Professor Philippe de Montebello’s NYU Graduate Course: "The Meaning of Museums"

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.