understanding art museums
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As a theorist of art and Art myself, I am struck by how very few books offer insight into the problem of Modern Art, the public promotion, civic installation and academic endorsement of a mostly bogus offering of artistic marvel, 1917 to present. This book, together with Carol Duncan's other book 'The Aesthetics of Power', is among that very few.
Her chief contribution is to explain what kind of social and political context (revolutionary politics), in Europe, led to the birth of the modern public Art museum in the early 19th century. The model she offers is the palace and its treasure nationalized and opened to public perambulation. For me, her essays brought an added perspective that allowed everything else I was thinking about for years to fall into place. Alas, she has not applied this perspective and her cool intelligence to 20th century developments in Art - the flip from an art of illusion to an illusion of Art. But then, nor has anyone else, yet.
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