The Bourgeoisie, Cultural Appropriation, and the Art Museum in Nineteenth-Century France
Author(s)
Sherman, Daniel J.
Abstract
An attempt is made to demonstrate that the apparent internal coherence of the art museum in nineteenth-century France was actually carefully constructed, the result of a complex historical evolution shaped as much by contingency as by system. Museums invested their constituent elements – art, buildings, administrators, and the public – with new cultural significances via ideological sanctions, material assistance, and aesthetic justification. Beginning with the designation of the Louvre as Europe’s first national art museum in 1793, the state’s role in the development and internal operation of museums, particularly provincial ones, is examined. It is demonstrated that both in their external appearances and internal rules of conduct, art museums reflected the model of bourgeois culture that they helped to create.
