[00:00.00]NARRATOR: Listen to part of a lecture in an art history class.
[00:03.55]MALE PROFESSOR: OK, so we’ve all heard of the Louvre, right? [00:06.86]Maybe the most famous art museum in Paris, France? [00:10.28]In 1793 the Louvre was the first museum to open its doors to the public. [00:15.57]Up till then, there were lots of private museums…private collections in the homes of Europe’s royalty and nobility…but only a select few were invited to see those works of art. [00:26.26]The idea of a public museum was, in essence, a new one.
[00:30.65]Now, when the Louvre opened as a public museum, it was free to all artists every day of the week. [00:37.10]But to those who were not artists—y’know, the rest of the general public? [00:40.91]Well, they were only allowed to visit the museum on certain days. [00:44.57]And that’s because the public museum was first seen as a teaching institution—a place where past artistic achievements would be available to current artists to learn from.
[00:53.85]OK, so you see the first step was taken—from museums that were just private institutions owned by royalty…to the Louvre, a museum open to the public—with some restrictions. [01:06.52]But then there was another shift…and that was brought about by a French painter named Alexandre Lenoir. [01:13.02]Lenoir was a young and enthusiastic artist who’d been assigned to be the supervisor of a storehouse for artworks in 1791.
[01:21.42]Y’see, the French Revolution was taking place at that time, and many national monuments and other works of art were getting damaged or destroyed. [01:29.89]Consequently, a couple of large buildings in Paris were dedicated as storehouses for rescued artworks. [01:36.40]Five years later, in 1796, Lenoir did something unique with the art in his storehouse—something never done before: he classified and displayed the paintings and statues by period and style.
[01:49.30]So people began to notice—and admire—what Lenoir was doing. [01:53.95]And soon, he transformed his storehouse into what would become the National Museum of French Monuments, which would later become a branch of the very Louvre that started this whole discussion. [02:04.74]And, uh, what’s even more notable is that, Lenoir’s system of classification and display—it became a model for other public art museums…with each room in the museum representing a different century or period of art. [02:19.37]Lenoir’s belief that a museum should be concerned with public instruction and offer education according to historical periods—this concept seems obvious now, but it was groundbreaking back then.
[02:31.31]Interestingly, though, not everyone was, uhh…impressed with Lenoir…or with museums in general, for that matter. [02:38.84]There were people—including some artists and historians—who were as much against museums as Lenoir was for them. [02:46.43]In fact, some argued that museums would pretty much bring an end to art. [02:50.78]They contended that works of art removed from their original context were…incomplete—that artworks ought to remain in the places…the mountains, towns, uhh…in the locations where they were originally created and viewed.
[03:05.41]Take a painting created in an Italian seaside village, for example. [03:10.48]Could that painting maintain its same identity once it was moved to a museum in France? [03:15.50]Nowadays, most of us know and appreciate the fact that we can go to a museum and see many works of art from different time periods, artists, and countries. [03:25.41]The fact that anyone can go into one place and see works of distant cultures, enjoy their beauty, and even find inspiration in them benefits us all. [03:35.38]The Louvre clearly embraces this concept. [03:38.55]But there are still some skeptics, people today who are just as skeptical of art museums as the critics were back in Lenoir’s day…and for all the same reasons.
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