a rule, these things find no place in the annual report.”30 There were positive exceptions to the rule, as Bather mentions at the end of his article. They chiefly originated in the United States, namely in Chicago, where museum officials “contrive not only to make their museums of interest to the public that frequents them, but their reports of interest to readers in all parts of the world.”31 Again the Museumskunde served as medium for a proposal with the intention of improving museum communication with the public, and again the effective model seemed to derive from the United States. The attempt to advance the professionalization of all aspects of museum practice is evident in further contributions by Bather. In his review of a book on museum history by David Murray, he agreed to the author’s suggestion of creating a “museum of museums.”32 It would provide “examples of museum apparatus and methods of exhibition […] in one place” for the close study of curators.33 Also in accordance with Murray, Bather called for the inclusion of offices, laboratories, and store-rooms in the modern museum from the start.34 In an issue of 1908, Bather turned to the north of Europe. His richly illustrated article pays tribute to the Northern Museum in Stockholm (fig. 19).35 Its building had been completed a year before, though the Scandinavian-Ethnographic collection already had been founded by Arthur Hazelius in 1873. During his lifetime, Hazelius’ collection, which comprised costumes, furniture, arms, jewelry, home appliances, and so on, was intended to preserve the memory of the pre-industrial customs of Sweden. At the same time, it was an expression of contemporary political ambitions to unite the Scandinavian nations under one roof.36 Or, dif-

30 Ibid., p. 19. 31 Ibid., p. 20. 32 Bather, David Murray, LL.D., F.S.A. Museums: their History and their Use. With a Bibliography and list of Museums in the United Kingdom, Glasgow 1904, in: Museumskunde 1 (1905), pp. 169–71. Murray’s book was published again in 2000 in New York: Pober Publishing; see Anke te Heesen, Theorien des Museums zur Einführung, Hamburg: Junius Verlag, 2012, pp. 68–70. 33 Bather (as fn. 32), p. 170. 34 Ibid. 35 See Bather, The Northern Museum, Stockholm, in: Museumskunde 4 (1908), pp. 66–78. 36 On the Northern Museum see Madgalena Hillström, Contested Boundaries: Nation, People and Cultural History Museums in Sweden and Norway 1862–1909, in: Culture Unbound 2 (2010), pp. 583–607 at http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se (accessed December 5, 2012); Per Widén,





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ferently put, with a view to Hazelius’ project: his museum anticipated the unity of Scandinavia in terms of common culture and habits regardless of existing territorial boundaries. Yet, Bather took no real interest in these connections or in the holdings, which were largely arranged cross-generically in interiors displaying the life of different classes of society. Rather, he called into question as to whether the spaces of the building erected in Swedish Vasa-style were appropriate for their purposes.37 Above all he emphasized aspects of display, like innovative lighting arrangements, backgrounds and choice of wall-surface, the showcases – even including the question as to whether these were dust-proof. His intention was, as Bather articulated again, to “be of service to other curators.”38 If the contributions by Bather and other international authors of the Museumskunde are brought into focus, they reveal a set of motifs that explain why Koetschau did his utmost to extend the range of the reporting far beyond the German frontiers. Exchange with the “Others” was the unequivocal premise for a professionalization of museum work. It guaranteed that the German museums would be capable of competing with institutions abroad. The transnational approach of the journal was thus absolutely in accordance with national interests. Moreover, the presentation of professional associations, innovative museum guides, novel ways of organizing collections, or models of display which had been established or tested in parts of Europe and the United States was to impel the transformation of museums from “temples of muses” into sites of education for the broader populace within Germany. An important factor in this transformation was the intensification of museum education activity – backed up by prestigious museum specialists like Bather, the periodical constantly called for this kind of work. That there was repeatedly talk of the museum practices and structures of North American museums is not of any surprise, given the close transatlantic relations cultivated by many museum representatives.39 The frequent emphasis of American models, manifest for example in articles on the implementation of a docent program for guiding visitors through the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, on the installation of exhibitions in the print room of the New York Public Library, or on the alterations at the Fogg Museum in Cambridge, confirm Alexis Joachimides’ observation that an independent museum reform movement most notably evolved, prior to World War I, in the United States.40

National Museums in Sweden: A History of Denied Empire and a Neutral State, in: Peter Aronsson, Gabriella Elgenius (eds.), Building National Museums in Europe 1750–2010. Conference proceedings from EuNaMus, European National Museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizens, Bologna 28–30 April 2011, pp. 881–902, pp. 894–97, at http://www.ep.liu.se/ecp_home/ index.en.aspx?issue=064 (accessed January 12, 2013). 37 Bather 1908 (as fn. 35), p. 67. 38 Ibid., p. 68. 39 See Thomas Adam’s and Xavier-Pol Tilliette’s chapters in this volume. 40 See Joachimides 2001 (as fn.  1), p. 239; E.H., „Ein Dozent für Museumsführungen […], in: Museumskunde 3 (1970), pp. 186–87; Frank Weitenkampf, The Problem of Exhibitions in Print Rooms,



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Around the World in Nineteen Years With the help of Bather, Dedekam, and many more contributors from home and abroad, the Museumskunde conducted a global exploration of museums of a whole range of types. News and travel descriptions from Bulgaria, Denmark, Great Britain, Holland, Italy, Norway, Austro-Hungary, Russia, Sweden, Spain, and the United States bring to life the topography of international museums while including decisive, earlytwentieth-century museographic developments and changes.41 Particularly the items published continuously in the chronicle on worldwide museum plans or openings, on exhibitions, personnel issues, and new catalogues, guides, or other museum literature render a vivid picture of the museum culture of the time. By no means only prominent institutions like the Louvre, the Uffizi, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, or the Tate Gallery were in the spotlight of the coverage.42 Every event, however remote, every incident, however exotic, was taken note of – like the Danish museum planned on the basis of a donation of birds, bird eggs, and butterflies in Indian Darjeeling, the opening of a Navy museum in Breton Lorient, or Hamdi Bey’s 25th anniversary of employment as a museum officer in Istanbul.43 The exceptional meticulousness of documentation made evident by these few, arbitrarily chosen examples clearly brings home the fact that Koetschau’s Museumskunde was more than just a mirror of the transnational interweavings of museums and their staffs. In order to provide readers with such information, the journal – and thus its editor as well – was at the same time dependent on those very interweavings, dependent on a vibrant, well-functioning transnational network.

in: ibid. 7 (1911), pp. 215–17; Margaret T. Jackson, Alterations in the Fogg Museum Cambridge, U.S.A., in: ibid. 10 (1914), pp. 206–14. 41 See for example Gawril I. Kazarow, Das Archäologische Nationalmuseum in Sofia, in: Museumskunde 13 (1917), pp. 1–15; Oppermann, Nachruf auf Dr. Carl Jacobsen, 1842–1914, in: ibid., 10 (1914), pp. 112–16; E.W. Moes, Die Ordnung der Handzeichnungssammlung im Amsterdamer Kupferstichkabinett, in: ibid., 3 (1907), pp. 67–70; Robert Stiassny, Vom Gipsmuseum der Wiener Kunstakademie, in: ibid., 6 (1910), pp. 1–17; Bruno Adler, Das Museumswesen in Russland während der Revolution, in: ibid., 17 (1924), pp. 164–70; August Schmarsow, Die Zeichnungssammlung in Gijón (Asturien). Eine Notiz, in: ibid., 7 (1911), pp. 156–59; Antonio Taramelly, Das archäologische Museum zu Cagliari, in: ibid., 10 (1914), pp. 14–23. 42 See for example Museumkunde 1 (1905), p. 58; E. St. Ridolfi, Enrico. Il mio direttorato delle regie gallerie Fiorentine […], in: ibid., 2 (1906), p. 167; 6 (1910), p. 259. All quoted examples were published in the column „Museumschronik“. 43 See Museumskunde 1 (1905), p. 57; ibid., 6 (1908), p. 44; ibid., 2 (1906) p. 228.



Xavier-Pol Tilliette

Between Museumsinsel and Manhattan Wilhelm R. Valentiner, Ambassador and Agent of Wilhelm von Bode at the Metropolitan Museum, 1908–1914

Introduction The diffusion of the ideas of the German Museumsreformbewegung (movement for museum reform) in Europe and in the United States is the focus of my dissertation. In this context, I studied the influence of Berlin’s museums on the early development of American museums at the beginning of the twentieth century. My paper investigates the relationship between the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin (today’s Bode Museum) and the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner (1880–1958, fig. 20), a young German art historian and curator at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, was sent to the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1908 to help with the modernization of the museum and the outfitting of a new department. The unpublished letters of Valentiner to Wilhelm von Bode (1845–1929), located in the Central Archive of the State Museums in Berlin, shed light on the role of the two curators in

Fig. 20: Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner in 1919

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the cultural transfer of museological ideas across the Atlantic, and on the importance of their relationship for the development of American private collections.

The Metropolitan Museum and Morgan’s Presidency At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Metropolitan Museum, founded in 1870, was undergoing a period of tremendous change. A new generation of administrators replaced the original governing body. The board of trustees was the most exclusive club in New York, its members all the great winners of American capitalism: bankers, industrialists, financiers, merchants.1 Closely tied to the history of most of the great American museums, they were also art collectors whose names are still famous today: Frick, Altman, Johnson, Widener, and, above all, the first man ever to achieve a one billion dollar trust2 – the archetypical and even stereotypical American banker, John Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913). Trustee from 1888 onwards, Morgan was president of the Met between 1904 and 1913.3 Under his direction, significant administrative modernization took place and the quality and quantity of the collections increased rapidly. Morgan wanted the museum to collect only masterpieces, only remarkable works of art that could stand comparison with the works in European museums. At the Met, the new president applied the same system that he used for his private collections: he acquired famous, established collections, which he then rounded off with new purchases. His first major acquisition for the museum was the china collection of banker James A. Garland in 1902. When Garland died, he had not bequeathed the collection to the Met; it was just on loan to the museum. Garland’s heirs sold it for 500,000 dollars to the art dealer Duveen, but Morgan immediately bought it back for 600,000 dollars, asked Duveen to complete it for 200,000 dollars extra and donated it to the Met.4

1 See Thomas Adam’s chapter in this volume. 2 Calvin Tomkins, Merchants and Masterpieces. The Story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1989, p. 96. 3 The Metropolitan Museum is governed by a board of trustees, chaired by a president. This board administrates the budget of the museum and the new acquisitions, and nominates the director, in charge of the administrative and scientific aspects. 4 Jean Strouse, Morgan. American Financier, London: The Harvill Press, 1999, p. 494 and Tomkins 1989 (as fn. 2), p. 99. The Duveen corporation was founded in England by Joel Joseph Duveen and his brother Henry J. Duveen, later associated with the son of Joel Joseph. Joseph Duveen (“the first great supersalesman of art”. See Ernest Samuels, Bernard Berenson. The Making of a Legend, Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987, p. 39). The Duveen Brothers opened an office in London in 1879 and another in New York in 1886.





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Like other American private collectors, Morgan was always afraid of collecting something fake or a copy. Considered almost infallible in business matters, men of his caliber did not want to make a mistake while purchasing art, or to be fooled by dealers. But though they were superlative specialists in matters of banking or trade, few of them were real art connoisseurs, able to differentiate a genuine old master painting from a good school copy. At that time, the history of art was taught less scientifically in American universities than it was in Europe, where curators were also scholars, connoisseurs, and art market experts. Consequently, to ensure the success of his enterprises – both private and at the Met – Morgan hired European art specialists.5 In late 1904, upon the death of the director of the museum (from 1879) Louis P. di Cesnola, Morgan and the trustees hired the Englishman Sir Caspar Purdon Clarke to lead their modernization project. Up to that time, Clarke had been the director of the South Kensington Museum in London, and his departure from there was considered next to treason.6 The American salary, however, was twice the English one, and the task highly attractive: it consisted of creating a new museum, with almost unlimited financial resources. But the trustees were not satisfied with Purdon Clarke’s work. The man who actually conducted the modernization was Edward Robinson (1858–1931), co-director from 1905 and former director of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, who himself became director of the Met in 1910.

Bode and the Museumsreform Born in America, Edward Robinson had studied archaeology in Germany, in Berlin. There, he may have met one of the most important figures in the history of modern museums, the European museum specialist and art connoisseur, Wilhelm von Bode. The first known contact between the two men is a letter, dated December 1891,7 in which the American curator of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts asks the director of the Berlin Gemäldegalerie to check – with a “fatherly eye” – the list of the most recent casts purchased for his museum. In subsequent letters, Bode gave Robinson details about his current work in Berlin, especially regarding the building of a new museum between 1897 and 1904, the Kaiser Friedrich Museum (KFM), whose construction and installation he was supervising.

5 For his private collection, Morgan used to take advice from the English art expert and artist Roger Fry, who was later called to be curator of the paintings at the Met between 1906 and 1909. 6 Tomkins 1989 (as fn. 2), p. 102. 7 Letter from Robinson to Bode, 15 December 1891. Zentralarchiv, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz (SMB-ZA). These unpublished letters are transcribed and translated by me.



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Wilhelm von Bode began his career at the Royal Museums of Berlin in 1872, as an assistant for the Skulpturensammlung (Sculpture Collection). Ten years later, he undertook the direction of this museum before becoming director of the Gemäldegalerie in 1890. In 1904, the year of the inauguration of the KFM, he was appointed general director of the Royal Museums.8 As an art historian and museologist, he had an important role in the German Museumsreformbewegung. Since the first decades of the nineteenth century, Germany had been the setting for a rich museological debate.9 This modernization movement, which began with the discussion between Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Wilhelm von Humboldt, sought to define art in scientific and aesthetic terms, and experimented with new ways of exhibiting it in accordance with these ideas. The debate was particularly strong in Berlin between the 1880’s and the 1920’s. Here, Bode developed concepts which he put to practical use in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. He created a mixed exhibit in which different types of art of the same period were shown together in one room. Fine arts (painting and sculpture) and the applied arts were exhibited surrounded by architectural pieces (chimneys, door lintels...) of the same period (differing from a period room, in which a complete interior is recreated) in order to suggest to the visitor the particular atmosphere of the particular time in art history. Bode also promoted a partnership system between public museums and private collections. He cultivated close ties with wealthy collectors, advised them in building their collections, aided them in cataloguing their acquisitions, and helped in arranging their exhibition rooms. He convinced them that no greater social prestige could be attained than by bequeathing their collection to a museum, and encouraged them to do so, even during their lifetime.10

Appointment of Valentiner When in 1906 Morgan and Robinson needed someone to help with the creation of a new department of decorative arts at the Metropolitan Museum, they asked Bode (whom Morgan had first met in 1902) if he could recommend a museum and art specialist. The general director of the Berlin Museums suggested that they hire one of his

8 See Thomas Gaehtgens, Peter-Klaus Schuster (eds.), Kennerschaft. Kolloquium zum 150sten Geburtstag Wilhelm von Bode, vol. 28, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, Berlin, 1996; and Bode’s autobiography: Thomas Gaehtgens, Barbara Paul (eds.), Mein Leben, Berlin: Nicolai, 1997. 9 See Alexis Joachimides (ed.), Museumsinszenierungen. Zur Geschichte der Institution des Kunstmuseums. Die Berliner Museumslandschaft 1830–1990, Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1995; and Alexis Joachimides, Die Museumsreformbewegung in Deutschland und die Entstehung des modernen Museums 1880–1940, Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 2001. 10 So, in 1904, the banker James Simon gave part of his collection to the KFM.





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assistants, Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner – a young man whose career was destined to stand out in the history of American museums. After his studies at Heidelberg University, Valentiner worked as an assistant to the art historian Cornelis Hofstede de Groot in The Hague in the Netherlands, became a specialist in Dutch painting and, in 1905, published a dissertation on Rembrandt.11 He was then appointed to be Bode’s assistant at the Royal Museums of Berlin and, between 1906 and 1907, worked in several departments, including the department of Islamic art, leading to the development of a great interest in this field. Valentiner’s relationship to Bode turned into friendship, in spite of the age difference, and the younger man often spent the evening with the older, conversing about art and museums. Bode warmly recommended to Robinson the “most gifted and capable student [he had] ever had at the museum.”12 Robinson met Valentiner in August 1907 in Frankfurt for a kind of employment interview. He was delighted and wrote to Bode how happy he would be to have Valentiner at the Met where “everything is yet to be done.”13 As the position was certainly interesting for him and as he was having difficulties in finding a comparable appointment in Germany, Valentiner accepted, but he let Bode know he would not stay in a foreign country for more than one or two years.14 In March 1908, on his first transatlantic voyage, Valentiner was far from supposing that he would in fact spend six years abroad.

Valentiner as Bode’s agent and informer in New York As a traveling companion, Valentiner had Roger Fry, the Metropolitan Museum’s curator for paintings. It was he who gave Valentiner his insight into the workings of the Met, which the young German then transmitted to his friend and professor Bode: “A considerable disorder seems to be prevalent in the Metropolitan Museum’s administration and each one can, if he wants, have a word on the acquisitions of other departments. Fry let me understand I could help with the Netherlands.”15 So begins a correspondence between NewYork and Berlin, an average of one or two letters a month, which would last until the onset of the First World War. In New York, Valentiner rapidly became well integrated into high society. Bode’s reputation opened many doors for him: collectors, art dealers, curators did their best to make Valentiner feel comfortable in the United States. They knew the young curator

11 Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner, Rembrandt und seine Umgebung, Strasbourg: J.H.E. Heitz, 1905. 12 Strouse 1999 (as fn. 4), p. 606. 13 Letter from Robinson to Bode, September 1, 1907, SMB-ZA. 14 Letter from Valentiner to Bode, August 16, 1907, SMB-ZA. 15 Letter from Valentiner to Bode, March 18, 1908, SMB-ZA.



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could be a helpful intermediary in their dealings with Bode, widely considered to be the greatest European art specialist. Though, in his letters, Valentiner claimed to be exhausted from all his new social obligations (he was invited to dinner parties almost every evening), he continued to maintain friendly relations with all the cultivated elite of New York, including Morgan himself – in spite of the great banker’s notoriously difficult and authoritarian nature. In a short time, Valentiner’s services and expertise became essential at the Metropolitan, and as he had announced in his first letter, he could take part in numerous activities and decisions beyond his own department. This department itself was very well stocked, a kind of “giant amoeba,”16 extending in many different directions. It had been created for the purpose of exhibiting, alongside collections of diverse preColombian objects and Persian carpets, the very rich and diverse collection, recently acquired by Morgan, of the French artist, architect, and designer Georges Hoentschel. The collection consisted of arts and crafts, French furniture of the eighteenth century, and Gothic pieces (sculptures, choir stalls, tapestries, china, and ivories). Valentiner’s position in both society and the Museum gave him access to a wealth of information which he regularly passed on to Bode. He wrote to him about the state of American private collections, the collectors (what they planned to buy, but also what kind of relationships they had – whether friendly or inimical), the art dealers and art market, the Metropolitan Museum, its administration, its trustees (who were also collectors). When the Titanic sank in April 1912, Valentiner wrote to reassure Bode that no one of importance to the American museum world had died.17 Valentiner’s reports were precise: for instance, when Henry Clay Frick had a new building constructed to host his collections in 1911, Bode received a letter containing a drawing of the ground plan of the future building.18 When there were important auctions, Valentiner sent Bode catalogues and photos, and drew his attention to objects that might be of interest to German museums or collectors. The two German curators also made private arrangements about some works of art. For example, in the summer of 1910, while Valentiner was touring Europe making acquisitions for the Met, he found a Madonna by Andrea Sansovino at an auction in Paris and asked Bode to let him have it. He wrote: “I would be glad if you wouldn’t buy it, unless of course you want it for the KFM.”19 Bode did not use his right of preemption, and Valentiner bought the sculpture which can still be found in the Metropolitan Museum today.20

16 Tomkins 1989 (as fn. 2), p. 176. 17 Letter from Valentiner to Bode, May 27, 1912, SMB-ZA. 18 Letter from Valentiner to Bode, December 8, 1911, SMB-ZA. 19 Letter from Valentiner to Bode, June 20, 1910, SMB-ZA. 20 Madonna and Child, European Sculpture and Decorative Art Collection, Accession Number 10.185. The work of art is now attributed to Niccolò Roccatagliata.





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As revealed by this anecdote, Valentiner never tried to hide his preference for the German museums, and above all for the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. The relatively impoverished state of the museums of his homeland was a constant source of regret to him, as evidenced in remarks such as the following one, concerning a low relief which he had seen at an auction: “I would be happier to see it come to the Kaiser Friedrich Museum than here; but I fear the price is too high.”21 And though he rejoiced in being sent to Europe every summer to acquire art, he wrote Bode during his first trip: “If I were free, I would rather be buying for Berlin, but maybe it is a good thing that I gain experience beforehand.”22 In spite of this preference for the German museums, Valentiner took an active part in the acquisition of art, in Europe, for the United States – for the museums, but also for private collectors. Bode helped him to buy some objects, acting as an intermediary at auctions and sales. For example, before the sale of the Aynard collection in France, Valentiner sent Bode a telegram asking his help in buying (not above 60,000 francs), a Donatello terra-cotta for an American collector (who wished to stay anonymous — he was in fact the banker and tobacco tycoon Thomas Fortune Ryan). Bode won the bid.23 During his time of service at the Met, Valentiner also took on the role of a kind of press agent for Wilhelm von Bode, sending his friend reports of every American newspaper article related to him or to German museums. He also reported on how Bode’s articles were received, on the commentaries, most of which were very favorable – even in cases where Bode wrote about the American “Kaufwut” (buying fury): “Your article was reprinted everywhere and aroused some irritation; but most American people where flattered.”24 Valentiner also safeguarded the public image of the general director of Berlin’s museums. In January 1911, the Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin reprinted a New York Tribune article critical of Bode (an allusion is made to his mistakes in regard to the wax bust of Flora25). Sometime later, Bode received two letters of apologies, one from the Director of the Met, Edward Robinson, and one from the vice-president, Robert W. De Forest.26 Both officials had in fact been told by Valentiner how annoyed and angry Bode was, and they expressed their deepest regrets,

21 Letter from Valentiner to Bode, March 28, 1911, SMB-ZA. 22 Letter from Valentiner to Bode, June 21, 1908, SMB-ZA. 23 Telegram from Valentiner to Bode of December 3, 1913 and letter from Valentiner to Bode of December 19, 1913, SMB-ZA. 24 Letter from Valentiner to Bode, September 21, 1909, SMB-ZA. 25 In 1910, the authenticity of a wax bust of Flora attributed by Bode to Leonardo was questioned: it was in fact a modern work of the nineteenth century. Passionate debates took place in the press and among scholars; Bode protested and was much criticized and mocked. See Ulrike Wolff-Thomsen, Die Wachsbüste einer Flora in der Berliner Skulpturensammlung und das System Wilhelm Bode. Leonardo da Vinci oder Richard Cockle Lucas?, Kiel: Verlag Ludwig, 2006. 26 Letters to Bode from Robinson and De Forest, January 20, 1911, SMB-ZA.



