Philippe de Montebello in the waning days of his reign (last fall at the Metropolitan Museum)
Here it is, studious art-lings—the course description (scroll to P. 6) for the former Metropolitan Museum director’s fall foray into academia at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts:
THE MEANING OF MUSEUMS
(Lecture) G43.2035.002
Philippe de Montebello
Tuesday 10:00am-Noon
The lectures survey selected issues in the prehistory of the museum, such as collecting in
classical antiquity; the Ottonian Renaissance; church treasuries; the humanist studiolo and
princely Kunstkammer; the birth of the “modern” museum in the Enlightenment; and the early
history of the major European institutions, which emerged alongside the new scientific
disciplines of archaeology and art history. The outstanding concerns of our times—among them
patrimony, repatriation, context, interpretation, education and professionalization—are of
particular interest, and today’s museum serves as a constant against which the multiple agendas
of collecting and display in the past can be assessed. As the course examines the museum as a
Western European development, issues of special interest include the differences in approach
between northern and southern European museums, and the relationship—historical and
current—of Western museums to parts of the non-Euro-American world, in their earlier role as
source-countries and more recently as players in our new age of globalization.
I thought one of the “outstanding concerns of our times” was finding the resources to do all that. And while comparing “differences in approach between northern and southern European museums,” why not also explore the considerable differences between European museums and those right here in the U.S.?
As it happens, two preeminent British museum directors just recently had their say on the American-European dichotomy (not to America’s advantage): COMING SOON.