The Rise of University Art Museums
BOSTON REVIEW
By Alana Shilling-Janoff
MASSACHUSETTS---At the beginning of the twentieth century, museums were considered august guardians of cultural wealth. By the late 1960s the association between culture and wealth remained intact, though the terms had changed: culture was no longer just a kind of metaphorical wealth; it was a way of procuring the real thing. Over the last fifty years, museums have become even more entangled in consumerism. There is, moreover, hope elsewhere. Another kind of museum offers the public what commercialized counterparts might—and often more cheaply and effectively. Ironically these museums are sheltered under the aegis of institutions perceived as so exclusionary that they are collectively labeled the “ivory tower,” a synecdoche that suggests an improbable wedding of spun-sugar fantasy and contemptuous anti-intellectualism. [link]
By Alana Shilling-Janoff
MASSACHUSETTS---At the beginning of the twentieth century, museums were considered august guardians of cultural wealth. By the late 1960s the association between culture and wealth remained intact, though the terms had changed: culture was no longer just a kind of metaphorical wealth; it was a way of procuring the real thing. Over the last fifty years, museums have become even more entangled in consumerism. There is, moreover, hope elsewhere. Another kind of museum offers the public what commercialized counterparts might—and often more cheaply and effectively. Ironically these museums are sheltered under the aegis of institutions perceived as so exclusionary that they are collectively labeled the “ivory tower,” a synecdoche that suggests an improbable wedding of spun-sugar fantasy and contemptuous anti-intellectualism. [link]
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