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professing their friendship and gratitude towards Bode. “Our museum has no more valued and helpful friend in Europe than yourself,” wrote De Forest.

The Influence of Bode and Valentiner on Museology at the Met Enjoying the complete confidence of the trustees, who were satisfied with his work for the museum and his mediation with Wilhelm von Bode, Valentiner was in a position to carry out museological reforms at the Met, using what he had learnt from the German art expert. One of his first achievements was the installation of the Hoentschel collection. He wrote regularly to Bode, giving him news and asking him questions. Here he explains his plans: I’m currently planning the out-fitting of the new building where the Hoentschel collection, which however occupies only a part of the three floors, is to be located. By chance, Morgan is neither against a systematic arrangement of the collection, nor a reduction of the number of exhibited objects. So I would install the medieval sculpture and the Biron monument in the large middle room,27 and the arts and crafts in the other rooms, beginning in the floor below with a Coptic, early Christian, Roman and, especially, Islamic department (last three rooms), like in the KFM. It would then continue on to the next floor, up to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.28

The direct reference to the KFM makes clear that Valentiner intends to arrange his department as if its windows were to open out onto the Spree: he planned to use the same museology as Bode, to combine works of art and objects of the same epoch, to emphasize chronology and to develop the Islamic section, one of Bode’s favorite periods. Valentiner did not let Morgan’s criticism irritate him, in spite of the Museum’s president remark upon observing the unfolding arrangement of medieval objects and tapestries: “It looks like a junk shop.”29 The Hudson-Fulton exhibition of 1909 offered another excellent opportunity for Valentiner to put into practice the ideas of the Museumsreform.30 The Met presented a show of American art, combining paintings, furniture, and arts and crafts, from 1625 to 1825, parallel to an exhibit of Dutch paintings by contemporaries of Fulton.

27 Those objects are still in the Met, Accession Number 16.31.2b. 28 Letter from Valentiner to Bode, 7 May 1908, SMB-ZA. 29 Ibid. 30 This great exhibition was one of the events of a national celebration for the 300th anniversary of the discovering of the Hudson river by Henry Hudson, and the 100th anniversary of the first commercial steamer line, on that river, by Robert Fulton.





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Valentiner’s letters to Bode indicate that a major incentive for his work was praise from his master. When Bode announced he would come to America and visit the Metropolitan towards the end of 1911, Valentiner told him: “I’m very curious to see whether you will like my department, and I’m delighted in advance by the advice you will offer me. I hope you won’t find too many counterfeits among my acquisitions, but the quality of most of the objects is substantiated, since we bought them with your help.”31

The Influence of Valentiner and Bode on the Tastes of American Private Collectors Even if they had sometimes studied in Europe, the new American art collectors and billionaires of the beginning of the twentieth century where first and foremost financiers (like Pierpont Morgan), merchants (like Benjamin Altman), or industrialists (like Henry Clay Frick). Their taste and artistic knowledge was not attained through studies at the university: in art as in business, they were self-made men. So their artistic instincts were not considered to be as accurate as those of the Europeans were. In Valentiner’s opinion, only the Philadelphia lawyer John Garver Johnson really understood the art he collected. He rejoiced when Johnson became a trustee in October 1910 because he “understands the images more than all the others together.”32 Before this Johnson’s election, Valentiner had had to battle alone in promoting the purchase of certain works of art by artists of insufficient recognition and prestige. As he wrote to Bode in May 1908: “Apart from the works of Titian or Rembrandt, an understanding of the painting of the past is lacking at the museum. I recently suggested acquiring Judith Leyster’s beautiful painting at Müller’s auction of the Moogendick collection, but no one had ever heard the artist’s name. Finally, Johnson bought it.”33 This painting, The Last Drop or The Gay Cavalier, is still hanging in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in the building which opened in 1933. Johnson’s bequests form the core of the museum’s early European painting collection.34 The Metropolitan Museum thus missed an opportunity to acquire one of the twenty or so known paintings by Judith Leyster.

31 Letter from Valentiner to Bode, October 13, 1911, SMB-ZA. 32 Letter from Valentiner to Bode, November 8, 1910, SMB-ZA. Bode shared this point of view: he thought Johnson was the only collector who was not relying on art dealers for his purchases. See Bode 1997 (as fn. 8), p. 386. 33 Letter from Valentiner to Bode, May 7, 1908, SMB-ZA. 34 Philadelphia Museum of Art, European Painting before 1900, Johnson Collection, cat. 440.



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Knowing that the future holdings of the museum would depend on the present collections, an important task for Valentiner was to develop the taste of American collectors. Like Bode in Germany, he was trying to convince them of the value a bequest could have for their social prestige. So Valentiner began to lobby American collectors and the Met trustees. With the encouragement of Bode, he tried to convince them to acquire artworks of periods which had thus far been neglected. In this vein, Bode and Valentiner attempted to arouse the collectors’ interest for Near and Middle Eastern art. In May 1908, Valentiner wrote that he wished the trustees to buy “a large, green enamel dish, like the one in the Muschatta gallery in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum.”35 He failed to obtain it, though he tried to convince the trustees, impressing upon them the importance of Middle Eastern collections in all the great European Museums. Another campaign led by Valentiner was for early European paintings. According to the conception of art history that he shared with Bode, a prerequisite for the understanding of the development of the different schools of painting was chronological completeness. Thus, to comprehend Early Netherlandish Painting it would be necessary to understand the renowned seventeenth century in Holland.36 The art dealer Joe Duveen understood how important the influence of the German correspondent was on his clients. He encouraged Valentiner to create a new art magazine, Art in America, modeled after the English Connoisseur or the German Cicerone. Duveen called this publication his “beloved magazine”37 and helped Valentiner to find authors. He also supported the journal financially, well aware that it could help his business. Art in America was a scientific magazine with prestigious contributors – the first of them was Bode – and it was a great honor for a collector to have his new acquisitions discussed in it. Furthermore, it invited the collectors to pay more attention to the periods which Valentiner und Bode desired them to collect. When John Garver Johnson began to be interested in Renaissance sculpture (and not only painting, as was common), Valentiner at once wrote to Bode to tell him the good news.38 But why did Bode and Valentiner spend so much time and energy in helping American museums and collectors to take art out of Europe?

35 Letter from Valentiner to Bode, May 7, 1908, SMB-ZA. 36 Bode 1997 (as fn. 8), p. 386. 37 Samuels 1987 (as fn. 4), p. 152. 38 Letter from Valentiner to Bode, May 7, 1908, SMB-ZA.





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Interests and Counterparts Since the end of the nineteenth century, the European museum and art world had been conscious of the danger presented by the new capitalist bourgeoisie. Its almost unlimited financial power seemed to threaten all the works of art that were not stored in the security of the museums (fig. 21). The press amplified this discussion and helped to stir up the fear of American billionaires eager for European treasures. Bode himself wrote about the issue quite a few times, and though he was not as alarmist as others, he was conscious of the problem. But he still helped the Americans to collect, above all as a result of political considerations. Bode and Morgan first met in July 1902. The banker visited the Royal Museum of Berlin guided by the art historian who offered his help in any question related to art and collecting.39 On July 17, 1902, an article in the German newspaper Vossische Zeitung, expressed worries about the arrival in Berlin of many wealthy Americans, who had recently taken part in a regatta in Kiel. Morgan, the head of this group, was indeed accompanied by friends and members of his family. But the regatta was not just an entertainment; it was, in fact, part of an important German foreign policy meeting – a reception Kaiser Wilhelm II gave for J. P. Morgan to thank him for his help in a delicate matter. Everything had started in late 1900, when Morgan decided to get involved in the creation of a maritime trust. He bought renowned English Atlantic shipping lines, like the Atlantic Transport Company and the prestigious White Star (the company that launched the Titanic), to amalgamate them with the American International Navigation Company. Informed of these purchases, Wilhelm II feared that Morgan would want to buy German lines, too.40 Intent on competing with the English maritime power, maritime expansion was of great importance in the Kaiser’s foreign policy strategy. In February 1902, Albert Ballin, director of the German Hamburg-America Line, was sent to New York as a special emissary of the Kaiser to meet Morgan and to conclude a commercial agreement with him. The two of them decided that Morgan would not include German maritime companies in his trust, and divided the North Atlantic into two zones of influence: one for the Germans, one for the Americans. The agreement was very unfavorable to England, much to the delight of the Kaiser, who invited the banker to meet him in Kiel. Morgan nevertheless took care not to give either a political or a nationalistic dimension to his trust and named it International Mercantile Marine.41

39 Strouse 1999 (as fn. 4), p. 472. 40 John C. G. Röhl, Nicolaus Sombart (eds.), Kaiser Wilhelm II. New Interpretations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, p. 161. 41 Ibid., p. 168.



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Fig. 21: The Magnet, cartoon by Joseph Keppler, Jr., Puck magazine, New York, 1911

In Kiel, Morgan and his companions were received like statesmen, and on July 4th, fireworks celebrated the American Independence Day in their honor. The Americans were then invited to Berlin, where the meeting with Bode occurred. Bode, faithful supporter of the Hohenzollern regime, certainly understood how important it was for his country to have good relations with J. P. Morgan and, by extension, with the wealthy Americans. Bode was also willing to promote a positive image of Germany and its regime on the international stage, in the face of the growing hostility towards Wilhelm II. Seen from this angle, the exhibit of modern German art supervised by Bode at the Metropolitan Museum in 1909 can be seen as a diplomatic instrumentalization of art.42 The exhibition tended to present a Germany replete with order and serenity, and to show its leader in a good light. The country particularly needed such propaganda after the Daily Telegraph affair of 1908: an unedited interview with Wilhelm II was published in October and its false information and bombastic language held German imperialist ambitions wide open to ridicule.43 Another reason behind the help that Valentiner, Bode, and other German curators gave to American museums and collectors was their expectation of reciprocity in the form of gifts and bequests for their own institutions. In December 1908, the

42 Julien Chapuis, Bode und Amerika. Eine komplexe Beziehung, in: Jahrbuch Preußischer Kultur­ besitz 43 (2006), pp. 143–76. 43 Röhl, Sombart 1982 (as fn. 40), pp. 249–68.





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curator of Islamic art and Bode’s colleague at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Friedrich Sarre, gave the Metropolitan Museum two pieces of Sassanid low relief44 as a gift of the KFM45, and, in 1913, an Iranian ink drawing as a gift in his own name.46 In 1910, Valentiner donated a study for a Pietà by an artist of the Rembrandt school,47 and, in 1911, Bode gave six sixteenth-century majolicas.48 In return, the only gift to the KFM seems to have been a predella by Fra Angelico, which Morgan sent in 1909 to express his thanks for Bode’s help in cataloguing his bronze collection, but maybe also for the “loan” of Valentiner.49 No American collector actually bequeathed his collection to a German museum, though Bode hoped that Benjamin Altman would do so.50 A last explanation for the German cooperation would be a certain idealism associated with art and museums. For German curators and art historians, American private collections and museums were a great opportunity to put their competence to use and to satisfy their immense interest in art. While European museums already had great holdings, in America the necessary work was endless, almost ex nihilo, and apparently without financial restraints. In taking part in this adventure of creating modern museums in the United States, Valentiner and Bode were happy to transmit their ideals of museums, their visions of art, and their aesthetic judgments. Valentiner’s letters clearly state that making money was not his prime interest: he was satisfied to see his salary increase over the years, but he was first and foremost passionately interested in art and in the scientific and museological work he was able to do at the Metropolitan Museum and for the great American collectors. And when, after the First World War, he had difficulties finding work in Germany because of his political involvement with the Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Workers Council for Art)51 during the German revolution of 1918, he emigrated to the United States where, from 1924 onwards, he pursued a brilliant career at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Los Angeles County Museum, the Getty Museum, and the North Carolina Museum of Art.

44 Metropolitan Museum, Ancient Near Eastern Art, Acession Numbers 08.199.1 and 08.199.2. 45 Letter from Valentiner to Bode, December 10, 1908, SMB-ZA. 46 Metropolitan Museum, Islamic Art, Accession Number 13.172. 47 Metropolitan Museum, Acession Number 10. 1. 48 Metropolitan Museum, Acession Numbers 11. 163. 1 to 6. 49 Strouse 1999 (as fn. 4), p. 609. 50 Chapuis 2006 (as fn. 42). 51 Kristina Kratz-Kessemeier, Kunst für die Republik. Die Kunstpolitik des preußischen Kultur­ ministeriums 1918 bis 1932, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008, p. 25.



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Conclusion Bode’s museological influence at the Metropolitan Museum is unquestionable, and it marked the museum for many years: the Cloisters, opened in 1938, a project for which Valentiner was an advisor, can be seen as a further realization of Bode’s ideals in the United States.52 But most important is the transnational network which was woven between Berlin and New York in the period between 1908 and 1914. The relationship between Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner and Wilhelm von Bode structured this fabric of relationships, and helped to connect the actors of the art and museum worlds: curators, administrators, scholars, art patrons, collectors, and dealers.

52 Chapuis 2006 (as fn. 42).



Christina Kott

The German Museum Curators and the International Museums Office, 1926–1937 The 1934 International Conference of Madrid on museography and its two-volume proceedings1 are today not only considered milestones in the history of the museum and the standardization of museum practices, but also a climax of the activity of the International Museums Office (IMO),2 which was founded in 1926 by a decision of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC) at the League of Nations. Although German museum curators had been taking an active part in this office up to 1933, there was no official German representative among the 68 participants at the Madrid Conference.3 However, the handbook contains a huge number of examples from German museums, both in the text and the illustrations. How can this discre­ pancy be explained? The political reason for the absence of German curators might be the German withdrawal from the League of Nations some months after Adolf Hitler’s coming to power. But German museum directors might also have been, on a more professional level, critical of or even hostile towards the international museum cooperation. The study of the German attitude towards the IMO during the interwar period is interesting not only as far as cultural policy is concerned, but also from the point of view of research on the processes of the internationalization of museography, of the process through which it became more scientific, and of cultural transfer.

1926–1929/1930: Political Isolation and Personal Commitment Little is known about the history, the role and the impact of the IMO, especially in the English and German-speaking countries, although it is generally considered to be

1 Office international des musées (ed.), Muséographie. Architecture et aménagement des musées d’art, 2 vols., Paris, 1935. 2 In French Office international des musées, OIM; in German: Internationales Museumsamt des Völkerbunds. 3 The following countries sent delegations: Austria, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, China, Vatican, Denmark, Spain, USA, Ireland, France, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Persia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland. The following countries participated at the conference without sending delegates: Germany, Australia, Canada, Greece, Norway, Czechoslovakia, and USSR, see list in: UNESCO archives, OIM IV 13.

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the forerunner of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), which was founded in 1946 within the framework of the UNESCO.4 A google search of the German word Internationales Museumsamt produces no result. The French term Office international des musées is revealing too: the first entry is the Wikipedia article “Musée,” beginning with the following warning: “This article is adopting a regional or cultural point of view and must be internationalized!”5 The same remark could be made on the scholarly research about the history of the IMO, which was written almost exclusively from the French perspective. Jean-Jacques Renoliet, in his PhD on the history of the intellectual cooperation within the League of Nations,6 has dedicated only a short chapter to the IMO, whereas Marie Caillot, in her still unpublished PhD and other scholarly works,7 focuses more precisely on the internal history of the IMO. Italian scholar Annamaria Ducci’s point of view is more international since she focuses on the role of the IMO and its journal Mouseion in the debates on modern museum in Western Europe and the USA in the 1920s and 1930s.8 However, Renoliet and Caillot’s approach is quite critical as they demonstrate that though the IMO was founded as a sub-commission of the ICIC with its headquarter in Geneva (Switzerland), it was in fact a French enterprise: its headquarters were situated in Paris, next to the International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation (IICI), to which it was affiliated, and it was largely and liberally subsidized by the French government. In January 1926, Henri Focillon, the French art historian and a professor at the Sorbonne persuaded the members of the ICIC in Geneva that museums were “natural mediums of international peaceful cooperation.”9 Since the European Renaissance period, museums had been places of cultural exchange and had promoted the knowledge of other cultures; from a historical point of view the museum as an institution had been, as he said, “the first draft or the first medium of a European and global consciousness.”10

4 See Hiroshi Daifuku, Museums and Monuments. UNESCO’s Pioneering Role, in: Museum Inter­ national. The Fiftieth Anniversary Issue vol. L, no. 1 (1998), pp. 9–19. 5 http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus%C3%A9e (accessed September 16, 2012). 6 Jean-Jacques Renoliet, L’Unesco oubliée. La Société des Nations et la coopération intellectuelle (1919–1946), Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1999. 7 Marie Caillot, La revue Mouseion (1927–1946). Les musées et la coopération culturelle internationale, Thèse pour le diplôme d’archiviste paléographe, Ecole nationale des chartes, 2011; ibid., La SDN et la protection du patrimoine culturel. L’œuvre de l’Office international des Musées durant l’entre-deuxguerres, Mémoire IEP de Paris, 2010–2011. 8 Annamaria Ducci, Mouseion. Una rivista al servizio del patrimonio artistico europeo (1927–1946), in: Annali di critica d’arte I (2005), pp. 287–13. 9 According to Mouseion (no. 1, 1927), Focillon gave two lectures in Geneva: in 1925, at the first meeting of the Sous-Commission des lettres et des arts, and on January 12, 1926, at the second meeting of the same Sous-Commission, where he presented a more detailed program. The main ideas of this lecture are published in the first issue of Mouseion. 10 Ibid.





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By propagating the role of museums as vehicles of a policy of international understanding and by institutionalizing the transnational dialogue between museum experts from Europe and the world, the French intended to take over the leadership of a new movement, the aim of which was to replace the national-oriented, elitist, nineteenth-century concept of museum by a more modern i.e. democratic and popular one. But what is rarely or never mentioned in the scholarly works quoted above is the fact that, until 1914, the leadership in modern museography had been assumed – even though somewhat informally and limited to the European continent – by museums and museum associations in the German-speaking countries.11 The historical actors never explicitly mention this development; it can only be assumed retrospectively by comparing the later development to the pre-war situation. After the German defeat, relationships between German scholars and scholars from the former allied countries were placed under the sign of boycott and isolation.12 In other fields of the arts and humanities, as well as in scientific domains, the internationalizing tendency in the field of museography during the interwar period was a kind of “brake” against German domination.13 Indeed, the first international congress of art historians after the war was held in Paris in 1921 without official German participation, although the initiative for the congress goes back to German-speaking art historians at the end of the nineteenth century.14 Reflecting the new interest in the topic, the first section of the 1921 congress was dedicated to museography; almost two thirds of the speakers were Americans, presenting some innovative American museums and progressive popularization measures in the US.15 Transfer of new museum practices and experiences which had been made in Germany and Austria to France or other European countries could only take place by circuitous routes – passing for example through American

11 See Alexis Joachimides, Die Museumsreformbewegung in Deutschland und die Entstehung des Modernen Museums 1880–1940, Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 2001. 12 See Roswitha Reinbothe, L’exclusion des scientifiques allemands et de la langue allemande des congrès scientifiques internationaux après la Première Guerre mondiale, in: Revue germanique internationale: La fabrique internationale de la science. Les congrès scientifiques de 1865 à 1945, 12 (2010), pp. 193–208, http://rgi.revues.org/285 (accessed November 8, 2013). 13 See Wolf Feuerhahn, Pascale Rabault-Feuerhahn, Présentation. La science à l’échelle inter­ nationale, in: ibid., p. 9. 14 See Heinrich Dilly, Trouvailles. Images latentes du congrès international d’histoire de l’art, in: ibid., pp. 105–22, published also at the CIHA-Website, http://www.ciha2012.de/info/ciha-1873-2008. html (accessed October 22, 2012). 15 Actes du Congrès d’histoire de l’art (Paris, September, 16 – October, 5, 1921), Paris, PUF, 1923. See Christina Kott, “Un Locarno des musées” ? Les relations franco-allemandes en matière de muséographie dans l’entre-deux-guerres, in: Actes du colloque “L’art allemand en France, 1919– 1939. Diffusion, réception, transferts”, October 30 and 31, 2008, http://hicsa.univ-paris1.fr/page. php?r=18&id=394&lang=fr (accessed October 22, 2012).



