The Arts in the University
How to Make Great Art More Accessible
A few years ago, I was walking in Berlin with a German colleague near to the Museum Island. On one side, he remarked, you find the site of Hegel’s office. And on the other side, the Bode Museum, the Pergamon Museum and the other great Berlin art museums. That makes it sound like the academics and the museums were closely connected. In fact, however, he went on to note, Hegel didn’t play any practical role in the founding of the great Prussian public art museums. But that proximity is very suggestive, for it’s a reminder that academic art history and the art museum grew up together in 1820s Prussia.
Indeed, there was a natural alliance, for the museum curators need their colleagues in art history to make attributions, explain the values of artworks and develop a history of these artifacts. The art museum curator is concerned with artifacts, and the academic art historian with the attributions, the history, and the interpretation of those artifacts. If we accept this broad division of activities, then it seems obvious that the births of the art museum and art history occurred at the same time and place because they needed each other. This, at least, is a useful generalization.
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