Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums (Re Visions : Critical Studies in the History and Theory of Art)

The Art Museum As Ritual -- From The Princely Gallery To The Public Art Museum: The Louvre Museum And The National Gallery, London -- Public Spaces, Private Interests: Municipal Art Museums In New York And Chicago -- Something Eternal: The Donor Memorial -- The Modern Art Museum: It's A Man's World. Carol Duncan. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 162-173) And Index.

Public art museums have become necessary fixtures of every city or country with any claim to importance. Yet we have still to understand what happens in them. Civilizing Rituals treats art museums from a new perspective--as ritual settings in their own right and as cultural artifacts that are much more than neutral shelters for art.

Drawing from both anthropological and philosophical literature, Carol Duncan begins by exploring the idea of the art museum-as-ritual. She examines specific musuem rituals in the US, Britain and France including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Musuem of Modern Art, the National Gallery in London, the Louvre and several donor memorials including the Frick Collection and the Morgan Library, not only in relation to their political and social contexts but also paying close attention to the details of the museum settings themselves.

Duncan illuminates the ways in which musuems engage their visitors in the performance of ritual scenarios and, through them, commmunicate and affirm ideas, values and social identities. Art museums emerge as significant objects of historical and art-historical inquiry, sites on which political power and social interests and the history of cultural forms visibly intersect.

Annotation Illustrated with over fifty photos, Civilizing Rituals merges contemporary debates with lively discussion and explores central issues involved in the making and displaying of art as industry and how it is presented to the community. Carol Duncan looks at how nations, institutions and private individuals present art and how art museums are shaped by cultural, social and political determinants. Civilizing Rituals is ideal reading for students of art history and museum studies, and professionals in the field will also find much of interest here. BOOK COVER......Page 1 HALF-TITLE......Page 2 TITLE......Page 5 COPYRIGHT......Page 6 CONTENTS......Page 7 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS......Page 8 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS......Page 10 INTRODUCTION......Page 12 1 THE ART MUSEUM AS RITUAL......Page 18 I......Page 32 II......Page 44 3 PUBLIC SPACES, PRIVATE INTERESTS......Page 58 4 SOMETHING ETERNAL......Page 83 5 THE MODERN ART MUSEUM......Page 112 CONCLUSION......Page 142 NOTES......Page 144 BIBLIOGRAPHY......Page 174 INDEX......Page 187 In a groundbreaking study, Carol Duncan explores the function of art museums as ritual settings and as cultural artifacts that are much more than neutral shelters for art. She illuminates the ways in which museums in France, Britain and the U.S. engage their visitors in the performance of ritual scenarios and, through them, communicate and affirm ideas, values and social identities. This book considers the material conditions in which the production and consumption of art takes place, looking at how art is presented to the community and how art museums are shaped by cultural, social and political determinants