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museums.16 But the German position was also affected by self-isolation and counterboycott measures. The following statement by Max Planck, quoted by Albert Einstein, may have been shared by German museum curators: “As long as the Germans are not admitted to international federations and meetings, the right behavior for a German scholar is to keep away from all international events – without taking into account ties of friendship with particular persons from abroad.”17 For many conservative Germans, the League of Nations and its associated units were closely related to the Versailles Treaty, the stipulations of which were considered to be unfair to Germany. However, there were some German representatives in the assembly in Geneva in 1926 who listened to Focillon’s speech – among them Thomas Mann, as well as the art historian Wilhelm Waetzoldt, who later became the head of the Berlin State Museums. But when the IMO was officially created in July 1926, German participation was still uncertain, since the German Republic had not yet joined the League of Nations – this occurred on September 9, 1926. Max Jakob Friedländer, the art historian and director of the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett, was among the international museum experts in charge of the elaboration of the IMO program in January 1927. He was a member of the comité consultatif d’experts until he lost his Berlin position in 1933, and played an important role during the first years of the IMO (fig. 22). In November 1928, Richard Graul, the German art historian who was the former director of the Leipzig Museum for Arts and Crafts and director of the Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts, joined the executive committee of the IMO. He remained a kind of official German representative and a permanent member of the executive committee and the Mouseion editorial board, while Wilhelm Waetzold, who was head of the Berlin State Museums from 1927 to 1933, represented the German museums at official meetings organized by the IMO. During this first period, the aforementioned German curators took an active part in different IMO projects. Besides conservation of art works, heritage preservation, and technical museography, the IMO focused on the issue of the social and educational function of museums. As early as 1927, a symposium was held on that question, with the participation of Max J. Friedländer. Museums in Germany had a wide experience in this field, on a theoretical as well as on a practical level.18 One of the

16 Eva-Maria Knels, Die Wiedereröffnung des Museums Louvre und ihre Rezeption nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg. Aufbruch auf dem Weg zum modernen Museum, Master’s thesis, dir. Thomas Gaehtgens/ Bénédicte Savoy, FU Berlin, 2006; See also the contribution of Xavier-Pol Tilliette. 17 Albert Einstein, German member of the ICIC from 1922 to 1932, on January 9, 1925, in a letter to H.A.Lorentz, in: Siegried Grundmann, Einsteins Akte. Wissenschaft und Politik - Einsteins Berliner Zeit, Berlin et al.: Springer Verlag, 2004, p. 333, fn. 675. 18 See Die Museen als Volksbildungsstätten. Ergebnisse der 12. Konferenz der Centralstelle für ArbeiterWohlfahrtseinrichtungen, Berlin, 1904, especially: Karl Ernst Osthaus, Der Folkwang in Hagen, in: ibid., pp. 58–61, reprinted in: Kristina Kratz-Kessemeier, Andrea Meyer, Bénédicte Savoy (eds.), Museumsgeschichte. Kommentierte Quellentexte 1750–1950, Berlin: Reimer, 2010, pp. 94–99. See also Joachimides 2001 (as fn.11), pp. 110–13.





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Fig. 22: Group photograph of the Commission consultative de l’Office international des musées, in: Mouseion, 7 (1929)

resolutions of the IMO symposium was not only to use modern media like the radio to inform a broader public of museum activities, but also to systematize this method on an international level. Friedländer, as an expert of this kind of early museum advertising, called “propagande radiophonique,” initiated the project and chaired the meeting of the executive committee dedicated to the issue on November 26, 1928. The first radio program broadcast in different countries and languages was written and read by Jules Destrée, the president of the IMO, and the fact that it was dedicated to the Berlin Museumsinsel on the occasion of its 100th anniversary in 1930 may be interpreted as a sign of the successful return of German museums to the international museum community.19 The international exchange and exhibition of plaster casts was another IMO cooperation project in which the Germans participated. The city of Cologne and its mayor Konrad Adenauer, who later became chancellor of the Federal

19 La “Cité des musées” de Berlin, par Jules Destrée, Ancien Ministre, Président de l’Office international des musées. OIM, service radiophonique, Communiqué no. 1, 28/9/1930, UNESCO Archives, OIM XI 1.



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Republic, provided its Staatenhaus where the first international exhibition of plaster casts took place in 1929. German curators also wrote articles for the Mouseion journal, which had been edited by the IMO since 1927. While French authors were responsible for nearly half of the articles published from 1927 to 1946, Germans and Italians were the most represented among the other nations.20 As the German Museumskunde founded by Karl Koetschau in 1905 had not been published since 1924,21 there was no competitive situation. Even though Museumskunde had been published in German, it had become an international professional journal. In the opinion of the IMO editors, Mouseion was supposed to replace Museumskunde, which also became a model for Mouseion. In 1929, the articles became more technical, and new rubrics like “museography,” “personnel,” and “necrology” were created, as in Museumskunde.22 However, Museumskunde was relaunched in 1929, and the editors of Mouseion intended to cooperate with their German colleagues in order to prevent any kind of competition. Although several letters seem to attest to traces of information exchanges between the two editorial boards,23 more systematic analysis would be necessary to determine the nature of their relationship. At this stage of research, one can already suggest that despite the involvement of some German curators during this first period, the IMO was much more interested in museographic experiences in Germany than German museum curators were interested in activities conducted by the IMO.

1929–1933/1934: Increasing Cooperation, Competition and Rejection This situation changed around 1929: on the one hand, German museum curators started to display an increasing interest in the work of the IMO, while criticizing it more. In 1929, the IMO became more international and professional, thanks to his new secretary, the multilingual and open-minded Euripide Foundoukidis of Greece, who became general secretary in 1931 and thus its virtual director.24 Under his leadership, the IMO started organizing several international conferences with a huge number of participants. German curators and art historians abandoned their passive attitude towards the IMO. Their presence became more offensive and also more problematic.

20 Caillot 2011 (as fn. 7), p. 66. 21 Museumskunde. Vierteljahresschrift für Verwaltung und Technik privater und öffentlicher Sammlungen, journal of the Deutscher Museumsbund, 1905–1924, 1929–1945. 22 See Caillot 2011 (as fn. 7), p. 63. 23 See UNESCO archives, OIM VI 1. 24 Euripide Foundoukidis (1894–1968), lawyer and art historian, see Caillot 2011 (as fn. 7), pp. 190–92.





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In fact, the younger generation of curators no longer hesitated to criticize the IMO and the Institute for Intellectual Cooperation, as Graul wrote to Foundoukidis: If you had taken part in the International Congress of Art Historians at Brussels, you would have been surprised by the way the museums office and the Institute for Intellectual Cooperation have been criticized. It is said that there will be protests against the composition of the commissions [of the IMO, C.K.] and against the use of only two languages […]. At the reception in the Berlin castle the day before yesterday, some museum directors like Buchner, Sauerlandt and Puyvelde, held the view that the official IMO communications should also be made in German […]. This hot-tempered discussion is typical of the young generation.25

And he suggested defining the collaboration with the Museumsbund, the German Association of Museum Curators founded in 1917, and the Internationaler Museumsverband, the International Federation of Museum Curators founded in 1898 by Justus Brinckmann of the Hamburg Museum of Arts and Crafts. But beyond these language and generational problems, some deeper differences appeared: some curators, like the director of the modern section of the Berlin Nationalgalerie Ludwig Justi, were doubtful about the need for this kind of international institution. In his opinion, the meaning and the value of German museums were to be seen in their “lively intellectual dimension” (“im lebendig Geistigen”), and not in the uniformity of external properties like the dimensions of museum catalogues. German curators who took part in the IMO meetings, he continued, had a part in the rationalization of what he considered creative and sacred.26 Yet the representation of German museums and their professional federations within the framework of European appeasement also encountered difficulties related to domestic policy. Max J. Friedländer was not officially nominated to represent the German art historian community at the 1930 congress held in Brussels – a decision that was due to his Jewish origins, according to Erwin Panofsky.27 The IMO was responsive to some of the criticisms: in February 1931, its board of directors decided to translate the communications into German and to elaborate German summaries of all articles of Mouseion, as long as there was no German version of the journal.28 The German museum curators expressed their “satisfaction” with

25 Graul to Foundoukidis, on October 4, 1930, UNESCO Archives, OIM VI 1. I; Caillot 2011 (as fn. 7), p. 164. Actes du XIIe Congrès International d’Histoire de l’Art. Bruxelles, September 20–29, 1930, publ. Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art, CIHA, Brussels, 1930. 26 Ludwig Justi, Foreword, in: Museum der Gegenwart. Zeitschrift der deutschen Museen für neuere Kunst, 1 (1930), p. 2. 27 See Dilly 2010 (as fn.  14), pp. 105–22, here p. 118–19; Dieter Wuttke (ed.), Erwin Panofsky. Korrespondenz 1920–1936, Wiesbaden, 2001, pp. 371–72. 28 Foundoukidis to Neumeyer, from the General Direction of Berlin State Museums, February 3, 1931, UNESCO Archives, OIM XI 1. From 1931 on, the most important articles were translated not only into German, but also into Italian, Spanish, and English, see Caillot 2011 (as fn. 7), p. 193. Neither a German version of Mouseion nor versions in other languages have ever been published.



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this decision, according to Karl Hermann Jacob-Friesen, the director of the Provinzialmuseum Hannover and editor of the new Museumskunde series.29 The efforts made by the IMO to integrate the German colleagues were supported by the diplomatic abilities and human qualities of Euripide Foundoukidis. In general, the lack of interest or even the refusal of the German officials to collaborate with the IMO and other units of the League of Nations was counterbalanced by intensive personal contacts and relationships. In February 1930, the German Commission of Intellectual Cooperation intended to reorganize the Institute of Intellectual Cooperation – to which the IMO was associated – including its transfer from Paris to Geneva and even, in the long term, its dissolution. In doing so, the Germans insulted the French officials – the more so as Germany had never been very much involved either financially or intellectually in the works of the Institute. Richard Graul, who was at the meeting of the German commission, understood the urgency of the situation and the necessity to realize projects that could persuade the Germans of the need for international museum cooperation.30 As a matter of fact, Graul, who seized a suggestion of his colleague Daniel Baud-Bovy from Switzerland, initiated the first international conference organized by the IMO on the issue of “The study of scientific methods for the examination and the conservation of works of art” in Rome in November 1930. In the process, a certain competition with the Internationaler Museumsverband occurred, since its mission was to fight against art forgery by using the same scientific methods. Although World War I had seriously affected the activities of the Museumsverband – its first meeting took place not until 1926, without the former enemies France, Belgium, and Italy –, Max Sauerlandt, who had been its president since 1927, refused its integration into the IMO.31 He argued that his Federation was a much older institution and that the very specialized issue of art forgery did not fit into the more general IMO program. However, not only did he agree to send two members of the Federation as experts to the Rome conference, but he personally participated in the meeting. In fact, together with Paul Vitry, the director of the Louvre department of sculpture, he directed – even though it was not entirely his choice – the section of the conference devoted to sculpture. In spite of an argument he had with the IMO on the usefulness of plaster casts, his report on the conference was basically positive. On the boundaries between the two international museum organizations, he wrote confidently: “At the Rome conference, it became clear to me that the International Federation of Museum Curators would be fully recognized in its own nature, as the secretary of the IMO, M. E. Foundoukidis explicitly made sure it would. The IMO is determined to tackle only those problems

29 Karl Hermann Jacob-Friesen to the Director of the IICI, Feb. 25, 1931, UNESCO Archives, OIM XI 1. 30 Graul to Foundoukidis, February 21, 1930 (copy), UNESCO archives, OIM VI 1. 31 Heinz Spielmann (ed.), Max Sauerlandt. Ausgewählte Schriften. Band 1: Reiseberichte 1925–1932, Hamburg: Verlag Hans Christians, 1971, pp. 74–75.





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which cannot be solved by the Federation itself.”32 However, he had to admit that some overlapping of activities of both organizations might occur occasionally. The huge number of German participants, besides the experts for scientific and technical analysis of works of art, especially with their new infrared radiation and x-radiation methods, reflected the Germans’ great interest in the Rome conference. From Sauerlandt’s perspective it seemed almost natural that among the 17 nations attending the conference, “Germany, France, and England were particularly well represented.”33 Against this background of increasing German commitment, especially of art conservation experts and museum curators, the difficulties that occurred after the coming into power of Chancellor Adolf Hitler and the withdrawal of Germany from the League of Nations may appear particularly serious.

1933–1937: Political Rejection and Professional Participation The effects of the new national-socialist order on museum personnel, i.e. dismissals and suspensions, affected two of the German IMO collaborators, Max J. Friedländer and Wilhelm Waetzoldt.34 However, political changes in Germany did not mean a complete and immediate interruption of the cooperation between German museum curators and the IMO. Richard Graul remained a permanent member of the executive committee at least until October, 1933, and continued to be in close contact with Euri­ pide Foundoukidis, especially on the issue of the preparation of the international conference on museography which was supposed to take place in April 1934, in Madrid. From June to October 1933, a German attendance still seemed to be possible: the new German officials assured Graul of their acceptance and their commitment to financial support.35 On October 14, the very same day when Germany officially withdrew from the League of Nations, Graul informed Foundoukidis of a working group in charge of the composition of the German delegation, and on November 8, he was even able to announce that the German Foreign Office supported it.36 But the latter amended its decision: neither the delegation of official representatives nor the individual participation of German museum curators, architects, and other experts was permitted, be it at the conference itself or at the exhibition on museography which was organized

32 Ibid., p. 179. 33 Ibid., p. 180. 34 Friedländer was dismissed on June 29, 1933, see Joachimides 2001 (as fn. 11), p. 228, Waetzoldt was suspended in 1933 and returned to the Halle University as a professor and director of the art history institute. 35 Graul to Foundoukidis, on July 5, and October 11, 1933, UNESCO archives, OIM IV 13 1. 36 Graul to Foundoukidis, on October 14, and November 8, 1933, UNESCO archives, OIM IV 13 1.



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by the Spanish representative.37 Although Museumskunde published one short article entitled “Museumskunde at the Madrid conference” in its 1935 issue,38 it is difficult to know whether the author really attended the conference because the content of the article could also have been reported by someone else. Given all these elements, how can the discrepancy between the absence of German representatives and the important presence of German museums, during the conference as well as in the above-mentioned handbook, be explained? In order to be able to explain it, one needs to have a look at the conference method. In May 1933, the IMO put up a working program which included questions of architecture (A), museum organization and installation (B), special technical problems like lighting, heating, and security (C), and the presentation and display of museum objects (D).39 As a result of experiences made during the previous international conferences, a new method was implemented for the Madrid conference: instead of lectures made in plenum, each expert was asked to prepare a paper (rapport) on a different, given aspect of one of the main issues. These texts were supposed to be discussed in small groups during the conference and to form the corpus of the handbook (fig. 23). The experts (rapporteurs) were asked to tackle the questions not only from their own national point of view, but also from a transnational perspective. This approach required a more intensive preparation, especially an exchange of information and documents between experts, which was organized by Foundoukidis. The IMO secretary and organizer of the conference was convinced of the importance of the German museum-modernization movement, and he was also aware that several German museum curators were still interested in the international museum cooperation. He therefore applied to a large number of German museums, especially those which had realized innovative reforms or reorganizations, and asked them for documents, reports, photographs, and even drapery or wallpaper patterns: e.g. of the new Pergamon Museum in Berlin, of the Cologne Kunstgewerbemuseum with its new display methods, of the colored wall papers at Bremen Kunsthalle, the pivoting walls at Folkwang Museum Essen, etc.40 The German museum curators willingly sent all the documents he had asked for and Foundoukidis dispatched them to the different rapporteurs. Once the latter had produced drafts of their papers, Foundoukidis sent these texts to the German museum curators who returned them with their comments, remarks, and sugges-

37 The German Foreign Office to Graul, on August 7, 1934, Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office, R 66591. The conference had been postponed from April to October 14, 1934, and a second time to October 28, due to the political instability in Spain (“Spanish autumn”). 38 N.N., Internationales Museumsamt. Museumskunde auf der Madrider Tagung, in: Museumskunde 24 (7, 1935), pp. 21–23. 39 Issues E and F concerned the lending of objects and the organization of the exhibition on museography, see conference program, UNESCO Archives, OIM IV 13 (1). 40 See correspondence between Foundoukidis and German museum curators in UNESCO archives, OIM IV 13 (1–5).





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Fig. 23: Cover of the handbook Muséographie (1935), Unesco Archives Paris

tions.41 Thanks to this system of exchange between museum curators via the IMO, the German museums could take part in the conference in an indirect, strictly professional and objective way. This virtual but still apolitical and non-ideological German participation is remarkable against the background of the German contribution to the 1937 World Fair in Paris. Compared to the IMO working system, which tended towards the dilution of national borders, this international but national-based event was much more adequate to the goals of the national-socialist party. In the section of the fair dedicated to “Museums and exhibitions – Museography,” the new general director of Berlin State Museums, Otto Kümmel, thus presented the innovative accom-

41 Ibid., UNESCO archives, OIM IV 13 (6–7).



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plishments of German museums – on the technical, architectural, and educational levels – as the results of a genuine national-socialist cultural policy.

Transfer, Internationalization and Scientification of Museographical Knowledge The relationship between the IMO and German museum curators had a short period of intensive cooperation from 1929 to 1933, though it was affected by latent competition and attitudes of reserve or even rejection. This evolution was partly stopped by the dismissal of two main German actors in 1933 and ended almost completely when the Nazi authorities refused to cooperate with an institution related to the League of Nations. German museum experts nonetheless participated indirectly in the 1934 conference by exchanging documents and comments with the other experts. But what about the tangible transfer of good museum practices and museographical know-­ ledge, especially from and to German museums? According to recent research findings, the attempt to determine and analyze transfer processes within the framework of international research organizations and their meetings is highly questionable, due both to entanglement and parallel evolutions.42 This is even more the case for the Madrid conference, since its method was transnational and thematic from its very beginning, and accomplishments on a national level had merely the status of examples of practical interest. Nevertheless, a case study on museographical transfer processes would be interesting in respect to some main questions such as the separation between the displayed and the stored collection, which was a kind of change of paradigm, on both the theoretical and the practical level, during the first decades of the twentieth century. On the other hand, it would shed further light on the history of museography to study the circulation and the application of technical solutions thanks to the Madrid conference and its handbook: for instance, it seems to be proven that French architects planning new museum buildings for the 1937 World Fair based their plans on the documentation assembled by the IMO for the Madrid conference.43 However, the Madrid conference, and moreover all IMO activities, were not only dedicated to the “new technique” of museography44 – they also prepared its transformation into a systemized, applied science. Indeed, after the two volumes on the more

42 Marie-Claire Robic, À propos de transferts culturels. Les congrès internationaux de géographie et leurs spatialités, in: Revue germanique internationale 12 (2010), pp. 33–45. 43 P. Viard, M. Dastugue, J.C. Dondel, A. Aubert (architectes des musées d’art moderne) asking Foundoukidis for documentation from the Madrid Conference about lighting and interior organization, February 25, 1935 (UNESCO archives, OIM IV 13, Nov.–Dec. 1934). 44 Janick Daniel Aquilina, The Babelian Tale of Museology and Museography. A History in Words, in: Museology – International Scientific Electronic Journal 6 (2011).





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technical aspects of museography, a third volume of the Traité de muséographie was prepared in 1939/1940 on the issue of the social and educational role of museums.45 Due to World War II and the later dissolution of the IMO, this project was abandoned and left to the next generation of the then so-called “museologists.”

45 See the 4-page document “Muséographie. Tome III. La mission sociale et éducative du musée, A. Programme d’études,” March 1939, UNESCO archives, OIM XI 7.



Museums as Transnational Sites for National Identities

Emília Ferreira

Building on the London 1881 Pretext The Birth of the Portuguese National Fine Arts Museum

Introduction One of the consequences of the Great Exhibition in 1851 in London was an augmented debate on the relevance of ornament. The London South Kensington Museum was an institution specialized in the ornamental arts and was their devoted guardian. In 1881, it created an exhibition with the ambitious purpose of studying and presenting the ornamental arts of Iberia. In doing so, it focused on an issue that in its own way summarized the issues of the rising nationalist movements. The Special Loan Exhibition of Spanish and Portuguese Ornamental Art was designed by one of the museum’s most eminent curators: John Charles Robinson (1824–1913). Artist, art historian, and critic, associated member of several European art academies, including the Portuguese Fine Arts Academy and the Spanish Academy of San Fernando, experienced and educated traveler, author of some important essays on Peninsular ornamental art and on the Portuguese School of Painting, Robinson was determined to enlarge the museum’s collection and to broaden its (and his) knowledge of these areas, about which “there was an entire blank.”1 There were, in fact, very few essays on the matter. This blank, along with greedy art dealers and (not infrequently) ignorant owners, established ideal conditions for the disappearance of this significant heritage. In 1845, an important volume by Richard Ford on Spanish art, Handbook of Spain, had been published. Since then, apart from a paper that saw the light of day in 1862, only the Paris exhibition in 1867 had presented both Spanish and Portuguese ornamental art. Yet, neither had ever been shown in England. In 1872, as a result of several expeditions to Spain, the South Kensington Museum had published a catalogue on its Spanish collection and, maintaining its role as a preserver of cultural heritage,2 had purchased several Spanish artworks. By then, a famous Spanish scholar, Juan Facundo Riaño y Montero, had written a small but important essay on the Spanish ornamental arts. However, no similar study had yet been done on the Portuguese side. This blank and the concomitant collection owned at the time by the museum were the two sides of the coin Robinson was holding. Soon there were also other reasons: the desire to enlarge the number of ornamental items

1 J.C. Robinson (ed.), Catalogue of the Special Loan Exhibition of Spanish and Portuguese Ornamental Art, South Kensington Museum, 1881, exh. cat., London: Chapman & Hall Ltd, 1881, p. 7. 2 Also avoiding a dangerous market of copies and forgeries.

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in the South Kensington Museum collections,3 the aim of increasing public awareness through reproductions of the loan objects, and the quest to gain national prestige as a museum. Quite political in its core and in all aspects of its organization, including its novel committee members, the exhibition would become a marker in the museum’s history.4 In Lisbon, where the birth of a national fine arts museum was still a dream of the elite class, the invitation that was about to come would be gladly accepted. In fact, in 1879, three eminent Portuguese citizens had made a concerted effort to create a museum. Delfim Guedes (1842–1895), a lawyer who was also an amateur painter and an active patron of artists, and who had recently (1878) become viceinspector of the Lisbon Fine Arts Academy, had succeeded in persuading the government to rent a palace for the purpose of establishing the future national museum. In 1880, the same Delfim Guedes, along with the architects and painters António Thomas da Fonseca (1822–1894)5 and Alfredo de Andrade (1839–1915),6 combined their energies and their money to buy works of art for the future museum. Delfim Guedes had also conceived the first plan for recovery of the national artistic heritage, by organizing some expeditions to a few towns and monasteries in Portugal, to get a feel for what really existed and where. Starting in February 1880, Alfredo de Andrade joined the photographer Carlos Relvas7 and the journalist Rangel de Lima8 on three artistic expeditions to the provinces of Coimbra, Bragança and Lisbon, taking notes and photographs. Such were the steps that had been taken. But the national museum was still not in existence, in spite of all the efforts and the expeditions. From here, we will now backtrack to London, and to January 10, 1881.

