The Architecture of the Illusive Distance by Ameri Amir H

Author:Ameri, Amir H.
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Ltd
Published: 2015-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

Fig. 4.2 Giovanni Paolo Pannini, Interior of a Picture Gallery with the Collection of Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga, 195 × 264 cm, oil on canvas, 1740, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT

Photo credit: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY

Art was to the emerging nation-states an effective instrument for public education and the forging of a new national identity and state citizenry. The charter of virtually every major art museum, since the museum’s inception, identifies education of the public as a primary mission.10 Works of art did and continue to validate and substantiate the historical claims and the distinct mythos of the new state, that is, to synthesize aspects of its worldview and ethos, in terms discussed earlier. The concerns here are thematic and focused on works of art and their instrumental exhibition. In this respect, the state took over the function of the gallery and continued its thematic and aesthetic concerns with a new agenda.

The evolving exhibition practices in museums and the motivations behind these practices over time have been the subject of a number of studies on museums in the past two decades.11 The architecture and the distinct spatial experience of the art museum itself have been tangential to these studies, given the focus on the museum’s subject. Admittedly, the exposure and public visibility afforded art in the museums of nineteenth and twentieth centuries is an indispensable part of its instrumentality to the state and can readily be taken for granted. However, this exposure took place in a new space and a distinct place whose development was as instrumental and influential in the public reception of art as the exhibition practices within.

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