The Museum Is Open: Towards a Transnational History of Museums 1750-1940 (Contact Zones Book 1)

New perspectives for the research on museum history Museum science, museum analysis, museum history, and museum theory – all this expanding terminology underscores the growing scholarly interest in museums. A recurring assertion is that as an institution, the museum has largely functioned as a venue for the formation of specifically national identities. This volume, by contrast, highlights the museum as a product of transnational processes of exchange, focusing on the period from 1750 to 1940. * A ground-breaking contribution to transnational art scholarship and museum history * Contribution to a better understanding of museum practice and its international framing Museum science, museum analysis, museum history, and museum theory - all of these composite designations have come into our parlance in recent years. Above all, this expanding terminology underscores the growing scholarly interest in museums. In this new scholarship, a recurring assertion is that as an institution, the museum has largely functioned as a venue for the formation of specifically national identities. This volume, by contrast, highlights the museum as a product of transnational processes of exchange, focusing on the period from ca. 1750 to 1940. Mobility, in the grand understanding and using of this term, is used as one of the major model of thinking art and history today. It suggests a contra vain of interpretation to the traditional art historian's mind, which has usually been occupied with the static of art, and therefore emphasizes in contrast the in-flowing process of the creation of art. The series Contact Zones encourages studies that focus on contact zones, namely spaces of interactions and diffusions of objects and men, art and ideas, materials and techniques, and on spaces of processing of aesthetic notions and concepts, all related to the visual. Book jacket

Museumswissenschaft, Museumsanalyse, Museumsgeschichte, Museumstheorien ... – neben Bezeichnungen wie Museologie und Museumskunde haben in den letzten Jahren Komposita Verwendung gefunden, die vor allem eines vor Augen führen: das zunehmende wissenschaftliche Interesse an Museen. Bis heute kehrt dabei das Argument stets wieder, dass die Institution maßgeblicher Schauplatz nationaler Identitätsbildung gewesen sei. Der Band rückt hingegen das Museum als Produkt grenzüberschreitender Austausch- und Transferprozesse von circa 1750 bis 1940 in den Mittelpunkt.

Mobility - in the broad sense and use of the term - is a major theme in the reflection on art and history today. With its emphasis on processes of influx and reciprocity, it suggests an interpretative approach new to traditional thinking on art history, most often concerned with art in its static state. The Contact Zone series encourages studies focusing on spaces of interaction, transaction and movement of persons and objects, art and ideas, materials and techniques, and on spaces where aesthetic concepts related to the visual arts evolve and develop.