3 The urgency of acquisitions was clear. As Robinson (who knew the value of the artworks and could advise the museum on their best buys) clearly stated, the museum needed to buy the artworks before the exhibition opening, and their value increased. “Proposal of purchases of objects from Spanish + P. loans exhib. Correspondences.” (In V&A Archive, Lisbon File, MA/35/71, Doc. No 3697/81. Archive photographed and sent to me by archivist James Sutton, May 2010). 4 See Anthony Burton, Vision & Accident. The Story of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London: V&A Publications, 1999, p. 125. 5 He studied in Munich, and in several other schools in France, Italy and England. He was an art teacher and the director of the Lisbon Fine Arts Academy from 1878. 6 Educated traveller and habitual visitor to museums and exhibitions, Alfredo de Andrade was also professor of drawing and applied arts in Italy, where he had organized the Scuola Libera de Ornato. He was recognized internationally as an authority on the applied arts and was also member of several European fine arts academies. See Lucília Verdelho da Costa, Alfredo de Andrade 1839-1915. Da Pintura à Invenção do Património, Lisbon: Vega, 1997. 7 A person of significant wealth, he had an eclectic education and had become interested in photography very early in his life. 8 Francisco Rangel de Lima. Public servant, journalist, and playwright. An art amateur and educated traveller, he visited Spain, France, England, Switzerland, Belgium, and Italy.





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The London Pretext On January 10, 1881, at South Kensington Museum, the committee had its first meeting. An exhibition on Spanish and Portuguese ornamental art, from the beginning of nationality up to the end of the eighteenth century, would take place at the museum in May of 1881. The cooperation of several collectors of different nationalities (mainly aristocrats, diplomats, artists, or researchers)9 and from important museums (such as the National Gallery, the Spanish National Archaeological Museum in Madrid, or the Parisian Musée des Thermes de Cluny) had already been assured. Organized into four commissions (the main British one and the three Spanish, Portuguese and French sub-commissions), this committee was presided over by Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany. The other personalities involved included several British, Spanish, and Portuguese diplomats such as Marquês de Casa Laiglesia and Miguel Martins d’Antas, Lionel Sackville-West, the important archaeologist Sir Austen Henry Layard, the novel collector Francis Cook, Viscount of Montserrat, Portugal, the renowned specialist of Spanish history Baron Davillier, Paris, British collector Alfred Morrison, painter Edward J. Poynter, the Spanish scholar Juan F. Riaño, J.C. Robinson, and the French archeologist and museologist Edmond du Sommerard. In the following, we will focus on the Portuguese commission: a group of men with a very specific task – one that was completely different from that of all the other commissions. They had to collect works that were scattered all over the country and not, as in the case of the other countries involved, works that had previously been organized within collections and museums. The commission included Delfim Guedes, Antonio Thomas da Fonseca, Ignacio de Vilhena Barbosa,10 Teixeira de Aragão,11 José

9 Most of them had very impressive curricula: archaeologists associated with the discovery of Nineveh, museum curators, and important artists. 10 Ignácio de Vilhena Barbosa, writer and historian, author of several studies on art and artistic heritage. Journalist since 1839, he founded the newspaper O Universo Pittoresco, and wrote to several other newspapers. In 1867, he had worked as a reporter in Paris, during the Universal Exhibition. 11 Augusto Carlos Teixeira de Aragão, army physician, professor, numismatist, collector and author of historical and archaeological essays. Responsible for the collection of coins and medals presented in the Portuguese section at the Universal Exhibition in Paris (1867), and author of an essay for its catalogue.



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Luís Monteiro,12 Augusto Filippe Simões.13 Alfredo de Andrade and Sousa Viterbo14 would later join them. The adventure was about to begin. Facing the absence of records, the members of the Portuguese commission had a titanic task on their hands. Having to overcome the mistrust of potential lenders, the scarcity of time and means, having to deal with the absence of an effective railroad network in rural areas and, as they so humorously emphasized in their letters – the scarcity of good meals and lodging. Their responsibility was tremendous: to work fast and exceedingly well while collecting a significant number of treasures that would assure a prestigious image for Portugal. The schedule could not have been tighter. On March 18, 1881, the first mail exchanges took place, from London to Lisbon. On April 5, an official document appointed the commission. On that very same day, its leader, Delfim Guedes, sent a telegram to Italy summoning Alfredo de Andrade. He accepted the challenge.15 On April 6, work began. It was clear from the start that there was great determination on the part of both the commission and the state to work together in order to make the most of the invitation. If, for the state, the motivation was the importance of Portugal in the European (and world) context, for the commission members this was a door opening wide onto the path towards making the dream of a national museum come true. From the very beginning of the work, they held fast to the idea of a future exhibition in Lisbon, through which they would prove to the Portuguese government that the creation of the museum held great potential. Throughout the month of May, the commission members travelled across the country searching for artworks. To assist the enterprise, the government sent official letters to appropriate members of the clergy, managed to get 50% off on railway passes for the commission members, alerted the mail service to help them in all their needs, paid for all expenses as they arose, and instructed the authorities at the border not to open the boxes containing the artworks (as requested by the commission), as to avoid any misplacement or damage and to speed up the process. Anticipating mistrust on the part of the lenders, the organization created a loan form. Nothing was to be collected without a proper receipt. The transportation of

12 José Luís Monteiro, architect and scholar, he studied in Lisbon, Paris, Rome, Venice, and Florence. 13 Augusto Filippe Simões, Major in Philosophy and Mathematics, PhD in Medicine, professor at the University of Coimbra, and archaeologist. Author of several essays on art and science. Responsible for the organization of the library and the museum (Museu do Cenáculo) in Évora, he had also established a museum and an archaeological section at the Institute of the University of Coimbra. 14 Francisco Marques de Sousa Viterbo, Navy physician, researcher, archaeologist, poet and journalist, he wrote for various newspapers. Teacher at the Lisbon Fine Arts Academy. He wrote innumerable essays on cultural issues. 15 The conditions were: no salary; only expenses will be paid. See Academia Real das Bellas Artes [ARBA]. Exposição de Arte Ornamental Portuguesa e Espanhola – Londres 1881. [EAOPE] Box 2, File 2, Doc. 10. Arquivo dos Directores [AD], Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga [MNAA], Lisbon. N. 2.





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any artwork – they assured all the lenders – was to be done with tremendous care, avoiding any kind of damage or any risk of theft. As for the railway, the commission members asked for special wagons to transport the boxes in complete safety. Insurance was also guaranteed. And to be fair to the lenders, the commission had even asked for independent appraisals of the objects. When some lenders, in spite of all these measures, did not want to send their objects abroad, the commission promptly asked them if they would consider the possibility of lending their works for a coming event in Lisbon. Back at the capital, Delfim Guedes was constructing the organization, writing letters, and coordinating everything. In the field, Augusto Filippe Simões covered central Portugal (Coimbra, Viseu, Lamego, Guarda), Teixeira de Aragão travelled through the Alentejo (Évora, Vila Viçosa, Beja, Montemor, Mértola), and Vilhena Barbosa was in the North (O’Porto, Guimarães, Braga). They were being confronted with all kinds of obstacles: the person responsible for the collection might be out ‘for a week,’ or the object might be misplaced; sometimes, the item was, indeed, there, as was the person in charge, but there was no superior order that would allow the commission members to get on with their task; at times, the person in charge did not really understand the importance of the artworks in his care. Teixeira de Aragão would even confess, in a letter to Delfim Guedes, that the whole situation was quite disappointing, that one had to act with malice in the case of certain individuals. Nevertheless, his sense of humor never left him, and (that very same day) he would write to say that he was going to a female monastery, a task he anticipated with pleasure.16 On May 23, Vilhena Barbosa arrived in London, accompanying the first shipment of artworks. At this point, the exhibition had already been postponed to June 10. On June 1, Thomas da Fonseca sent a telegram to London: “Royal Mail Steamship Guadiana being safer and quicker than Steamer Lisbon, are preferred sending loans by the former, which will arrive to Southampton the 4th or the 5th – Please advise Southampton Custom house authorities in order that our Commissioners find no difficulties landing and proceeding directly to London – Fonseca.”[sic]17 Rangel de Lima and Alfredo de Andrade travelled with the artworks. The arrival in London was on June 8, and, on the following day, a member of South Kensington Museum’s Department of Arts and Science, Norman MacLeod, sent Delfim Guedes an official document confirming the safe recipience of the almost 200 items on loan. “Sir, I beg to inform you of the receipt of the Collection of Objects for the Special Loan Exhibition of Spanish and Portuguese Art Nºs 1 to 197 as per your list.”18

16 See ARBA. EAOPE – Londres 1881. Box 2, File 2, Doc. 10. AD, MNAA, Lisbon. N. 17. 17 In ARBA. EAOPE – Londres 1881. Box 2, File 2, Doc. 13. AD, MNAA, Lisbon. Without number. 18 Ibid. doc. n 10.



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Alfredo de Andrade did his best. With everything in place, and the day after a private preview of the exhibition on the 10th, the South Kensington Museum opened the Special Loan Exhibition of Spanish and Portuguese Ornamental Art to the public. In spite of all the obstacles, the excellent collaboration of the Portuguese commission and the government, along with the extreme professionalism (extreme care and strictness in matters of loans, transportation and insurance), resulted in making possible the presentation of a total of 1,586 objects from Portugal at the Special Loan Exhibition. Of these, 873 belonged to the museum collection; 269 were loans from British collectors; 188 were sent from French lenders (both public and private), 84 were from Spain (collections belonging to the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid, the Royal Palace, the Royal Armory, and the National Library in Madrid, and some private collectors), and 162 were those objects collected by the Portuguese commission in a period of only two months.

Building the Path for the National Fine Arts Museum in Lisbon In the meantime, in Lisbon, work was not slowing down. The news about the London success was all over the press, especially in O Commercio do Porto, through Rangel de Lima’s eyes and words. It was this vision which later made Portuguese art historians think that the London ‘success’ spurred on the idea of repeating the exhibition in Lisbon. However, as we have seen, it did not really happen this way. As is clearly stated in all the letters and official documents, the project of a Lisbon exhibition was on the commission members’ minds long before the opening of the London show. In fact, it began to take form only a few days after the beginning of the project, in early April 1881. And, on April 28, 1881, the commission sent an official letter proposing that the government support and provide resources for a subsequent exhibition in Lisbon. It also suggested Alvor Palace as a setting. The government took a few weeks to accept this project. The commission had to wait until the first days of June,19 when an official document finally confirmed the hopes shared by Delfim Guedes and his peers. In the meantime they kept working, firmly believing that this was not an opportunity to be wasted. When, on June 24, the first page of the Lisbon Diário de Notícias announced the government’s decision to sponsor a Lisbon “retrospective exhibition of decorative art” whose commission would be the same as the one in London, Delfim Guedes and his companions already knew that various lenders would gladly loan their artworks for the occasion. From

19 This will be confirmed in Diario de Noticias, Lisbon (June 24, 1881), p. 1.





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then on, using the same modus operandi they had in London, they maintained absolute transparency in their contacts with lenders – still exchanging a receipt for each object. They got in touch with the Spanish authorities to assure that Spain would lend their treasures to the Lisbon event, and they made sure that the South Kensington Museum was open to lending some of its artworks to Lisbon. To assure that the exhibition would, once again, meet (if not more than meet) expectations, the Portuguese commission also oversaw the work of adapting the Alvor Palace20 – a private palace that, as we already saw, the government had rented two years earlier. Once again, the commissioners took the utmost care. They enlarged the doors and windows, constructed skylights for overhead lighting, painted frescoes, improved the main entrance and the garden, built showcases and plinths. They undertook security measures (from metal barriers to prevent people from touching the objects, to fire prevention and police). Both gas and electric lighting were installed to allow evening visiting hours. Summer and autumn went by as remodeling proceeded at the palace. The artworks were collected, inventoried, and a catalogue was created. The high quality resulting from of all these procedures once again reflects the professionalism of these men. Unjustly accused by some national newspapers of being no more than amateurs,21 they not only did a splendid job, but also were able to recognize when they needed help. They were perfectly capable of asking for advice (recognizing the expertise of their foreign colleagues), thus establishing very close cooperation between all the professionals involved. The cooperation with the Spanish commission was especially close in the Lisbon event. Under the sponsorship of the Spanish ambassador D. Juan Valera,22 the Lisbon project was coordinated by the sculptor, painter, and drawing teacher D. Vicente Esquivel, the sculptor D. Luiz Gargollo, and by D. Dário Ulloa, D. Enrique Casanova, D. José Perdiguez, and D. José Ramón Mélida. Enrique Casanova was an eminent Spanish watercolorist, painter, engraver and scientific illustrator living in Portugal, where his pupils included the royal Infantes. He was also the author of the lithographs in the exhibition catalogue. José Ramon Mélida also played a very important role. Still a young man at the time, he was one of the first trained professionals to work in museums. A graduate of the Escuela de

20 For the first time, in Portugal, an exhibition – and later on, a museum – would be installed in a former palace, instead of an old monastery. 21 In fact, a considerable number of its members were scientists; yet, all of them had significant cultural and artistic curricula. 22 Juan Valera y Alcalá Galiano (1824–1905). Diplomat, art critic, and writer, was a very influential person and the main contact at Museo Arqueológico de Madrid, managing for a more complete collection to come to Lisbon. Cf. Daniel Casado Rigalt, José Ramón Mélida (1856–1933) y la Arqueologia Española. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2006, pp. 49–50.



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Diplomática da Arqueología, Numismática y Historia del Arte, where he studied under Juan de Riaño, he was by then a published author. Though already employed at the Archeological Museum in Madrid, he requested to go to Lisbon, anticipating a great opportunity to learn and gain practical experience. He would have an important role through his critical analysis of the exhibition, which was published in the magazine La Ilustración Española y Americana. These compounded efforts created a very comprehensive show. Yet, in spite of the intention to open the exhibition in September (and, then, in December), it would continue to be postponed. This time, both sides were responsible for the delay: on the British side, making copies of some of the most important Portuguese artworks took longer than had been estimated by the British authorities, and on the Portuguese side, the renovation of the palace and the collection of the artworks was still in progress. But simultaneously, publicity work was proceeding. The press had been kept fully informed since the beginning of the commission’s work, and it incited the curiosity of the public, providing as many details as possible on the objects, the construction, and the interaction with foreign museums and authorities. The commission also made use of other advertising tactics, such as printed posters scattered all over Lisbon. All the conditions were set to create a blockbuster. Or so the commission hoped. On December 10, the setup of the display began. A telephone line between the palace and the Fine Arts Academy was installed to speed up communication. Finally, on January 11, 1882, the palace was ready, fully decorated; the press was invited to a preview. A few Portuguese journalists and several foreign ones23 were granted entrance. In general, the reviews were quite positive. The political events and the party mood that took Lisbon by storm would also be of the utmost interest to most domestic and foreign newspapers. In fact, a dazzling succession of military parades, balls, and receptions, tours to Sintra, boating trips on the Tagus, and the unavoidable bullfight would be more than enough to engage the press. The official opening was on the following day, January 12, at three in the afternoon, welcoming the Spanish and Portuguese royal couples and their entourages, along with some other special guests, including the lenders (fig. 24). Later that evening, the palace doors would reopen to again welcome the royal visitors under the brilliance of electric lights, the perfume of hundreds of flowers, and music played by the Banda da Guarda Municipal. In the middle of river Tagus, fireworks were launched for the benefit of the royal visitors watching from the palace. Though overall, the reviews were positive, some were also quite critical – and in some ways they were justifiably right. Most of the critics (including some Portuguese critics) would cite the considerable number of objects on display (more than 4,000

23 Iberia, El Liberal, El Día, Pátria, Integridad, Commercio de Manilha, Estandar, Rincón, Telegramma, Placer-Debate, Ilustração Galega, Fomento, Figaro, Monde Illustré, Illustrated London News, La Épocha, Temps, La Ilustración Española y Americana and Revue des Deux Mondes.





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Fig. 24: First page of Portuguese magazine O Occidente, January 21, 1882



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items), their artistic value, and the surprisingly rich effect of the electrical lighting system — quite a novelty at the time. There were, indeed, too many objects displayed in fifteen quite small rooms. Hence, in the course of the exhibition, the number of rooms grew to nineteen. One of the more critical reviews referred to the nature of the objects: too many of religious origin. That made the day for some domestic Republican newspapers; as one journalist stated, in a country unused to art exhibitions, but very familiar with church liturgy, the presence of all those crosses and the general ‘sacristy scent’ was confusing; some elderly ladies were in an unpleasant state of distress, not knowing whether to simply enjoy the artworks or to kneel down and pray before them. Plus, the catalogue was still not available. No one seemed to remember that in London the catalogue had not come out until long after the event closed and that it had had no illustrations. However, when the catalogue was finally published, the reasons for the delay were made perfectly clear. As stated by Filippe Simões in the Forward, one of the reasons was the number of objects. From the 4,000 items on display in Lisbon, only about 300 had already been inventoried for the London exhibition.24 The organizers had needed to collect, study, and catalogue all the others. Furthermore, they had had to make choices about which ones would be drawn and reproduced in Casanova’s lithographs.25 The catalogue was very informative, stating the different methodologies and aims pursued in London and Lisbon. Whereas in London items had been displayed according to the national origins of the original collections, in Lisbon the display was organized according to type and period. Whereas in London the artworks where exhibited without insurance or special security guards, according to the usual museum policy, in Lisbon everything had been insured and very specific safety measures had been taken (guard services, firefighters, reception). And the commission had given great importance to aesthetic aspects as well, taking extreme care in the presentation26 of the displayed objects, benefiting from the previous experience of committee members like Alfredo de Andrade (and the experience in London) and from the expertise of their foreign colleagues (fig. 25). As for the building, whereas in London, the museum – constructed from scratch – had a new wing just for the purpose of temporary exhibitions, in Lisbon, as we have seen, the organization had had to adapt the old Alvor Palace – originally built to accommodate a family – to its new function. The renovation work had been carried

24 We recall that only 197 had then been sent to London, and only 162 were on display. 25 See Catalogo Illustrado da Exposição Retrospectiva de Arte Ornamental Portuguesa e Hespanhola celebrada em Lisboa em 1882 sob a protecção de Sua Magestade El-Rei o Senhor D. Luiz e a presidencia de Sua Magestade El-Rei o Senhor D. Fernando II, exh. cat., Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, 1882, Advertência. P. XVI. 26 Security was still an issue here, and special showcases were built to accommodate the artworks.





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Fig. 25: Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Exposição Retrospectiva de Arte Ornamental Portugueza e Hespanhola, 1882, the ceramics room

out to configure the space for museum needs and that had meant an extra effort within only a few months. Additionally, in London, success had been defined in terms of the museum’s internal policy, which aimed to expand the collections and to further educate their already initiated, if not specialized, audiences (the main aim for Robinson and his co-workers). The catalogue is organized as a plain inventory list, without any need for illustrations (either in the paperback or in the hardcover edition).27 Accordingly, the British press had given the exhibition its rightful ‘place’ as just another display. As we have established, the situation for Portugal was of an entirely different nature. And so, the commission had the domestic press follow the event at close range, spurring them on to emphasize the relevance of the event, hoping its success could open the way to the future national museum. They were right in doing so. The exhibition was a blockbuster: 31,842 tickets were sold. The total number of visitors is uncertain, but considering that art students, journalists in general (and art critics in particular), employees, and lenders had free admission, the number was surely much higher. And so, as clearly stated by Filippe Simões, there was a catalogue (late, yet published during the exhibition period), to help people ‘read’ the treasures on display,

27 The catalogue of the Special Loan Exhibition of Spanish and Portuguese Ornamental Art was only published after the close of the exhibition.



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with a complete (and very much needed) inventory of all the items, and a quite accurate iconographic record of some selected artworks.28 As a whole, the outcome was very good. Filipe Simões did not claim that the results were perfect, but the commission certainly had reason to be proud of their honestly done job. The enthusiasm of the public clearly confirmed this. The continuous influx of visitors forced an extension of the exhibit to the end of June. On June 20, 1882, after a final visit by the Portuguese king – the band playing one last time – the doors finally closed.

Conclusion Behind these heavy closed doors, the commission members were once again alone. They still had quite a lot of work to do: the return of the objects to their Portuguese or foreign lenders, in the same condition as when they arrived (and sometimes better, due to restoration work) and the balancing of the accounts. Every penny they had spent was in the books: a tram ticket, to speed up work and shorten the distances in hilly Lisbon; a tip one of the members gave to a messenger; the rental of a carriage (‘three hours’); a few pounds of wire; soap; a water glass; telegrams… everything — from restoration, to renovation work, to showcases, window curtains, electric and gas lighting, security, transports — was written down, stating how and when the money was spent. When the books were finally closed, the total money spent was 48.523$571 reis. Taking into account the tickets and catalogues sold, there was a profit: 4.115$393 reis. Based on this money, Delfim Guedes, the future viscount – a reward for his services to the nation — wrote to the minister and state secretary, stating that the nation finally was in a position to create the much desired national museum. Two years later, on May 11, 1884, that museum was finally opened. It was named the Museu Nacional de Bellas Artes e Archeologia (National Museum of Fine Arts and Archeology). In 1911, a year after the Republican Revolution, it was reorganized, and renamed the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (National Museum of Ancient Art). It is still located in the Alvor Palace. One hundred and thirty years after the exhibition and the party mood which Lisbon experienced with its first blockbuster exhibition, we definitely have John Charles Robinson to thank for the impetus. But even more so, our thanks should go to these seven stubborn, talented, and resilient Portuguese gentlemen who decided that there was no time like the present to make their dream of a national museum come true.

28 By the end of the exhibition, another collection of images would be organized: 500 photographic clichés, by Carlos Relvas. Exposição Retrospectiva de Arte Ornamental em Lisboa. 1882: Album de Phototypias a beneficio da Santa Casa da Misericordia da Gollegã, Clichés de Carlos Relvas e Phototypo de J. Leipold, Lisbon: s.n., 1883.



