Gwendolyn Wright, Editor

The Formation of National Collections of Art and Archaeology

ISBN 978-0300077186
CASVA/National Gallery of Art
1995
Architectural History

A wide-ranging analysis of museums that have represented and sometimes invented national aspirations. From the late-eighteenth century to the late-twentieth, both the architecture and the collections of such institutions asserted a shared public heritage for all citizens. The collections also extended nationalism to incorporate places that had been colonized, taken by military force or were admired as a prestigious lineage (notably ancient Greece, Rome, and Persia). Essays consider the overlapping yet distinctive national museums of Britain, France, the United States, the Scandinavian countries, and the French colony of Indochina, as well as implicit presumptions about cultural hierarchies that define the very nature of museum settings.

Selected Review Quotes
'A matter of great personal and public significance.'
   Matthew Politsky, Modern Language Quarterly

'The heady rhetoric of education and national coherence became the hallmark of the museum's appeal to the public.'
   Annie Coombes, Oxford Art Review