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From Trayeler to Tourist:

these were seldom open to the public. In ancient days, and es-pecially before the printed book, museums and libraries had been closely allied, as in Alexandria, for example. Of course, there had always been some works of art especially designed for public display, as in the Pinacotheca (a marble hall of the propylaeum on the Athenian Acropolis) or in the forum of Augustus in Romę. At least sińce Roman times, the best collections of the works of art and of learning were privately owned. And the first modern public museuin was the Brilish Museum, established by Act of Parliament in 1753. It had been inspired by the will of Sir Hans Sloane, who on his dcath that year left the nation his remarkable collection of books, manuscripts, and curiosities. On ae European continent most of the great art museums are part of the booty which the ris-ing middle classes have captured for themselves in the revolu-tions sińce the late eighteenth century. The Louvre, which had been a royal pałace, became a public art museum after the French Revolution of 1789.

Nowadays a visit to the best art museums in Europę is often a tour of the vacated residences of magnates, noble-men, and monarchs of the pre-democratic age: in Florence, the Uffizi and Pitti Pałace    Yenioe, the Doge’s Pałace; in

Paris, the Louvre; in Vie^;    ehonbrunn. Beautiful 'objects,

taken from scores of pp iy residences, are crowded to-gether for public display the grandest of defnnct palaces. Painting, sculpture, tapeśtries, tableware, and other objets d’art (once part of the interior decoration or household equipment of a working aristocracy) were thus(^f‘liberated7 by and for the people. Now they were to be shown to the nation and to all comers. Common people could now see treas-ures from the inner sanctums of palaces. treasures originally dćslgned^_TO~adoTn the intimate dining tables, bedrooms, and bathrooms of a well-guarded aristocracy. At last everyone could take a Cook’s Tour of the art of the ages for a nominał admission fee or free of charge. Statesmen saw these new museums as symbols of wide-spreading education and cul-ture, as monuments and catalysts of national pride. So they

were. Today they remain the destination of tourist-pilgrims from afar.

To bring the paintings of Botticelli, Rubens, and Titian into a room where one could see them in a few minutes, to gather together the sculpture of Donatello and Cellini from widely dispersed churches, monasteries, and drawing rooms for chronological display in a single hall, to remove the tapes-tries designed for wall-covering in remote mansions and hunt-ing lodges, and spread them in the halls of centrally located museums—this was a great convenience. But there was one unavoidable consecpignce. Ali these things were being re-moved fr(un their contest. In a sense, therefore, they were - all being _laQsrepfeseifted. Perhaps morę was gained in the quantity of peopIg~who could see them at all than was lost in the quality of the experience. This is not the question. The effect on experience is plain and undeniable.^ i

Inevitably these museums—and others madę later on the defunct-palace model—become major tourist attractions. They still are. It remains true, however, that, almost with-out exception, whatever one sees in a museum is seen out of its proper surroundings. The impression of individual works of art or of a country’s past culture as a whole, whenever it is formed from museum visits, is inevitably factitious. It has been put together for your and my convenience, instruction, amusement, and dełight. But to put it together the art com-missioners havc had to take apart the very environment, the culture which was once real, and which actually created and enjoyed these very works. The museum visitor tours a ware-house of cultural artifacts; he does not see vital organs of living culture. Even where (as in the Prado in Madrid or the Hermitage in Leningrad) one visits what was once a private museum, the origirial collection has been so diluted or ex-panded and the atmosphere so changed that the experience is itself a new artifact. Only the museum itself is quite real— a functioning part of a going concem. The ribbon across the chair, the ancestral portrait no longer viewed by its descend-ant, is a symbol of the change. Each living art object, taken