Ayse H. Koksal

Museum as a Transnational Space for National Identities A Case Study on the Turkish Experience The museum has always been a space that is both poetic and political, a space where knowledge is transformed, negotiated, and visualized in terms of regimes of power and knowledge. “Deceived by the illusion that the museum’s authority rests on its objective representation of the world,” the nation states instrumentalize this space of cultural symbolism as a political stage.1 Museum scenography has been effective for international competition, in which modernity and civilization transcends geographical and national boundaries. Long before globalism, the public art museum actually served as a space for glocalism, where national distinctiveness and transnational resemblances were presented simultaneously. Thus, even though the museumification process has been shared by all countries, museum practices have been modeled and adopted by nation states on different levels and for distinct purposes. “This global localization (or glocalization) produced heterogeneity of the museum form and public culture across space.”2 In this context, the experience of the public art museum as a transnational space for national politics in Turkey – as an example from a non-Western country – is worthy of special interest. The Turkish Republic was founded in 1923 in a multifaceted conjuncture in which a nationalistic paradigm overlapped with an urge for modernism. The new Republican state had to solve a dilemma. On the one hand, the Ottoman Empire and its civilization had to be abandoned in favor of the new nationalistic conjuncture. On the other hand, the Ottoman heritage had to be accepted due to the fact that the modernization project, as well the roots of the Turkish Republic, emerged out of this old regime.3 Given the above circumstances, the museum, due to its transnational character, was transferred to Turkey and served as an important element in the complex transition from empire to nation state. The museum was “one of the institutions and prac-

1 Simon Knell, National Museums and the National Imagination, in: Simon Knell et al. (eds.), National Museums. New Studies From Around the World, London: Routledge, 2010, pp. 3–29. 2 Sharon MacDonald, Museums, National, Postnational and Transcultural Identities, in: Museum and Society 1 (2003), p. 3. 3 The modernization process started with the Westernization project of the Ottoman Empire in the Tulip Era (1713–1730) and it reached its highest impact during the Tanzimat Period (1839–1876). Ironically, the Turkish Revolution was conducted by a new-breed of Western-educated Ottoman intellectual bureaucrats who emerged in the Tanzimat era. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the leader of the Turkish Revolution, was a member of this group.

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tices associated with modernity, part of the checklist for being a nation, a means of disparate groups to present and claim their histories and values in the public sphere and simultaneously an arena and means of constituting community identities.”4 Accordingly, I will describe and discuss the conditions of the museum’s transfer to Turkey, which was not an act of imitation but rather a requirement for the transnational dynamics of the time. The following questions will be investigated: what were the transcultural elements and who were the actors that shaped the museums? Were there ideological and/or pragmatic criteria used in selecting transnational practices? Was Turkey’s museumification experience a product of cross-border processes of exchange and transfer? Or are there any aspects of the process which are unique to Turkey? In the following, I will focus on two cases; the foundation of the first museum, the Imperial Museum of the Ottoman Era, and the foundation of the first public art museum, the Istanbul Museum of Painting and Sculpture in the Republican Era.

Proto-Transnational Museums of the Ottoman Empire Modernization, referred to as Westernization during the Tanzimat Era (1839–1876), was a pragmatic solution for the Ottomans, who were faced with the internal threat of national fragmentation as well as the external threat from Europe with its expansive, territorial ambitions.5 The aim was to re-integrate the Ottoman Empire into the new world order as a dominant power. In this context, the modernization project was not a mere transfer of Western ideas, but rather “a complex process of acculturation, in which Western ideas, manners and institutions were selectively adopted, and evolved into different forms set in a different context.”6 The Ottomans, however, did not aim to to construct a national identity. Rather, intent upon international prestige, they ambitiously strove to promote their image as a brand. This new conjuncture intensified the dynamism of the transcultural relationship between the Ottomans and Europe.7 New embassies were founded in Western coun-

4 Corrine Kratz, Ivan Karp, I. Introduction: Museum Frictions. Public Cultures/Global Trans­ formations, in: Ivan Karp et al. (eds.), Museum Frictions. Public Cultures/Global Transformations, London: Duke University Press, 2006, p. 3. 5 Tanzimat reforms aimed at a new constitution restricting the powers of the Sultan, and marked the Empire’s attempt to modernize the army, the state, and finally, the Ottoman culture. 6 Şükrü Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Ottoman Empire, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2009, p. 4. 7 Since the reign of Mehmed II (1432–1481), the Ottoman court had always been welcoming towards foreign officials, delegates, and especially artists. However, the Tanzimat Era marked a transition to a period of dynamic transcultural relationships that actually affected many spheres of Ottoman society, from education to lifestyle. İlber Ortaylı, Osmanlı’yı Yeniden Keşfetmek, Istanbul: Timaş Yayınları, 2008.





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tries, attachés were appointed as cultural and economic delegates to Europe, and new European-educated intellectual bureaucrats emerged as a result of the modernization not only of the state, but especially the army. Meanwhile, as a public relations strategy for the promotion of the Empire, the Ottoman palace welcomed elite visitors: experts from various fields, foreign delegates, travellers, intellectuals, and especially artists. In this transcultural atmosphere, the Ottoman officers discovered a new and effective space for this purpose – the museum. The first attempt to create a museum took place in 1847 in the basilica of Hagia Irene, which was used as the Imperial Armory. Ahmet Fethi Paşa, who served as the minister of war as well as the first curator of the Imperial Armory, was a perfect example of the new type of Ottoman statesman. Prior to his military position, he visited several European cities and discovered the importance of the museum for Europeans. Upon his return to Constantinople, he managed to persuade Sultan Abdülmecid to create an exhibition of his collection of ancient spoils of war, consisting of antique weapons and Greco-Hellenistic antiquities. The display was organized into two parts: the Magazine of Antique Weapons (Mecmua-i Asliha-i Atika) and Magazine of Antiquities (Mecmua-i Asar-i Atika).8 The Imperial Armory had all the transnational aspects of the proto-museum. It was open only to Sultan Abdülmecid, who had a chamber designed in the style of Louis XIV in the Hagia Irene, and to select guests, such as important foreign intellectuals, diplomats, and officers, all of whom were in possession of a ferman (official permission of the Sultan).9 Therefore, the Hagia Irene, with its aim to impress visiting gentlemen, was essentially an Ottoman Wunderkammer (cabinet of curiosity) – a space for diplomacy and the spectacle of power.10 A well-known French intellectual, Théophile Gautier, among the privileged visitors to the Hagia Irene in 1852, described this atmosphere in detail. He began with the small but impressive collection of antiquities: “In the former church of Hagia Irene, there are assembled diverse antique objects: torsos, heads, bas reliefs, inscriptions and tombs [...]. In the courtyard the sarcophagi without covers are full of rain water and birds drink from them while singing cheerfully.” However, his emphasis was on the Magazine of Antique Weapons: “[…] the wide walls lined in mosaics, with ancient and modern armor of every form. Breastplates, helmets, suits of chain armor, battle-axes, maces, scimitars, pikes blend in strangely with thousands of rifles from America.”11 Mannequins in varied clothing

8 Aziz Ogan, Türk Müzeciliği’nin Yüzüncü Yıldönümü, Istanbul: Türkiye Turing ve Otomobil Kurumu, 1947. 9 Wendy Meryem Kural Shaw, Possessors and Possessed. Museums, Archeology and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. 10 Paula Findlen, The Museum. Its Classical Etymology and Renaissance Genealogy, in: Bettina Messias Carbonel (ed.), Museum Studies. An Anthology of Contexts, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2004, pp. 23–51. 11 Theophile Gautier, Nurullah Berk (tr.), İstanbul, Istanbul: İstanbul Kitaplığı, 1980, p. 262.



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accompanied the disorderly display of kettledrums and cooking pots of the Janissaries, reminiscent of the recent opening, in 1836, of Madame Tussaud’s wax museum.12 As Gautier denoted “Quantities of old halberds, coats of arms, antique cannons and shaped culverins recall Turkish strategy before the Reforms of Mahmoud,” who abolished the Janissary corps as part of his modernization of the army.13 Another traveller, Demetrius Coufopoulos, also noted the ancient tokens, helmets, and keys of the conquered cities, scattered around the artillery.14 But the highlight of the exhibit was the sword of Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople. The piece was displayed like an art masterpiece in a museum of the West, separately in the apse, with special lighting.15 Interestingly, the emphasis on a moment from distant history was at the core of the exhibit, disturbing any attempt at chronological display. It is obvious that Ahmet Fethi Paşa was well aware of the European methods of display. Not surprisingly, both Gautier and Coufopoulos, who came for an exotic experience, expressed their disappointment about the European display practices. It can be assumed that the juxtaposition of ancient and modern times within an arrangement of different categories of objects, antiquities, and ancient weapons all in the same space was a deliberate choice. The Janissaries were the past and the modern artillery was the future. The antiquities, which were given as much respect as the keys to the cities, were not the cultural heritage but the spoils of war, symbols of Ottoman military power. Rather than creating a chronological display, the narrative was based on the synchronic presentation of the glorious memory of the classical Ottoman military and recent military modernizations. Hagia Irene was the Wunderkammer of Sultan Abdülmecid; it was designed for his satisfaction, for his enjoyment of the most glorious moments in Ottoman history, and also to satisfy his desire to follow ritualistic European diplomatic conventions. Thus, Ahmet Fethi Paşa had to adopt the transnational technologies of display and then to distort them for his purpose of creating a narrative that would astound and impress.16

12 By 1852 the 140 mannequins of Janissary corps had been moved to a new site that was called the Magazine of Ancient Costumary (Elbise-i Atika). This new gallery had attracted the considerable attention of foreign visitors. However, the comments were not very positive, e.g. Edmondo de Amicis, who visited Istanbul in 1877, criticized the museum as follows: “It is like a museum of ghosts or an open tomb containing the mummified bodies of the most famous personages of Turkey as it once was.” Edmondo De Amicis, A Guide to Constantinople, London: Hesperus Press Limited, 2005, p. 26. 13 Gautier 1980 (as fn. 11), p. 262. 14 Demetrius Coufopoulus, A Guide to Constantinople, London: Adam and Charles Black Publishing, 1902, p. 69. 15 Sultan Mehmed’s sword was displayed in the middle of the armors of Tamerlane, the Mongolian invader of Anatolia under Beyazid II’s rule and İskender Bey, a powerful leader of the Ottoman Empire. The objects from these three important leaders strengthened the narrative of the museum. 16 The Hagia Irene housed the collection of the Imperial Armory till 1877. It was later moved to Yıldız Palace, and after the Turkish Republic it created the core of the Military Museum with a new ideology and narrative.





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After the 1867 visit of Sultan Abdülaziz to Europe, where he personally experienced the museums and galleries, he realized the project of founding a monumental museum for the Empire.17 The Imperial Museum (Müze-i Hümayun) was opened in 1869 at a new venue, the Tiled Pavilion (Çinili Köşk), in the Topkapı Palace. The Tiled Pavilion, a summer mansion built in 1472 for Mehmed II, was similar to the Hagia Irene in its reference to the conquest of Istanbul and the glorious times of Ottoman Empire. But a practical advantage was that it was the only building with a portico facade of columns with neo-classical characteristics – the transnational building style for European museums at the time. Accordingly, a European architect, Montrano, was hired for the renovation. Its Asian stylistic features were removed, and the Oriental tiled niches were covered. The mansion was converted into a neo-classical museum building. The transformation of the museum was not limited to the building, but applied to the collection as well. On his visit to Europe, Abdülaziz came to realize that, for museums, the core signifiers of European civilization and its progress were GrecoRoman artifacts. The Ottoman soils abounded in these antiquities so highly valued by the Europeans. Through the new milieu of transcultural interaction, the Ottomans comprehended that archaeology was the fitting transnational cultural capital in their ideological quest to re-claim their superiority over Europe. Thus, the Gallery of Antiquities collection, not the antique weapons, was transferred to the Tiled Pavilion as the foundation for the Imperial Museum. Interestingly, even though the antiquities collection consisted of several cultures affiliated with Ottoman history, such as Assyrian, Egyptian, Hittite, Kufic, Cypriot, and Babylonian.18 The Imperial Museum’s emphasis was always on the more distant heritage, the Greco-Roman sculpture and Byzantine relics. Transcultural interaction opened up opportunities for knowledge transfer. The first museum directors selected were European academics: Edward Goold in 1869, an English museologist, and subsequently Anton Philip Dethier in 1871, a German archeologist.19 The contributions of Goold and Dethier were the establishment of a wellorganized museum staff, a detailed inventory, and a system for publishing museum catalogues. Additionally, a museum commission was given the responsibility for the collection and conservation of the holdings, so as “to transform the museum into a space of spectacle that attracts people, and to categorize and organize existing works.”20 In fact, the commission indicated a change of ideology in respect to the function of the museum and its target audience. Rather than create a diplomatic cabinet of

17 Remzi Oğuz Arık, Türk Müzeciliğine Bir Bakış, Ankara: Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı Yayınları, 1953. 18 Edwin Grosvenor, Constantinople, Boston: Little Brown Press, 1900. 19 Abdülhak Şinasi, Müzelerimiz ve Hamdi Bey, in: Ülkü 14 (1934), pp. 187–91. 20 Mustafa Cezar, Sanatta Batı’ya Açılış ve Osman Hamdi, Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Yayınları, 1971, p. 258.



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curiosity for the Sultan’s private use, Goold and Dethier aimed to open the museum to a larger audience. The first attempt toward such a goal was in 1873, when they proposed building an archeology school and attaching the museum to the Ministry of Education. In accordance with contemporary transnational museum practices, Goold and Dethier intended to shift the museum from private to public by endowing it with pedagogical functions.21 Even though the Imperial Museum had not become public, the museum reorganized to attract a larger European audience as well as Ottoman subjects. The Imperial Museum gradually opened up to foreign visitors, later to students of the Academy of Fine Arts founded in 1882, and it expanded its target audience beyond the limited elite of Ottoman bureaucrats. The development was similar to the European transition from the Wunderkammer to the inchoate museum of the eighteenth century. As enlightened absolutism gradually lifted the restrictions placed on princely collections, museums were made more accessible to broader sections of the population and the displays were re-organized accordingly.22 In the existing situation, an Ottoman officer familiar with Ottoman politics and acquainted with Europe was more preferable than European experts.23 Osman Hamdi Bey was perfect for the position and was actually hardly less European than Goold and Dethier. He had grown up in one of the most Western-oriented families in the country and had been educated in Paris. Following the family tradition of the Ottoman bureaucracy, Osman Hamdi Bey was appointed to several positions, and was active as publisher, painter, lawyer, archeologist, and museum director. Under the directorship of Osman Hamdi Bey (1881–1909), the Imperial Museum flourished in many ways, especially in terms of collecting.24 With increasing acquisitions, the Imperial Museum required a new and monumental building. Once more, a French architect, Alexandre Vallaury, was hired.25 Vallaury’s building, the current Archaeological Museum of Istanbul, had a symbolic columned portico in the neo-classical style, following the many examples of Greektemple museum buildings in Europe and the US. The plan of the building was remi-

21 These projects actually indicated a new relationship between the state and the populace. In 1876, the palace recognized the rights of the individual and established a constitutional government. 22 Nick Prior, Museums and Modernity. Art Galleries and the Making of Modern Culture, Oxford: Berg Publishing, 2002. 23 Some resources suggest that Sultan Abdülhamid II was not pleased with the work of the foreign directors, and thus preferred to continue with Turkish officials. It is worth considering that this decision may also have been related to the Ottoman claims of hegemony over antiquities. Şinasi 1934 (as fn. 19), Arık 1953 (as fn. 17). 24 The new excavations conducted by Osman Hamdi expanded the collection immensely. Especially in the excavations near Sidon, Osman Hamdi discovered an important collection of 26 sarcophogi. The sarcophagi provided the first large-scale and complete collection from a single excavation site. 25 Alexander Vallaury was a well-known and popular architect in the Ottoman Empire. He had been teaching architecture at the School of Fine Arts and he also had designed the Yıldız Palace. Arık 1853 (as fn. 17).





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niscent of Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Altes Museum, which housed its collection in four wings around a central domed rotunda. Even though a domed rotunda was missing, the Imperial Museum did have its columned portico, which had a welcoming and liminal function for visitors, with a typical monumental stairway leading to the galleries. At the foot of the staircase, two stone lions were placed, following the European museum practice of marking the grand entrance.26 New necessary additions for a transnational museum were also made to the building: a library, a photography studio, and a studio for the production of plaster casts. The sculptures displayed outside of the building were reminiscent of displays in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, the Luxembourg Palace, or the Uffizi.27 Consequently, the new building, with its clarity of plan, with clearly defined functions, its adaptation to the site, and its balance of function and symbolism, became a transnational space. The newspapers celebrated the new building as symbolic of the Ottoman Empire’s progress and praised the Imperial Museum as the “pantheon of Europe’s great antiquities museums.”28 As a matter of fact, Osman Hamdi Bey’s dream was to build a Museum Island with several museums: one for antiquities, one for natural history and one for art. However, the Ottoman Parliament never came up with an opportunity for such a universal plan. “The collection is classified into seven main departments: Assyrian, Hittite and Egyptian, Cypriot, Byzantine and Medieval, bronze and jewels, inscriptions; and the spacious room for Greco-Roman Sculpture.”29 From the description of Edward Grosvenor, former attorney general of the United States, who paid a visit to the museum in 1890, it seems that antiquities from other cultures were distributed around the Helleno-Byzantine objects. Similar to the nineteenth century Louvre, where objects from the classical and Renaissance period occupied the most central spaces, Helleno-Byzantine heritage was at the center of the Imperial Museum. In the museum catalogue of 1893, it is assumed that the display was organized chronologically as “an uninterrupted series dating from the primitive Roman to Byzantine period of art.” However, descriptions of the museum indicate that the objects were arranged geographically rather than chronologically, without an evolutionary approach and without taxonomy.30 Rich and multifaceted collections of objects excavated from different locations served to legitimize the Ottoman claim to territories lost in military defeat. By displaying a variety of Helleno-Byzantine antiquities – from the very cultures that provided

26 The two lions also had a symbolic meaning. They had been moved from Halicarnassus to the museum, though C.T. Newton, an archeologist, had intended to take the artifacts to his country. Thus, Newton’s loss of the lions was presented at the entrance of the museum as a symbol of the new Ottoman legislation on archaeology and of their victory in this issue. Shaw 2003 (as fn. 9). 27 William Holden Hutton, The Story of Constantinople, London: J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd Press, 1914. 28 Shaw 2003 (as fn. 9), p. 159. 29 Grosvenor 1900 (as fn. 18), p. 778. 30 Coufopoulus 1902 (as fn. 14).



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European nations with their traditional heritage – the Imperial Museum not only claimed hegemony, but also appropriated these antiquities as part of its own national heritage. Following the same logic, the Imperial Museum never displayed the Sultan’s Western-style art collection and the collection of Elvah-ı Nakşiye (Tableaux of Paintings) consisting of original and copied works of Western artists as well as works of contemporary Ottoman painters.31 Western-style Turkish art, which was too embedded in the aesthetic values and the canon of the West, was not sufficiently useful in terms of promoting the nation. The opening of the Islamic Art department in 1899 was only a minor deviation from this narrative based on transnational heritage. The Qurans, mihrabs (prayer niche), calligraphic samples, and carpets were displayed in modern glass cases alongside Helleno-Byzantine antiquities.32 Abdülhamid II’s Pan-Islamist ideology determined the decision and this was probably the only attempt of the Imperial Museum to utilize its displays and collections to emphasize a distinctive Ottoman identity.33 Displaying Islamic art objects alongside the antiquities, the museum narrative implied that the prerequisite of Europe’s Enlightenment had been the Arabo-Islamic Renaissance. But, even for the purposes of nationalism and the formation of a distinctive identity, the Imperial Museum still had to adopt the transnational categorizations of the European museum. Similar to the religious relics in European museums, the objects that were actually of symbolic value in their religious context became secularized in the transnational museum categorization and display. Ironically, the project to promote Islamic identity as a strategy of resistance to the West resulted in Islamic art losing its most valuable aspect, its sacredness. The Imperial Museum changed into the Istanbul Archaeology Museum after the Turkish Revolution and continued to have symbolic importance. However, the emergence of the nation state was a complex process and required a newly imagined history and cultural heritage.

31 The brother of Osman Hamdi Bey, Halil Edhem, who subsequently became the director of the Imperial Museum upon his brother’s death in 1909, managed to secure a small budget from the government to build up an art collection which included copies of original paintings from museums in Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, some original works of Western artists, and the works of modern Turkish artists. Halil Edhem, Elvah-ı Nakşiye Koleksiyonu, Istanbul: Milliyet Yayınları, 1970 (2nd edition). 32 Shaw 2003 (as fn. 9). 33 With Pan-Islamism, Abdülhamid II tried to maintain his rule over Muslim minorities in Europe and also Arab countries through his role as caliph.





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Transnational Museum in the Republican Period The Turkish Republic, founded in 1923, was more decisively engaged in the Westernization project than the Ottomans were. In Ottoman ideology, the modernization project was necessary for resistance, but the Republicans instituted comprehensive reforms in their effort to be admitted as full-fledged members of Western society. For this purpose, the transcultural relationship between Europe and Turkey, established in the Ottoman Empire, was now more aggressively promoted than in any other period in Turkish history. This new impulse had a major influence on art and its institutions. Within this framework, Turkish Western-style art was instrumentalized as the new transnational cultural sphere. First of all, even though Western-style art collections emerged in the context of Ottoman modernization, they were never to be seen in the Imperial Museum, and so were never identified with the Ottoman Empire. Secondly, re-labeled as modern art, they had all the necessary connotations for a new (trans) national identity: Western, secular, progressive, and revolutionary, none of them represented the structure of Turkish society.34 As a political strategy, the state started to support and strictly control modern art.35 The hegemony of the state in the first decades of the Republic had a profound impact on the visibility of art styles, art institutions, and artists – in brief, on Turkish art history. The new state of affairs naturally required a public art museum. This time the Louvre unquestionably became the model. The Louvre model was perfect for creating a trans-political/cultural/national space where the transnational narrative of a new Turkish Republic would be glocally built. Unlike the Imperial Museum, the new museum had to adopt Western museum practices wholesale. The Painting and Sculpture Museum of Istanbul was founded in 1937 by the direct order of Atatürk. Adopting the nineteenth century system of the Académie des Beaux Arts and the Louvre, the museum was attached to the Academy of Fine Arts, founded in 1882. Accordingly, the first director of the museum was a member of the Fine Arts Academy, Halil Dikmen. Similar to Osman Hamdi, Dikmen was a Western-educated

34 In the Turkish case, modern art does not necessarily follow the periodization or categorization of the Western canon. For Turkey, the notion of modern art refers to Western-style art, mainly painting, and is always defined as “what was new and Western” with little or no connotations of “what was newest to Western art”. Ali Akay, Threads of Progress Adhering to Modern Art in Turkey, in: Third Text 22 (2008), pp. 99–104. 35 The one-party system and lack of any commercial bourgeois class secured the state as the only patron of art. Turkey lacked a commercial bourgeois class until the 1950s. In the Ottoman Empire, the minorities were occupied with commerce, while the Muslim majority had the chance to enter into the bureaucracy, which was more prestigious. During the War of Independence (1919–1922), a significant percentage of the minority bourgeois class was forced to leave Turkey, resulting in a loss of one generation of an Ottoman bourgeois class. Only after the transition to a multi-party system and to liberal politics in 1950, did the Turkish bourgeois class start to flourish.



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bureaucrat who could take on several responsibilities as an artist, curator, museum director, educator, and revolutionary bureaucrat. Halil Dikmen immediately established a committee for the collection. The committee was composed of members of the Fine Arts Academy, including the well-known French painter Leopold Levy, who was the head of the Painting Department at the time. In accordance with transnational practice for the birth of a public art museum, the collection was constituted from the holdings of the Ottoman Palace and the Elvah-ı Nakşiye collection of the Imperial Museum, briefly mentioned above.36 Initially, the committee was in favor of excluding the early generation of Western-style artists such as Osman Hamdi Bey, Şeker Ahmet Paşa, and Hoca Ali Rıza, who were not fully accomplished in being European. However, Leopold Levy, knowing the Louvre’s display policies, indicated the necessity of creating a narrative of progress from nineteenth century Ottoman painting to Turkish modern art and he managed to expand the collection to nineteenth century painters.37 The venue of the museum, Veliahd Dairesi (apartments for the Ottoman Heir Apparent) in Dolmabahçe Palace, had similar symbolic connotations as the Louvre, which turned the palace into a public space. Following the transnational museum code, Veliahd Dairesi was reorganized according to a new program. Rooms, the kitchen, hamams where the Sultan’s heirs had lived were divided into small galleries and redecorated for modern art; symbols and traces of the sultans were removed. As an exception, only the landscape paintings on the walls and the replicas of neoclassical columns were conserved due to their modern references. Like the Louvre, Veliahd Dairesi “[…] became a lucid symbol of the fall of the Old Regime and the rise of a new order.”38 But in the Turkish case, re-staging of art in the palace ran somewhat deeper. Visitors wandering around the displays of nude paintings and sculptures, on the grounds of the former Ottoman State, not only felt the victory of the new Republic, but also an urge to prefer secularism to Islamic rules. At this point, it is worth calling to mind that, in the 1930s, a discussion was going on in Europe about the BeauxArts temple architecture for museums and how its monumentality reduced the appreciation of the art itself. A new non-architectural museum paradigm was established along modernist lines.39 The Turkish state was also in favor of a modernist approach and the capital, Ankara, was re-built completely according to modern architectural practices. However, the new museum had to adopt the transnational symbolism of the nation state with its equal citizenship, shared enjoyment of liberated treasures,

36 Document from the Ministry of Culture on the foundation of the Istanbul Museum of Painting and Sculpture, no: 4-2837, Archive of the Istanbul Museum Painting and Sculpture, 1937. 37 Anonymous, Leopold Levy ile Mülakat, in: Ar Sanat Dergisi 3 (1937), pp. 2–3. 38 Carol Duncan, Civilizing Rituals. Inside Public Art Museums, London: Routledge, 1995, p. 22. 39 Andrew McClellan, The Art Museum from Boullée to Bilbao, California: University of California Press, 2008.





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and adherence to Western civilization. In other words, rather than a fashionable, modern, white-cube-like Museum of Modern Art, the Turkish state – at that time – needed its transnational Louvre. But the adoption of transnational display technologies also created problems in terms of Turkish art history. The categorization of art followed the rationalism of the European canonical system. Displays were chronological and showed the progression of a period of lesser competence towards ultimate perfection. Galleries 1–7 covered the period of artists born from 1800 to 1860, labeled as Primitives, based on their being the first group to have received a Western education in Paris. Galleries 7–10 exhibited the works of the period from 1860 to 1923. These galleries were devoted to works of the Academy of Art graduates during the Ottoman period, those who constituted the second wave of contact with the West via a Paris education. Galleries 12–17 contained the most progressive art works, produced from 1923 onwards. These perfect productions of the modern period originated after the foundation of the Turkish Republic. The paintings of Western artists, both copies and originals, were displayed in a separate gallery, as if they were the masterpieces. The sculptures were installed around the museum galleries and in the garden.40 Noticeably, the museum presented an uninterrupted sequence from the Ottoman to the Republican period, following the transnational methods of arrangement that had grown out of Enlightenment historicism and modernity, trends which Turkey had not experienced. In European models, exhibitions follow a sequence from the origins in Egypt and Greece, the revival of these origins in the Renaissance, to modern civilization in France (or Italy, Germany, England, etc). Combining Enlightenment historicism with natural history’s classification modes, the transnational public art museum creates a legitimate narrative to support a nation’s claim to supremacy over all other civilizations. In the Turkish case though, the narrative kept its focus at the national level, telling an Enlightenment story of the Turkish people. The idea was never to create a national canon and an art history with its own unique artistic criteria. The Museum was a transnational space for the purpose of creating the transnational identity of a new Turkey. Therefore, Turkish paintings were displayed, using the categorization and art historical periodization of a Western museum. Accordingly, early painters such as Osman Hamdi and Şeker Ahmet Paşa, today regarded as masters in Turkish art history with their unique techniques and themes, were labeled as primitives. On the other hand, painters of the Republican period, now criticized for their deeply Western tendencies, were considered to be modern. This approach can be regarded as transnational practice for many non-Western countries seeking approval from the master, in this case the West. Transnational criteria are not based on technique or style but on

40 Nurullah Berk, Resim ve Heykel Müzesi I, in: Ar Sanat Dergisi 4 (1938), pp. 10–12. Refik Epikman, Türkiye’de Plastik Sanatlar, in: Ar Sanat Dergisi 2 (1938), pp. 22–23.



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the resemblance with and connection to the West. Following this, the idea of serving the public was also a transnational act rather than a fact. The visitors were drawn from room to room to sense, not to read, their history as a progressive nation, as there was no attempt to include informative labels, catalogues, or educational programs. Not the didactic but the transnational, ritual character of the museum experience was transferred and was instrumentalized to transform traditional, Ottoman subjects into modern, secular citizens.

Conclusion Every nation seems to have created its own national identity, with its specific museum experiences and with different narratives in different museums. In doing so, every nation has adopted some similar practices in order to take part in the international competition. The modern museum was both an act of difference and resemblance, both an act of nationalism and transnationalism. Modernity has been shared as a communal transnational identity. In Turkish experience, the Imperial Museum was actually built as an act of resistance to Western powers, not to inspire admiration and not even for nationalistic purposes. Later, the Imperial Museum was constructed for the promotion of an Ottoman image that is still powerful, dominant and modernized/civilized/Westernized enough to conquer the new world order. However, even for such an ambitious and competitive project, the Ottoman Empire had to create a transnational space, with its neoclassical building and its emphasis on the Helleno-Byzantine collection, in order to communicate with the West. The divergences in the display technologies were intentional and ideological, not the result of a lack of transcultural knowledge. Thus, the Imperial Museum instrumentalized the transnationality of the museum institution, with similarities and differences, to emphasize the Ottoman government’s multifaceted ideology. In the Republican period, the Museum of Painting and Sculpture of Istanbul was a truly national project – like the Louvre Museum. Founded in 1937, it borrowed the transnational museum practices of the nineteenth century in order to proceed in a similar fashion towards nationalism and modernity. The transnational museum practices, ranging from the space to technologies of display, created a transnational narrative which was not authentic Turkish art history or authentically its own. In its attempt to be a “glocal” museum, it actually wiped out many authentic features of Turkish art history, even long before globalization. At that time the transfer of a Western-style institution to Turkey was condemned as an act of mimicry, imitation, and counterfeit, where as today, in contrast, under the conditions of globalization, Istanbul Modern (2004) has been praised for its resemblance to Tate Modern and is touted as a success story in selling Istanbul to the global economy.



Bärbel Küster

French Art for All! Museum Projects in Africa 1912–1931 between Avant-garde and Colonialism

Museums in Africa In current post-colonial studies, transnationalization is understood to be the process of transcending the nation state and is regarded to be the pathway towards a future globalization of cultures.1 In this sense, colonization is not a process of transnationalization. But transnational processes did nevertheless play a significant role at colonization’s very core: the colony of Algeria, for example – paradoxically, in light of its painful history – had an important constitutive role in the development of the modern French jus soli-based concept of nationality.2 From the African perspective, neither the idea of nation nor the concept of national boundaries in the European sense was known to that continent, which was not divided into “nations” until the Berlin Conference of 1885, when the colonizers undertook the division. The significance of “imagined communities” across national borders becomes clear when one considers Africa’s migratory ethnic groups, its multitude of languages and cultures, and last but not least its history of slavery. Museums have played and continue to play an important role in the above processes as an integral part of European material politics. A museum’s unequivocally defined mission to preserve the collective memory3 turns into a complex issue in “transnational” history: the validity of the European museum’s role as a “patrimoine” of cultural memory and its task of preserving symbolically freighted objects for visual reception are called into question when transposed into events of colonial history. In the light of current demands for restitution by today’s African states, which objects are shown where is a politically touchy issue, whether here or there. From the conqueror’s European perspective, the argument of preservation has been and still is one of the main arguments in justifying the massive appropriation of objects under colo-

1 See for example Walter Goebel, Saskia Schabio (eds.), Locating Transnational Idea(l)s, New York and London: Routledge, 2010, or The Global Contemporary. Kunstwelten nach 1989, exh. cat. ZKM/ Museum für Neue Kunst, Karlsruhe, 2011. 2 Patrick Weil, How to Be French. Nationality in the Making since 1789, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008. 3 See Aleida Assmann, Speichern oder Erinnern? Das kulturelle Gedächtnis zwischen Archiv und Kanon, in: Moritz Csáky, Peter Stachel (eds.), Speicher des Gedächtnisses. Bibliotheken, Museen, Archive, Part 2: Die Erfindung des Ursprungs/Die Systematisierung der Zeit, Vienna: Passagen Verlag, 2001, pp. 15–30.

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nialism. From the African perspective it meant a “viol de l’imaginaire” – a cause of both the historical war and suppression and today’s lack of financial capacities.4 In 1931, when the future protagonists of the black solidarity movement Négritude – Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor and Léon Gontram – met for the first time in Paris, France was going through an economic depression that made the colonies a pretentious political field of national pride.5 The 100-year jubilee of the Algerian colony was in 1930, celebrated for one last time with pomp and glory. The following year, 1931, the Colonial Exhibition took place in Paris, transforming the whole Bois de Vincennes into a colonial spectacle and endowing the city with the now still existing – at least as a building – Musée Colonial (Musée de l’Afrique et d’Océanie). Both events testify to the close connection between the founding of museums in the colonies and cultural politics in Paris. Many museums in Africa belong to colonial history – but the memory of artefacts certainly not. Eight years after the French had annexed Algeria, in 1838, the Musée d’Alger was founded to house the numerous artifacts of antiquity in the territory. The many natural history museums6 founded in Africa in the mid-nineteenth century (for example in 1855 on La Réunion) mirror the geological, zoological, archaeological, and paleontological interests of both scholars and entrepreneurs in the colonies. The creation of African zoos followed a similar logic as well: zoos were essentially storage repositories for animals, kept on hand for exotic shows in Europe.7 The collection of the Paris Musée d’Histoire Naturelle and the then ethnological museum profited by over 3,000 objects from the “Mission Dakar-Djibouti” (1930–31), an expedition accompanied by Michel Leiris and Marcel Griaule. In 1936, the French set up the Institut Français d’Afrique Noire, which was renamed the Institut Fondamental de l’Afrique Noire after independence. In French West Africa (A.O.F.), between the Atlantic coast of West Africa and the area of today’s Sudan and the Congo in Central Africa, numer-

4 Enjeux (Bulletin d’Analyses Géopolitiques pour l’Afrique Centrale): Le patrimoine culturel en Afrique Centrale 15 (2003); Nathalie Heinich, La Fabrique du patrimoine. ‘De la cathédrale à la petite cuillère’, Paris: Maison des sciences de l’homme, 2009 as well as Aminata D. Traoré, Le viol de l’imaginaire, Paris: Librairie Fayard/Éditions Actes Sud, 2002. 5 Herman Lebovics, The Seductions of the Picturesque and the Irresistible Magic of Art, in: id., True France. The Wars Over Cultural Identity 1900–1945, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992, pp. 51-97; Giles Manceron, Marianne et les Colonies. Une introduction à l’histoire coloniale de la France, Paris: La Découverte, Ligue des droits de l’homme, 2003. 6 For example, in Mozambique, Uganda, Angola, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia and Zimbabwe. See Anne Gaugue, Les états Africains et leurs musées. La mise en scène de la Nation, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997; Claude Daniel Ardouin, Emmanuel Arinze (eds.), Museums and History in West Africa, Washington and Oxford: Smithsonian Institution, 2000 as well as Claude Daniel Ardouin, Emmanuel Arinze (eds.), Museums and the Community in West Africa, Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995. 7 See Julien Bondaz, L’exposition postcoloniale. Formes et usages des musées et des zoos en Afrique de l’Ouest (Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso), thesis, Université de Lyon II, 2009.





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ous further IFAN institutes were established in the 60s.8 The IFANs, with their ethnological focus, had a lasting influence on the museographical field in these places, where they sometimes combined their work with cultivating crafts and artistic traditions.9 But already before the European invasion, important family collections of objects existed, for example at the royal courts. Under colonization, the deposition of the kings and the musealization of their treasures went hand in hand.10 Between 1920 and 1960, European art teachers, and in Senegal President Léopold Senghor as well, initiated the founding of private and state art schools. These were of great importance for communicating the European concept of “art” in Africa.11 Creative centers in African academies and studios not only adopted the traditional European arts, but also the newer artistic techniques used by photographers, painters and other artists of the era starting in 1900.12 Whether such art would now still be considered a genuine “Euro-centric construction” or rather the fait accompli of an over 100-year history of decentralized, poly-perspectived global modernity, the fact remains that the contact sphere of art always has political significance.13 At the same

8 Abou Sylla, Les musées en Afrique. Entre pillage et irresponsabilité, in: Africultures: Réinventer les musées 70 (2007), pp. 90–101. 9 See for example the Museum of the Ivory Coast in Abidjan at http://www.museevirtuelvirtualmuseum.ca/edu/ViewLoitLo.do;jsessionid= AEF7DC01DEBD2238909BEB0CDC9059E3? method=preview&lang=EN&id=11363. 10 In Abomey (Benin) the last king of the dynasty was removed from power. His royal palace with its five courts and an area of about 44 hectars was taken over for the museum in 1931. His collection’s up to 200-year-old objects, which were closely tied to oral tradition, were made into exhibition objects. In 1944, it was put under the control of the new IFAN in Benin. See Léonhard Ahonon, Benin. The Living Consecration of the History of the Kingdom of Abomey, in: Claude Daniel Ardouin, Emmanuel Nnakenyi Arinze (eds.), Museums & History in West Africa, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000, pp. 164–68; Franck Houndégla, Une expérience de maîtrise d’œuvre. Le réaménagement de l’exposition permanente du Musée Historique d’Abomey, in: Africultures 2007 (see fn. 8), pp. 71–74. 11 For the subject of art schools, see Elizabeth Harney, In Senghor’s Shadow. Art, Politics, and the Avant-Garde in Senegal 1960–1995, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004; Simon Ottenberg (ed.), The Nsukka Artists and Nigerian Contemporary Art, exh. cat., Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington D.C. , Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2002; Chidum Onuchukwu, Art Education in Nigeria, in: Art Education 47 (1994), pp. 54–60. See also Bärbel Küster, Visuelle Kontaktzonen in der bildenden Kunst. Europa-Afrika, in: Marie-Hélène Gutberlet, Sissy Helff (eds.), Die Kunst der Migration. Aktuelle Positionen zum europäisch-afrikanischen Diskurs, Bielefeld: transcript, 2011, pp. 199–211. 12 Sylvester Okwonodu Ogbechie, Ben Enwonwu. The Making of an African Modernist, Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2008. For the history of photography, see Pascal Martin Saint Léon (ed.), Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography, Paris, 1999; Tobias Wendl, Heike Behrend (eds.), Snap me one! Studiofotografien in Afrika, München: Prestel, 1998 as well as “In-Sight”. African Photography 1940 to the Present, exh. cat., Guggenheim Museum, New York, London: Harry N. Abrams, 1996. 13 See for example Kobena Mercer (ed.), Cosmopolitan Modernisms, London and Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2005; on the other hand: Karlheinz Kohl, „Der Kunstbegriff ist eine eurozentrische



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time, the attempt is and has been made to stage art as a space for international understanding (today: globalization). The histories of the museum on La Réunion and the Musée National des Beaux-Arts in Algiers demonstrate how museums act as power apparatuses and, also, how greatly the concept of museum correlates with the respective concept of art.

The Musée Léon Dierx on La Réunion In Paris of 1912, members of the European avant-garde discussed whether, in order to enhance the objects’ value as art, they should be shown in the Louvre as art primitive (also art sauvage). Simultaneously, the founding of the museum on La Réunion, a former slave island east of Madagascar, provides a noteworthy colonial complement to the exodus of African art objects– metalwork, bronzes, woodcarvings, and textile arts – implemented by their transport on a grand scale to Europe at the end of the nineteenth century.14 The founding of the Musée Léon Dierx took place upon the private initiative of Marius-Ary Leblond, two cousins, George Athénas (1877–1953) and Aimé Merlo (1880– 1958), publishing under the same pseudonym. They were both Créoles, as members of the white upper stratum of society on La Réunion were called. In 1989, they emigrated to Paris, where they made somewhat of a name for themselves as writers (Prix Goncourt 1909) and wrote for various journals. Their literary goal was to counter Pierre Loti’s exotic reveries with a more realistic handling of colonial themes. The Leblonds also had close contacts with visual artists and in 1909 they published the anthology Peintres de race, in which creativity and sensitization (in spite of crude racial categorizations) were celebrated as the new artistic criteria surpassing national boundaries. Painting – in all its cultural diversity – was understood as a medium of communication between all races. “Une commune ferveur moderne pour la peinture est devenue universelle comme une religion”15 – the Leblonds assigned racial characteristics to certain artists, on the one hand, and, on the other, they pleaded the case of an “Internationalisme” in which even the most opposite of nations were united in brotherhood in the realm of art. Art became the harbinger of Internationalism, the people would find common ground in their admiration for certain masters – the ideality of art would thus be expressed: “une sorte de suprématie et de droits surnaturels.”16

Konstruktion“, in: Klaus Heid and Rüdiger John (eds.), Transfer. Kunst-Wirtschaft-Wissenschaft, Baden-Baden: [sic!], 2003, pp. 97–12. 14 See Bärbel Küster, Matisse und Picasso als Kulturreisende. Primitivismus und Anthropologie um 1900, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2003. 15 Marius-Ary Leblond, Peintres de race, Brüssel: G. van Oest, 1909, p. X. 16 Ibid.





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Initially, in 1910, Marius-Ary Leblond established a committee for the museum on La Réunion. Its eleven members came from the Parisian circles of the “creole elite” and their organizations, as well as artists, critics and colonialists.17 The Leblonds enjoyed excellent contacts with the Symbolists of Mallarmé’s “Parnasse,” and had close relationships with the writer Léon Dierx (1838–1912) and the art dealer Ambroise Vollard (1866–1939) born in La Réunion. The well-known sculptor Emile-Antoine Bourdelle was appointed president of the commission.18 In November 1910, the Leblonds presented an acquisition list of paintings, graphics, and sculptures, and distributed it among potential patrons and donors, who could then either purchase one or more works on the list or fund the transport of the artworks. In 1912–13, a total of about 40 works were donated in Paris. Of the more than 40  artists who presented the museum with their own works, almost all had been referred to in Peintres de race and many were also friends or acquaintances of the Leblonds: the most renowned of these were Odilon Redon, Theo van Rysselberghe, Jean-François Raffaëlli, Léon Frédéric, Edouard Diriks and Emile-Antoine Bourdelle. Four Parisian galleries donated paintings or sculptures: Ambroise Vollard, BernheimJeune, Galérie Hébrard (the gallery that represented Bourdelle) and Galérie Blot.19 The most significant private donation came from Félix Fénéon, an anarchist, famous art critic, and a writer of Symbolist persuasion, who, together with Gustave Kahn, was one of the most important advocates of post-Impressionism in Paris. He donated a series of drawings by Maximilien Luce and a painting by Paul Signac, the leading Post-Impressionist of the time. That the Leblonds were closely involved with these circles only goes to confirm that Signac, Fénéon, Luce, and many of the artists who contributed their works (Raffaëlli, Le Sidaner, Rysselberghe, Diriks) were adherents to the Socialist movement in art, and even in some cases anarchists. Further members subsequently joined the honor committee: Jacques Doucet, Gustave Geffroy and Roger Marx added their names to the illustrious list of art critics.20 Bourdelle’s contribution to the La Réunion museum consisted of a bust and a monumental fragment.

17 A. Jacquinot et al. (eds.), Le Musée Léon Dierx, Paris: Réunion des Musées nationaux, 2001, p. 14. On the history of the Musée Léon Dierx see also Il était trois Réunionnais. Marius-Ary Leblond – Ambroise Vollard, Historique de la fondation du Musée Léon Dierx (1910–1913), Saint-Denis, 1981 as well as F. Cheval, Essai de muséographie coloniale, in: F. Cheval (ed.), Souvenirs de Paul et Virginie. Un paysage aux valeurs morales, Maison française du meuble créole, Saint-Louis et Musée Léon Dierx, Saint-Denis, exh. cat., Paris: A. Biro, 1995, pp. 20–51. 18 On October 8, 1910, the Leblonds wrote him a postal card: “Dear friend, If possible come on Friday the 14th around 10 o’clock so that you can preside over the first meeting of the La Réunion museum. Vollard, Lacoste, and a few Creoles will be there.” See Cheval 1995 (as fn. 17), pp. 21–22. 19 See Il était trois Réunionnais 1981 (as fn. 17). 20 The letter to Doucet requests the inclusion of his name in the Comité d’honneur and implies, between the lines, that he will donate works of art. That the letter, which Bourdelle only has to sign, was written by the Leblonds can be inferred from the handwriting as well as from a note on a further postal card from the Leblonds of November 1912, which refers to this letter: “Ci-joint une lettre pour le



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Leblond – upon his departure for La Réunion in 1912 – assured him that these would be displayed in a place of honor. Far removed from the art metropolis of Paris, and, from the Parisian perspective, more or less in a presumed cultural no-man’s-land, a museum for contemporary and mostly non-academic artworks was in the process of being established – at a time in which such art had no museum presence to speak of in France itself. Back in the 1890s, the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, under the rule of it’s director Léonce Bénédite, had kept its Impressionist paintings donated by Gustave Caillebotte, well hidden in the side galleries, fearing for the national reputation. Edouard Manet’s scandalous Olympia of 1865 was only exhibited privately, upon special request. Many artists considered the state’s one-sided, conservative funding of the arts to be autocratic, exclusive, and restrictive.21 Artists who produced non-academic art had little chance to exhibit their work and they organized their opposition: upon the occasion of a survey conducted in 1904, artists contributed many resolute articles on the subject in the magazine Les Arts de la Vie. Marius Leblond was the supervisor of this investigation (in his summary, he explicitly regrets the fact that the leading socialist politician Jean Jaurès had not expressed his opinions).22 And in a discussion of Roger Marx’s book L’art social in the magazine La Vie published by the Leblonds the acquisition policies and the mediocrity of the Beaux Arts Commission’s choices were criticized as well.23 In contrast, a majority of the works forming the matrix of the Musée Léon Dierx on La Réunion were by Impressionist, Post-Impressionist or Fauve artists. The museum thus profited from the anger of the artists, for whom sending their works off to the other side of the planet was a demonstrative act against the lack of state funding of contemporary art in France and against conservative museum policies. But the Leblonds had further ideas about the transnational value of art and about museums adapting the ideas of the socialist “art for all” movement in France and Belgium to colonial rule. They formulated their arguments and the mission of the colonial art museum in their magazine, La Vie, in May 1912. Their intent was to make the original works of French contemporary art accessible to people who were far from Paris and thus bring a bit of cultivation into the “creole life” of the island. They wanted to speak directly to the museum visitors’ senses, to heighten their awareness of nature, of colors, of light. But the Leblonds did not only wish to cultivate the

Musée de la Réunion que vous auriez mettre à la Poste après l’avoir signé, merci”, ibid. Musée Antoine Bourdelle, Paris, Dossier 103. 21 See Luc Alary, L’art vivant avant l’art moderne. Le musée du Luxembourg, premier essai de muséographie pour l’art vivant en France, in: Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 42-2 (1995), pp. 219–39 as well as Pierre Vaisse, Léonce Bénédite et l’impressionnisme, in: Rudolphe Rapetti et al. (eds.), Monet. Atti del convegno, proceedings, Conegliano, 2003, pp. 257–64. 22 Les Arts de la vie: Enquête sur la séparation des Beaux-Arts et l’État (September 1904), pp. 186–89, p. 189. 23 T. Leclerc, L’art social, in: La Vie 17 (1913), pp. 97–99, p. 98.





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senses. The museum was to communicate information, above all, about French art but also about the history of art in general: ‘epochs’ and works from ancient Greece, the primitive Italians (“essential pour notre idée de l’art”24), Gothic casts, works of the French ‘Renaissance’ (Poussin, Watteau, Nattier, Prud’hon, Delacroix, Géricault), all the way to the contemporary Puvis de Chavannes,25 supplemented by reproductions of the great masters from French museums. The Leblonds imagined that their visitors on La Réunion would be not only white, but also people of color, of various ethnicities: “When choosing them (the works), we thought of the white children, who would become even more graceful as they marveled at the vision of beauty which the master painters of their race had imagined – the idyllic vision of Arcadia or Ludus pro patria by Puvis de Chavannes. We also thought of the black children, who tend to emulate: won’t the little kaffir or the little Indian gape in astonishment as he stands in front of a Poussin, or a Puvis de Chavannes?”26 Puvis de Chavannes, alongside Signac, was considered to be a visionary of an ideal socialist society. In the words of Roger Marx: “The artist is a citizen of the world, and the artist’s language is understood worldwide. It is up to him to pave the way for a new era of peace, brotherhood, and love.”27 The Leblonds transported these themes into the colonial situation: art would induce the young colored people to love France more and to become better patriots. The cousins proceeded to present a rough outline of art pedagogy, which was to accompany the democratic education, leading to free elections – art being a guarantee of harmony among all people.28 This concept of a museum associated with democratic ideas was a weak but highly political reflection

24 Marius-Ary Leblond, La Réunion et son Musée, in: La Vie 12 (May 1912), pp. 371–74, p. 373. 25 Here, Renaissance means artists who had outstanding positions in French art: Poussin for French Classicism, Prud’hon as a representative of the socialist concept of art, Watteau and Nattier were included in the debate because of the topical writings of the Goncourts. 26 Leblond 1912 (as fn. 24), p. 373: “En les choisissant, on a pensé aux enfants blancs qui deviendront plus gracieux et plus actifs à admirer, dans la précision de leur forme, le rêve de beauté des maîtres de leur race, les visions idylliques de société inscrites dans une Arcadie ou un Ludus pro patria. On a pensé aux enfants noirs, flexibles à l’émulation: quelle est la surprise devant un Poussin, un Puvis de Chavannes, d’un petit Cafre, d’un petit Indien?” 27 Roger Marx: “L’artiste est le citoyen du monde, dont le langage se fait comprendre de toute part et auquel il appartient de préparer l’avènement d’une ère de paix, de fraternité et d’amour.” Cited from Camille Morineau, Roger Marx et art social, Thèse de doctorat, Université Paris I, 1988, p. 211. 28 Across-the-board enfranchisement did not exist in the colonies, as a result of the French “Indigénant” policy, in which the private person was subject to a hierarchically organized assignment of legal status. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigénat (accessed May 3, 2012). People born on La Réunion had the status of “Indigène citoyen français”.



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of the European socialist art education concepts. In its colonial form, its slogan might have rung: “French art for all!”29 The 16 plaster casts which arrived in 1913 from the Parisian Musée de Sculpture Comparée – sculptural ornaments from the great French cathedrals – fit perfectly into this line of thinking.30 The Leblonds also initiated a collection among the Creoles of cultural-historical objects, mementos, and personal effects from people of French culture on La Réunion. Military trophies and weapons, photographs and graphics, caricatures, portraits, clothing, grandmothers’ wedding stoles, medallions and furniture of the eighteenth century all together created a French past and present – a “mémoire” that not only supplanted all other cultures on La Réunion but also eclipsed the history of slavery, a history of which the Leblonds were well aware.31 On the one hand, this was a colonial gesture, on the other hand, it was modern museology from below, fostering a personal relationship with the museum’s visitors. The cultures of the Malaysian, Indian, or Chinese immigrants or the descendants of slaves living on La Réunion, however, were shut out; there was also no history of the British on La Réunion or of the Portuguese explorers. Only outside, on the veranda of the museum, there seem to have been a few “Madagascan objects”, but the individual pieces have not as yet been identified.32 In the seventeenth century, the first slaves came from Madagascar, where there was, in contrast to La Réunion, an indigenous population. The Leblonds’ focus on French culture resulted in the exclusion of these objects spatially: they were physically banned to the veranda, safely away from the institution’s inner sanctum. In 1912, the museum moved into the Villa Manès (built 1843–46), the onetime home of an influential citizen and one of the most prestigious buildings in the capital city of Saint-Denis. It was opened to visitors in 1913, welcoming people to the sculpture gallery, where among other items, the works of Bourdelle were displayed. Later, the “section historique” was arranged in the central room, encircling which were galleries for modern painting and photographic reproductions, as well as the gallery for the contributed furniture and clothing (fig. 26).33

29 Leblond 1912 (as fn. 24): “Qu’ils sentent qu’ils ne doivent pas seulement à la France les élections où le civilisé redevient barbare! – dont nous ne voulons d’ailleurs ici médire car elles sont utiles à l’éducation civique, mais qui sont exécrables si on n’équilibre point celle-ci par une éducation artistique, maitresse d’harmonie.” 30 The Leblonds donated writings by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, whose Paul et Virginie, according to them, ideally envisioned the French colonization in the Indian Ocean. See Cheval 1995 (as fn. 17), p. 37. 31 See Leblond 1912 (as fn. 24), p. 374. Here Leblond refers also to Indian woodcarvers, immigrants from the Moluccas, and Arabs. The library of the Musée Léon Dierx has photographs taken by the Leblonds, among these “type photographs” like “Indien assis au pied d’un jaquier”. On the suppression of the history of slavery, see Françoise Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries. Colonial Family Romance and Métissage, Durham (N.C.): Duke University Press, 1999, here pp. 109–35. 32 Jacquinot 2001 (as fn. 17), p. 30. 33 Ibid., p. 27.





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Fig. 26: Exhibition view in the 1930s, Musée Léon-Dierx, La Réunion

Subsequent to another donation by Vollard, the museum continued in its adherence to the European point of view.

The Musée National des Beaux-Arts in Algiers In many ways, the history of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Algiers complements the above sequence of events and also provides a continuation. When, in 1908, the museum was founded as the Provincial Museum for Fine Arts, there were already quite a few museums (especially for finds from antiquity), in the Algerian colony, where the arts and also tourism were already quite “developed.”34 In this same year, the governor and Léonce Bénédite of the Musée du Luxembourg inaugurated the provincial museum housed in a former military building in Algiers. Since 1897, the plans for the museum had been spurred on by people associated with the French Orientalists and the artist community of Abd-el-Tif (government grants for a residency at

34 Roger Benjamin, Colonial Museology in Algiers, in: id., Orientalist Aesthetics. Art, Colonialism, and French North Africa 1880–1930, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, p. 249–73 as well as Nabila Oulebsir, Les usages du patrimoine. Monuments, musées et politique coloniale en Algérie (1830–1930), Paris: Ed. de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 2004.



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the Villa Abd-el-Tif were awarded at the Paris Academy from 1907 to 1962). As in the case of the Société Francaise des Peintres Orientalistes, Bénédite was a co-founder. In the 1911 catalogue of the Provincial Museum of Algiers, the founders expressed their regret about the conservation conditions and the disadvantages which these entailed: it was not possible to procure artworks from the annual Parisian state art acquisitions, works which were usually distributed among French provincial museums. Nevertheless, they were able to display about 110 works, including older paintings by Paris Bordone and Claude Lorrain, works by the Barbizon painters and academic Orientalists – the contemporary avant-garde was explicitly avoided. In Algeria, too, museum policies were colonial policies. Up until the end of the 1920s, the focus was still largely on reaching an understanding with the natives. The French painter Etienne Dinet, who had lived in Algeria many years, converted to Islam and became involved, along with the governor, Maurice Violette, in advocating for the rights of the indigenous people. Violette was discharged in 1927. Jean Alazard, the renowned art historian at the Paris Institut français, who had been an instructor at the University of Algiers since 1922, was able, as the new director of the museum, to mobilize the French Orientalists, who maintained an active network in Paris and Algiers. He involved them in the planning of the new museum building for the upcoming 1930 centennial commemorating the founding of the French colony of Algeria.35 The jubilee, celebrated with military parades and much pomp and splendor, raised the provincial museum to its new status as a national museum. The new building, by Regnier and Paul Guion, proudly flaunted its pretentious architecture reminiscent of an Italian art gallery on a hill above the Bay of Algiers (fig. 27). Jean Alazard expanded the collection – with a sizable budget – to include the French Latinité and the Roman-antique heritage of the Mediterranean, more than half of the budget being spent on orientalist paintings. The Impressionists, who by this time had been given due recognition, a few Post-Impressionists and some sculptures by Bourdelle were added, but nothing representing the more current art movements such as the Fauves or even the Surrealists. The collection did include miniatures by Mohamed Racim and paintings by Azouaou Mammeri, Orientalists born in Algeria. The National Museum staged the School of Algiers as the art of a special orientalist ‘local style.’36 The character of the collection was patterned after that of the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, and was meant to symbolize the dominant culture – shaped by the French leading culture expanded into Algeria. Orientalism – successfully institutionalized – was meant to give visual proof of a thriving culture of “La plus Grande France.”

35 See Benjamin 2003 (as fn.  34). Alazard composed a definitive work on Orientalist painting: L’orient et la peinture française au XIXe siècle. D’Eugène Delacroix à Auguste Renoir, Paris: Plon, 1930. 36 Also, for example, Albert Marquet, see Benjamin 2003 (as fn. 34), p. 269 and Ecole d’Alger 1870– 1962. Collection du Musée National des Beaux-Arts Alger, exh. cat., Musée des Beaux-Arts Bordeaux, Bordeaux: Pujol, 2003.





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Fig. 27: National Museum of Fine Arts Algiers, c. 1930

Nabila Oulebsir has pointed out that the concept of “patrimoine” already existed before in the Berber and Arabic cultures, but that under French colonization the idea shifted from intangible traditions to ancient monuments.37 From here on, Orientalist painting was propagated as a transnational French art. Though, in considering the musealization of the visual arts in Algeria, it is important to bear in mind that the majority of the population was of Islamic faith, which more or less lacked any rights under colonialism,38 and that Orientalist painting, with its sensuous vision of the East and all its naked odalisks stood in stark contrast to Islamic aniconism and visual traditions.

37 Oulebsir (as fn. 34), pp. 13–17. 38 Weil 2008 (as fn. 2), pp. 207–27.



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Living Memory, Entangled History and Transnational Art That “France brought peace and prosperity to the colonies,” as the title of the goldplated, larger-than-life statue setup in front of the Palais des Colonies for the World Fair in Paris in 1931 proclaimed,39 was an ideology that few were able to counter with concrete arguments. Critical voices, except for a handful of articles in the Socialist newspaper L’Humanité, remained marginal, and the call of the Surrealists “Ne visitez pas l’exposition coloniale” fell largely on deaf ears.40 To this day, the myth of the “bringers of civilization” contains an irrevocable gesture of devaluation. In 1935, Marius Leblond, who could hardly be said to have sought out the company of Socialists anymore, became the director of the Musée permanent des Colonies, a museum which above all considered itself to be an active forum for colonization.41 While French society in general had almost completely stopped questioning colonization, students from the colonies, at the beginning of the thirties in Paris, formed a movement which attempted to counteract racism and the assertion of black inferiority. The concept of Négritude emerged along with periodicals like Légitime Défense, La Revue du Monde Noir, and Etudiant Noir that came into being in contact with surrealist poets.42 As racism with a positive twist, in which poets from the Antilles, Africa, and the Americas joined forces, the idea developed into a demand for a black contribution to a truly transnational humanism, in which art, in turn, was given central importance.43 Was art, and its presumed universality or internationalism, an attempt to establish transnational or humanistic ideas to counter the forceful power apparatus of imperialism or to escape it? In a first draft for a letter, in 1914, Antoine Bourdelle expressed his criticism of the nationalizing and racist tendencies of the art and artists which formed the basis of the Leblonds’ Peintres de races in 1909: “I am completely against the idea that each ethnic group has a particular style shaping its idea of art

39 Léon Ernest Drivier, La France apportant la Paix et la prospérité aux Colonies, bold-plated bronze, 1931 in front of the Palais des Colonies, whereabouts unknown. 40 Jody Blake, The Truth About the Colonies, 1931. Art Indigène in Service of the Revolution, in: Oxford Art Journal 25 (2002), pp. 35–58; Jean-Paul Clébert (ed.), Dictionnaire du surrealism, Paris: Editions Seuil, 1996; on critique see also Brigitta Kuster, ‘If the Images of the present don’t change, then change the images of the past’. Zur Exposition Coloniale Internationale, Paris 1931, in: Belinda Kazeem, Charlotte Martinz-Turek, Nora Sternfeld (eds.), Das Unbehagen im Museum. Postkoloniale Museologien, Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2009, pp. 77–109. 41 See Catherine Fournier, Marius-Ary Leblond. Ecrivains et critiques d’art, Paris: Harmattan, 2006, pp. 303–39 and Dominique Jarassé, Le palais des colonies. Histoire du Musée des Arts d’Afrique et d’océanie, Paris: Germain Viatte, 2002. 42 See Lilyan Kesteloot, Histoire de la littérature négro-africaine, Paris: Karthala Editions, 2001. 43 Léopold Sédar Senghor, L’humanisme et nous: Renée Maran, in: L’Étudiant Noir 1 (1935).





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[…] like a national way of thought, absolutely insulated like an oasis in the middle of endless desert, cut off from the ideas of other nations – that never, never, never existed.”44 The Leblonds, however, were simultaneously convinced – similar to Bourdelle – of the existence of a universal perception of beauty, and they aimed their colonial undertakings towards this idea. Art could, and still can, be draped with the cloak of humanism in a multitude of ways. But, paradoxically, colonialism, soaked to its bones with nationalism, also laid the groundwork for the today’s situation, in which sharply drawn national cultural boundaries have become unthinkable. Colonial history resulted in the debunking of the idea of art as a universal or transnational means of communication, and exposed this notion as an ideology. How little such presumably universal art helped in finding a way out of the colonial-political discussion about “assimilation” – the question as to whether it would be better to force the French way of life onto the autochthonous population or to leave it with some of its traditions – has already been shown.45 The production of identity within a material or immaterial cultural heritage is one of the most important missions of a museum.46 But it does not necessarily have to be a national issue or follow a historic approach. A comprehensive history of the museum from the perspective of African researchers has yet to be written.47 The examples of La Réunion and Algiers show that museums as such are no more universal than art itself, and that, in fact, they may not even be transnational. The discussion of colonial perspectives had led to new concepts: the museum as a contact zone, in which the performative aspects of ritual objects are given more space.48 In 2006, the project Maison des civilisations et de l’unité réunionnaise (MCUR), a space for all cultures, was initiated on La Réunion.49 In Mali, the museum as an institution was created

44 See Bourdelle, draft of a letter to Marius-Ary Leblond, May 9, 1914, Musée Bourdelle, Documentation, Dossier 103. 45 Ibid., p. XI. On the assimilation discussion, see Weil 2008 (as fn. 2). 46 UNESCO Convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage, Paris, October 17, 2003 at http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?lg=en&pg=00006 (accessed May 6, 2012). 47 On particular historiographic forms beyond European methodologies, see Steven Feierman, Afrika in der Geschichte, in: Sebastian Conrad, Shalini Randeria (eds.), Jenseits des Eurozentrismus. Postkoloniale Perspektiven in den Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften, Frankfurt, 2002, pp. 50–83. 48 James Clifford, Museums as a Contact Zone, in: Routes. Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997, pp. 188–219. 49 As in 1912, this initiative of Françoise Vergès and Carpanin Marimoutou was once again patterned after the ‘museology from below,’ but this time including all cultures. See the interview with Vergès: Postkoloniales Ausstellen. Über das Projekt eines ‘Museums der Gegenwart’ auf der Insel La Réunion, in: Kazeem 2009 (as fn.  40), pp. 143–65 (online at http://eipcp.net/transversal/0708/ martinzturekverges/de and the website: http://www.mi-aime-a-ou.com/maison_des_civilisations. htm (accessed May 14, 2012). For political reasons, however, the project is now being called into question.



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anew – as a “cultural bank” – to accommodate the needs of an agricultural population: in exchange for the contribution of ancestral figures and ritual objects no longer in use, the donors receive microcredits and literacy classes at the museum.50 Not only in Africa are museum concepts now oscillating between the entangled history of colonization and independence, between living, transmuted memory forms and traditions.51 Thus, for European museums, too, colonial history and its aftermath are demanding fresh conceptualizations – new, but genuinely transnational in a more radical way. Translated by Catherine Framm

50 Aldiouma Baba Mory Yattara, Les Banques culturelles du Mali. Une expérience porteuse d’espoir, in: Africultures 2007 (as fn.  8), pp. 174–79. The National Museum of Mali in Bamako in addition is celebrated as having one of the most distinguished museum displays in Western Africa. The crisis of the state and terror that migrated from the North of Mali since winter 2012/13 pinpointed once more the value of cultural goods as political symbols. 51 Kenji Yoshida, John Mack (eds.), Preserving the Cultural Heritage of Africa. Crisis or Renaissance?, Woodbrige, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2008. On entangled history, see Sebastian Conrad, Shalini Randeria, Einleitung. Geteilte Geschichten – Europa in einer postkolonialen Welt, in: Conrad, Randeria 2002 (as fn. 47), pp. 9–49.



Illustration credits Fig. 1: Cyrus Cylinder in the National Museum Teheran, 2010. © ISNA, Photo: Mona Hoobehfekr, published on payvand.com, February 2012. Fig. 2: Engraving showing the reception of the Nineveh sculptures at the British Museum, Illustrated London News, February 28, 1852, p. 184. Fig. 3: The Creek Court in the Crystal Palace in Sydenham, London, colour lithograph after a photograph by Philip Delamotte, 1854. From Jan Piggott, Palace of the People. The Crystal Palace at Sydenham, 1854–1936, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004, p. 71, bpk/ Kunstbibliothek/Dietmar Katz. Fig. 4: Otto F. Lindheimer, Venus de Milo in a niche of the Apollo Hall, watercolor, 1863, Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, from: Gertrud Platz-Horster, ‚… der eigentliche Mittelpunkt aller Sammlungen…‘. Die Gipssammlung im Neuen Museum, 1855–1916, in: Ellinoor Bergvelt, Debora J. Meijers, Lieske Tibbe and Elsa van Wezel, Museale Spezialisierung und Nationalisierung ab 1830. Das Neue Museum in Berlin im internationalen Kontext (Berliner Schriftenreihe zur Museumsforschung, vol. 29), Berlin: G+H Verlag, 2011, p. 195. Fig. 5: Fra Antonio da Modena (recte: Fra Antonio da Monza), Last Supper (miniature). Vienna, Albertina. Salt print, 32 × 23 on 34 × 24 cm. Fratelli Alinari, 1858. KHI Florence, Photo library, Inv. No. 60310. Fig. 6: Rogier van der Weyden, Miraflores Altarpiece, Berlin, Gemäldegalerie. Albumen print, 24 × 14,5 on 39 × 31 cm. Photographische Gesellschaft, 1867. Collection D. Peters. Fig. 7: Simon Louis du Ry, Gallery of Aeneas and corner salon in the Palais Royal, 1751. Hessisches Staatsarchiv Marburg. Fig. 8: Simon Louis du Ry, Interior of the Hôtel de Lassay, c. 1751. Hessisches Staatsarchiv Marburg. Fig. 9: The Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow surrounded by scaffolding, 1905. From: Erhard Hexelschneider, Alexander Baranov, Tobias Burg (eds.), In Moskau ein kleines Albertinum bauen. Iwan Zwetajew und Georg Treu im Briefwechsel (1881–1913), Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2006, p. 393. Fig. 10: Ground-plan of the top floor with inscriptions by Ivan Tsvetaev and Georg Treu (pencil). From Erhard Hexelschneider, Alexander Baranov, Tobias Burg (eds.), In Moskau ein kleines Albertinum bauen. Iwan Zwetajew und Georg Treu im Briefwechsel (1881-1913), Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2006, p. 391. Fig. 11: Turin, Galleria Sabauda, Study Rooms, 1932. From Pacchioni’s article in Mouseion, VIII, 27–28 (1934), pp. 124–34, Plate XV., bpk/Kunstbibliothek/Dietmar Katz. Fig. 12: Pesaro, Musei Civici, Salone del Giambellino, 1936. Su concessione del Comune di Pesaro/ Servizio Politiche dei Beni Culturali. Fig. 13: Opening Reception in the Picture Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 681 Fifth Avenue, February 20, 1872. Wood-engraving published in Frank Leslie’s Weekly, March 9, 1872. From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Metropolitan_opening_reception.jpg. Fig. 14: Cast Court of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, c.1890. Photo: Amsterdam Municipal Archives. Fig. 15: Page of Oesterreichische Monatsschrift für den Orient, edited by the Orientalisches Museum at Vienna. Photo: Library of the University of Amsterdam. Fig. 16: Photographic portrait of Sir Charles Eastlake, c.1855–1865. Copyright © The National Gallery, London. All rights reserved. Fig. 17: Engraving of a new room at The National Gallery. From Illustrated London News, 15 June 1861. Copyright © The National Gallery, London. All rights reserved. Fig. 18: Cover of the first issue of the journal Museumskunde, 1905. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. Fig. 19: Page with diagrams from Francis Arthur Bather’s article on the Northern Museum in Stockholm, published in the Museumskunde, 4 (1908), p. 72. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.

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 Illustration credits

Fig. 20: Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner in 1919. From: Margaret Sterne, The Passionate Eye: The Life of William R. Valentiner, Detroit: Wayne Univ. Press 1980, p. 136. Fig. 21: “The Magnet”, cartoon by Joseph Keppler, Jr. From: Puck magazine, New York, vol. 69, no. 1790, June 21, 1911. Fig. 22: Group photograph of the Commission consultative de l’Office international des musées, in: Mouseion, 7 (1929), bpk/Kunstbibliothek/Dietmar Katz. Fig. 23: Cover of the handbook Muséographie (1935), Unesco Archives Paris. Copyright: the author. Fig. 24: First page of Portuguese magazine O Occidente, January 21, 1882. From http:// hemerotecadigital.cm-lisboa.pt/OBRAS/Ocidente/1882/N111/N111_item1/index.html. Fig. 25: Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Exposição Retrospectiva de Arte Ornamental Portugueza e Hespanhola, 1882, the ceramics room. Phototype by Joseph Leipold from a collodion negative by Carlos Relvas. Photographic Archive, MNAA. Fig. 26: Exhibition view in the 1930s, Musée Léon Dierx, La Réunion. Collection Musée Léon Dierx, La Réunion. From: http://www.cg974.fr/culture/index.php/L%C3%A9on-Dierx/ImagesL%C3%A9on-Dierx/salles-dexposition-1930.html. Fig. 27: National Museum of Fine Arts Algiers, ca. 1930. From Roger Benjamin: Orientalist Aesthetics, Art, Colonialism, and French North Africa 1880–1930, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, p. 260 (detail), bpk/Kunstbibliothek/Dietmar Katz.



Index Abdülaziz, Ottoman Sultan 237 Abdülhamid II, Ottoman Sultan 238, 240 Abdülmecid, Ottoman Sultan 235–6 Adenauer, Konrad 209 Adler, Bruno 186 Ahmet Fethi Paşa 235–6 Alazard, Jean 254 Albert, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha 7–8, 45–6, 50, 168, 170–1, 174, 178 Albini, Franco 89–90 Alinari, Fratelli 46–7, 50 Altman, Benjamin 192, 199, 203 Andrade, Alfredo de 222, 224–6, 230 Angerstein, John Julius 166 Anisimov, Aleksandr Ivanovich 158 Antas, Miguel Martins d’ 223 Anton Ulrich, Duke of BrunswickWolfenbüttel 69 Archer, Frederick Scott 46 Argan, Giulio Carlo 89–90 Armbruster, Leopold 81 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal 233, 241 Aubert, Jean 75 Aynard, Edouard Mathieu 197 Azhbe, Anton 149 Bach, Richard 91 Bakst, Leon 150 Ballin, Albert 201 Bambridge, William 46 Bancroft, George 103 Bardi, Luigi 47 Barozzi, Nicolas 119 Bather, Francis Arthur 185, 187–90 Baud-Bovy, Daniel 212 Beaumont, George 166 Beekman 104 Becker, Ernst 46–7 Bénédite, Léonce 250, 253–4 Benois, Alexandre 150–2 Bertrand, Alexandre 121, 125 Bette, Laura 50 Bingham, Robert 47, 50 Blondel, Jacques-François 66–8 Bode, Wilhelm (von) 13, 52, 55, 57, 85, 90, 129, 179, 187, 191, 193–204 Bogoslovskii, Dmitry Fedorovich 158

Bonaparte, Jérôme 62, 69 Bonaparte, Louis-Napoléon, see Napoléon III Bonaparte, Mathilde 117 Bordone, Paris 254 Bossu, Charles François, see Marville, Charles Both de Tauzia, Pierre-Paul 125, 127–8 Botta, Paul-Émile 23, 27 Bourdelle, Émile-Antoine 249, 252, 254, 256–7 Boxall, William 54 Böcklin, Arnold 151 Braun, Adolphe 51–4, 56–7 Braun, Gaston 52 Braun, Henri 52 Briagin, Evgeny Ivanovich 157 Brinckmann, Justus 183–4, 186, 211 Briullov, Karl Pavlovich 155 Brulliot, Robert 50 Brumfield, William Craft 88 Bryant, William Cullen 105–6 Buchner, Ernst 211 Burtin, François-Xavier de 71 Caillebotte, Gustave 250 Caldesi, Leonida 46–7, 50 Casa Laiglesia, Marquês de (Manuel Rancés y Villanueva 223 Casanova, Enrique 227, 230 Cassirer, Bruno 180 Causid, Simon 73–4 Cavalcascelle, Giambattista 172, 177 Cernuschi, Henri 139 Césaire, Aimé 246 Cesnola, Louis Palma di 193 Cézanne, Paul 151 Charles, Archduke of Austria 47 Charteris, Francis Wemyss, Lord Elcho 170 Chesney, Colonel Francis Rawdon 169 Chennevières, Philippe de 118, 121, 127 Chirikov, Grigorii Osipovich 158 Clarke, Caspar Purdon 193 Cockerell, Charles Robert 174 Cole, Henry 40–1 Comfort, George Fisk 106–11 Coningham, William 169, 172–3 Conway, Martin 184 Cook, Francis 223 Cooper, James Fenimore 103

262 

 Index

Cornelius, Peter 107 Correggio, Antonio da 55 Cottini, Jean 121 Coufopoulos, Demetrius 236 Coypels, Antoine 66 Cundall, Joseph 46 Cuvilliés, François de 63–5 Cyrus II, King of Persia 21–2 Darcel, Alfred 128 David, Jacques-Louis 1 Davillier, Jean Charles 223 De Forest, Robert Weeks 197–8 Dedekam, Hans 186–7, 190 Dehio, Georg 159 Delacroix, Eugène 251 Demmler, Theodor 91–2 Dennistoun, James 175 Denon, Dominique-Vivant 69, 122 Destrée, Jules 209 Dethier, Anton Philip 237–8 Devéria, Théodule 123 Dewey, John 89 Diaghilev, Sergei 150–1 Dierx, Léon 15, 248–50 Dikmen, Halil 241–2 Dinet, Etienne 254 Diriks, Edouard 249 Disraeli, Benjamin 168 Donatello 197 Doucet, Jacques 249 Dovizielli, Pietro 46 Du Camp, Maxime 128 Duveen, Joseph 192, 200 Dyce, William 168, 170–8 Earl of Dudley (William Ward) 47 Eastlake, Elizabeth 168 Eastlake, Charles 12, 165, 167–9, 171–8 Einstein, Albert 208 Eitelberger von Edelberg, Rudolf 122, 133 Ellis, George Agar 166 Esquivel, Vicente 227 Fénéon, Félix 249 Fenton, Roger 46, 49 Filosofov, Dmitry 150 Focillon, Henri 91, 95, 206, 208 Fonseca, António Thomas da 222–3, 225

Ford, Richard 221 Foundoukidis, Euripide 13–4, 99, 210–4, 216 Fra Angelico 203 Frédéric, Léon 249 Frick, Henry Clay 192, 196, 199 Friedländer, Max Jakob 208–9, 211, 213 Friedrich II, King of Prussia 64 Friedrich II (son of Landgrave Wilhelm VIII of Hesse-Kassel 62 Frommel, Carl Ludwig 123 Fry, Roger 193, 195 Füger, Heinrich Friedrich 71 Fulton, Robert 198 Galichon, Emile 122 Gargollo, Luiz 227 Garland, James A. 192 Gauguin, Paul 151 Gautier, Théophile 235–6 Geffroy, Gustave 249 Gerhard, Eduard 34 Géricault, Théodore 251 Giovannoni, Gustavo 92–3 Gladstone, William Ewart 168 Gontram, Léon 246 Goold, Edward 237–8 Gottsched, Johann Christoph 70 Grabar, Igor Emmanuilovich 11, 147–62 Grabar, Vladimir 150 Graul, Richard 208, 211–4 Griaule, Marcel 246 Grimm, Herman 47 Grosse, Ernst 114 Grosvenor, Edward 239 Guarini, Guarino 93 Guedes, Delfim 222–6, 232 Guion, Paul 254 Guion, Regnier 254 Hakimzadeh, Farhad 19–20 Halil Edhem 240 Hardouin-Mansart, Jules 64 Hardouin-Mansart de Sagonne, Jacques 64–5 Hazelius, Arthur 188–9 Häckel, Heinrich Jakob von 63–4, 73 Heinecken, Carl Heinrich von 74 Hitler, Adolf 13, 205, 213 Hobbema, Meindert 120



Index 

 263

Hodler, Ferdinand 151 Hoentschel, Georges 196, 198 Hoetzsch, Otto 157 Hofstede de Groot Cornelis, 195 Hollenberg, Georg Heinrich 70 Houssaye, Arsène 129 Howlett, Robert 46 Hudson, Henry 198 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 172, 194

Lichtwark, Alfred 114, 183–4 Lindenschmit, Ludwig 121 Löcherer, Alois 50 Lorrain, Claude 120, 254 Loti, Pierre 248 Louis XIV, King of France 64, 235 Louis XV, King of France 65 Luce, Maximilien 249 Luini, Bernardino 127

Ibsen, Henrik Johan 134 Irving, Washington 103 Ivanov, Aleksandr A. 155

MacLeod, Norman 225 Madrazo, José de 120 Makan, John 106–7 Mallarmé, Stéphane 249 Mammeri, Azouaou 254 Manet, Édouard 250 Mann, Thomas 208 Marcenaro, Caterina 89 Marées, Hans von 151 Marville, Charles (Bossu, Charles François) 47–8, 50–1 Marx, Karl 134 Marx, Roger 249–51 Mechel, Christian von 74 Mehmed II, Ottoman Sultan 234, 236–7 Mélida, José Ramón 227 Meyer, Adolf Bernhard 112–3 Michelangelo Buonarotti 87 Millet, Gabriel 161 Moltke 120 Monteiro, José Luis 223–4 Montrano 237 Moogendick 199 Moore, John Morris 169–70, 172–3, 175 Morgan, John Pierpont  192–4, 196, 198–9, 201–3 Morris, William 134 Morrison, Alfred 223 Motley, John Lothrop 103 Müller, Friedrich 70 Mündler, Otto 121, 173, 177 Murray, David 188 Muther, Richard 152–3, 156–7, 162

Jacob-Friesen, Karl Hermann 212 Jameson, Anna 167 Jaurès, Jean 250 Jay, John 105 Jayne, Horace 91 Johan Maurits, Prince of Nassau-Siegen 68 Johnson, John Garver 192, 199–200 Jones, Owen 37 Jordaens, Jakob 74 Justi, Ludwig 211 Kahn, Gustave 249 Kannés, Gianluca 98 Kardovskii, Dmitry Nikolaevich 158 Kaulbach, Wilhelm von 107 Keune, Johann Baptist 129 Klein, Roman 81, 83–8 Klenze, Leo von 69, 88, 172, 177, 179 Koetschau, Karl 12, 179–85, 187, 189–90, 210 Kümmel, Otto 215 La Font de Saint-Yenne, Etienne 68 Lansere, Evgeny (Lanceray, Eugène) 150 Lassalle, Ferdinand 134 Lavice, André Absinthe 123 Layard, Austen Henry 23–9, 171, 223 Le Sidaner, Henri 249 Leblond, Marius-Ary (pen name of Aimé Merlo and George Athénas) 248–52, 256–7 Leiris, Michel 246 Leopold Duke of Albany 223 Lepsius, Karl Richard 107 Lespilliez, Carl Albrecht von 63 Levy, Leopold 242 Leyster, Judith 199



Napoleon I 4, 31, 34, 37 Napoleon III 117–8, 126 Nattier, Jean-Marc 251 Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon 21 Nechaev-Maltsov, Yury 79–80

264 

 Index

Neumeyer, Alfred 211 Newton, Charles Thomas 34, 239 Nieuwerkerke, Alfred-Émilien de 117, 119–20, 122–7 Ojetti, Ugo 99 Oppenord, Gilles Marie 66 Osman Hamdi Bey 237–43 Ostade, Adriaen van 122 Osthaus, Karl Ernst 183–4, 208 Overbeck, Johann Friedrich 70–1 Pacchioni, Guglielmo 9, 89, 91, 93–100 Panofsky, Erwin 211 Paribeni, Roberto 99 Passavant, Johann David 45, 49, 121, 168 Paxton, Joseph 36 Peel, Robert 166, 171, 174–5, 178 Perdiguez, José 227 Perov, Vasily Grigorevich 155 Perret, Auguste 91, 95, 97 Perrier, Charles 120 Phidias 33 Philippe II, Duke of Orleans 66 Planck, Max 208 Plater, Władysław 186 Poussin, Nicolas 251 Poynter, Edward John 223 Price, William Lake 46 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 134 Prud’hon, Pierre-Paul 251 Pul, King of Assyria 26 Pulszky, Ferenc 35 Putnam, George Palmer 105, 109 Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre 251 Puyvelde, Leo van 211 Racim, Mohamed 254 Raffaëlli, Jean-François 249 Rangel de Lima, Francisco 222, 225–6 Ranke, Franz Leopold von 107 Raphael 8, 45–52, 104, 109 Read, Herbert 89 Réau, Louis 161 Redgrave, Richard 168 Redon, Odilon 249 Reiset, Frédéric 121, 127–8 Rejlander, Gustave 46 Relvas, Carlos 222, 232

Rembrandt, Harmenszoon van Rijn 55, 74, 195, 199, 203 Repin, Il’ia Efimovich 155 Rhinelander 104 Riabushkin, Andrei Petrovich 155 Riaño y Montero, Juan Facundo 221, 223, 228 Ribera 123 Ris, Dominique Clément de 123–5 Rıza, Hoca Ali 242 Robert, Hubert 72 Robinson, Edward 114, 193–5, 197 Robinson, John Charles 168, 221–3, 231–2 Robinson, Lionel G. 42 Roland, Jean-Marie 1 Römmler, Emil 50 Rops, Félicien 151 Rougé, Emmanuel de 123 Rubens, Peter Paul 55, 68, 74 Ruhl, Ludwig Sigismund 70 Ruland, Carl 46–7, 52 Rumohr, Carl Friedrich von 70–1, 168 Ruskin, John 134, 171 Ry, Charles du 64, 66 Ry, Simon Louis du  66–7, 75–6 Ryan, Thomas Fortune 197 Rysselberghe, Theo van 249 Sackville-West, Lionel 223 Saint-Victor, Paul de 52 Sanpaolesi, Piero 93 Sansovino, Andrea 196 Sapori, Franceso 92 Sarre, Friedrich 203 Sauerlandt, Max 211–3 Scarpa, Carlo 90, 92 Schäfer, J. 50 Schinkel, Karl Friedrich 50, 194, 239 Schletter, Heinrich Adolf 109, 120 Schliemann, Heinrich 77 Schmidt-Ott, Friedrich 157 Schmincke, Christoph 70 Schopenhauer, Arthur 134 Schumacher, Fritz 91 Schwabe, Hermann 133 Seguier, William 166 Seidlitz, Woldemar von 115 Şeker Ahmet Paşa 242–3 Senghor, Léopold Sédar 246–7, 256 Signac, Paul 249, 251



Index 

Simões, Augusto Filippe 224–5, 230–2 Simon, James 194 Sommerard, Edmond du 223 Somov, Konstantin 150 Sotomayor, José Alvarez de 91–2 Sousa Viterbo, Francisco Marques de 224 Spence, William Blundell 172 St. John, Frederick Bayle 34 Sturgis, Richard Clipston 114 Stuyvesant 104 Suermondt, Barthold 55 Swan, Joseph Wilson 52 Tacitus 77 Taine, Hippolyte Adolphe 134 Tarral, Claudius 121 Teixeira de Aragão, Augusto Carlos 223, 225 Temple, Henry John (3rd Viscount Palmerston) 168 Teniers the Younger, David 55, 74 Thoma, Hans 151 Thompson, Charles Thurston 46, 49–50 Thoré-Bürger, Théophile (Thoré, Étienne-JosephThéophile) 120–1 Thorvaldsen, Bertel 85 Ticknor, George 103 Tischbein the Younger, Johann Heinrich 69 Titian 55, 65, 199 Tolstoy, Lev Nikolayevich 134 Tretyakov, Pavel Mikhailovich 154–5 Tretyakov, Sergei Mikhailovich 154 Treu, Georg 77, 79–84, 88 Tsvetaev, Ivan 77–88 Ulloa, Dário 227 Usedom, Guido von 54 Uwins, Thomas 172 Vachon, Marius 10–1, 131–9, 141–5 Vaillant, Jean Baptiste Philibert 119–20, 122, 126 Valentiner, Wilhelm Reinhold 13, 191, 194–204 Valera y Alcalá Galiano, Juan 227 Vallaury, Alexandre 238 van Dyck, Antony 55, 74 Veronese, Paolo 55, 65



 265

Viale, Vittorio 98–9 Viardot, Louis 123 Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 46, 175 Vilhena Barbosa, Ignácio de 223, 225 Villot, Frédéric 51, 119–21 Vinci, Leonardo da 121, 197 Violette, Maurice 254 Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène-Emmanuel 42–3, 87–8, 136 Vitry, Paul 212 Vogel, Hermann Wilhelm 55 Volbach, Wolfgang 91–2 Vollard, Ambroise 249, 253 Voyer d’Argenson, Marc-René de 8, 64–9, 76 Vrubel, Mikhail Aleksandrovich 155 Waagen, Gustav Friedrich 12, 49–50, 53–4, 107, 121, 166–75, 177–8 Waetzoldt, Wilhelm 208, 213 Wailly, Charles de 72 Warren, Samuel Dennis 114–5 Watt, Digby 37 Watteau, Antoine 251 Werckmeister, Albert 53 Werckmeister, Emil 53 Werckmeister, Friedrich 53 Werther, G. 55 Wey, Francis 33–4, 36 Wheelwright, Edmund March 114 Widener, Joseph Early 192 Wildenstein, Georges 98 Wilhelm II, King of Prussia and Emperor of the German Empire 201–2 Wilhelm VIII of Hesse-Kassel 8, 62–6, 68–9, 73–5 Wilkins, William 167 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim 70 Winthrop 104 Wit, Jakob de 76 Woermann, Karl 55 Wornum, Ralph Nicholson 169, 171, 173, 177–8 Zahn, Albert von 55 Zix, Benjamin 69

Acknowledgements We would particularly like to thank the Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung for generously providing support for the printing of this volume, and the Deutsche Forschungs­ gemeinschaft for funding the preceding conference Transnational History of Museums at which most of the contributions were presented. Moreover, we would like to thank Indiana University Press for the permission to include the chapter by Thomas Adam. It contains large portions of the first chapter of his book Buying Respectability: Philanthropy and Urban Society in Transnational Perspective, 1840s to 1930s published by Indiana University Press in 2009. We owe specials thanks to Mei-Hau Kunzi, Jennifer Falckenberg and Markus Hilbich for assisting us in the editorial process, and to Catherine Framm for her profound translation work and committed cooperation. We would also like to express our gratitude to Katja Richter from De Gruyter Verlag for her continuous support and, finally, to our authors, for the inspiring exchange and their commitment to the realization of this book.