The Birth of the Modernist Art Museum

2013 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 503-529
Author(s):  
Katherine Kuenzli
Keyword(s):  
Formal Language ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Educational Programs ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Museum Design

The Folkwang Museum (1902) in Hagen, Germany, represented a radically new approach to museum design and display. Based on principles of a Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, the museum overturned historicist museum principles. Following Nietzsche, the Folkwang’s founder and director, Karl Ernst Osthaus, advocated a spontaneous and individual relationship to artworks and praised art that yielded rich, synesthetic experiences. With the help of art critic Julius Meier-Graefe and designer Henry van de Velde, Osthaus defined an advanced formal language based in Parisian painterly aesthetics that he believed could provide the terms for coordinating the arts. In The Birth of the Modernist Art Museum: The Folkwang as Gesamtkunstwerk. Katherine Kuenzli shows that at the Folkwang, principles of simultaneity displaced linear narrative and historical and geographical classification. Through visually striking displays and ambitious educational programs, Osthaus and his colleagues also sought to expand the public for art. Unity remained elusive, however; Osthaus, Meier-Graefe, and van de Velde adopted competing ideological agendas that reveal the political heterogeneity of the Gesamtkunstwerk around 1900.

To Have and To Hold … Or Not? Deaccessioning Policies, Practices, and the Question of the Public’s Interest

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-159
Author(s):  
Deandra Rose Mann
Keyword(s):  
Financial Distress ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
George Washington ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
National Gallery Of Art ◽  
Washington University ◽  
Arts Community

Abstract:Shockwaves echoed through the media and the arts community when the Delaware Art Museum chose to deaccession pieces from its collection and when the public learned that the Detroit Institute of Arts might be forced to do the same. Further concern arose when financial troubles compelled the Corcoran Gallery of Art to merge with the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University. An examination of the climate and legal battles surrounding these events shows how these institutions chose to cope with the financial adversity that put their collections at risk and illustrates the precarious position of works in a museum’s collection when that museum experiences financial distress. This article explores the ethical, judicial, and legislative frameworks currently governing deaccessioning and ultimately advocates for new legislative solutions to guide the deaccession process in order to provide the opportunity to maintain these works in the public sphere.

scholarly journals Henry Savile and the Elizabethan Court

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 32-60
Author(s):  
Alexandra Gajda
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Connections ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Problematic Relationship ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Court Politics ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Earl Of Essex

Abstract This essay examines Henry Savile’s relationship with the Elizabethan and Jacobean court and the political culture of the period in which he lived. Particular attention is paid to the controversies surrounding Savile’s alleged connection to Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex and the court politics of the 1590s, and variant interpretations scholars have made of the political significance of his historical scholarship. Savile’s Elizabethan literary remains demonstrate his persistent interest in the association between militarism and the arts of civil government, and the frequently problematic relationship of virtuous soldiers and statesmen to princely rulers. These concerns were shared by leading Elizabethan soldiers and statesmen, from the earl of Leicester, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, to the earl of Essex, and may have influenced the latter’s growing alienation from queen and court in the late 1590s. A broader comparison of Savile’s career with those of contemporary Merton scholars, however, confirms that he rejected the public careers pursued by other friends and colleagues. Savile’s political connections seem to have served his scholarly ambitions rather than the other way around, and after the rebellion of the earl of Essex he seems to have retreated from life at court.

Liberal hospitality

The Athenaeum ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 133-156
Author(s):  
Michael Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Religion And Science ◽  
New Members ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Social Backgrounds

This chapter assesses the Athenæum's 'hospitality' towards a wide range of ideologies and social backgrounds among candidates and members. Non-partisan politically, it accommodated both sides in the Reform debates of the 1830s, with members engaging in pamphlet wars rather than calling for resignations, as happened at the political clubs. Similarly, the pattern of early Rule II elections indicates a willingness to introduce new members of outstanding ability in science, literature, and the arts who were known to be the chief antagonists of equally prominent existing members. The chapter looks at some of the flashpoints in the club's history between 1860 and 1890, when liberal opinion in politics, religion, and science assumed the ascendancy in Britain, and the Athenæum strove to maintain its tradition of tolerance and balance. It is at these flashpoints, and at times when conservative sexual mores influenced public life, that the relationship between national developments and the life of the club, conducted on the margins between the private and the public, is most revealing.

scholarly journals Breaking Through: Literature and Arts in China, 1997-1986

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bonnie S. McDougall
Keyword(s):  
Political Leadership ◽  
Professional Autonomy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Art World ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
The Public ◽  
Economic Basis ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Means Of Production

One of the most notable features of the fifties and sixties in China was the public willingness of the literary and art world to submit to the dictates of the political leadership. The reasons for their cooperation, heavily qualified though it might have been, and the various methods by which the authorities ensured it, have been described elsewhere and are not the topic of this paper.' What I am interested in here is the way in which this cooperation was undermined in the seventies and openly flouted in the eighties. Instead of submission, a sigruficant number of people in literature and the arts offered challenges both within the system and outside it, ranging from flagrant rejection of accepted conventions to a more cautious testing of the limits of tolerance, and from demands for professional autonomy to private arrangements outside existing organisations. The limit-setters and upholders - that is, the overlapping groups of orthodox Party leaders, the entrenched cultural bureaucracy, and writers and artists claiming positions of authority - found themselves restricted in their response to these challenges by the post-Mao modemisation program. The reform faction in the new leadership, acknowledging a complex relationship between the superstructure and the economic basis, found themselves to a certain extent obliged to yield ground, supporting the challengers and restraining the orthodox. The more detached of the Party intellectuals might also have noticed how, with a keen grasp of Marxist imperatives, the new activists began by establishing their own means of production and distribution.

Klimt, Gustav (1862–1918)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Jordon
Keyword(s):  
Modern Art ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Arts And Crafts ◽  
The Public ◽  
Founding Member ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Imperial Court ◽  
Gustav Klimt ◽  
History Of

Gustav Klimt had an indelible influence on the artistic and cultural innovations that occurred in Vienna at the turn of the century. He was a founding member and public figurehead for the city’s Secession, an organization responsible for exhibitions that introduced the public to the latest developments in European modern art. His associations with leading members of the city’s cultural and intellectual elite, and his collaborations with leading artists, architects, and designers resulted in many important artworks. In 1876, at age 14, Klimt enrolled at the recently founded Kunstgewerbeschule (Imperial and Royal School of Applied Arts and Crafts), where he spent seven years. Klimt soon established his reputation for large paintings in public buildings as part of the redevelopment of the Ringstrasse: a series on the history of theatre for the new Burgtheater (Imperial Court Theatre), 1886–1888, was followed by murals in the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Art Museum), 1891, featuring female personifications of the arts of ancient cultures, showing Klimt’s growing interest in women as a primary subject in his work. Klimt received the Emperor’s prize for his realist painting Auditorium Theatre (1888), which includes more than 100 portraits of leading Viennese citizens making up the theatre’s audience.

scholarly journals Theories on socialist realism and socialist music culture in the 1960s in Hungary

Muzikologija ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 125-140
Author(s):  
Andras Ranki
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Music Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Crucial Problem ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
The 1960S

In the 1960s, the quantity of publications on aesthetics of music significantly increased in Hungary. The variability of the subjects, the approaches and the opinions are result of an explicit ideological reordering based on the consequently articulated politics of anti-Stalinism. By the mid-sixties the economic founding and sustainability of socialism and its optimized operation became the crucial problem for the power, hence the importance of natural and social sciences increased in the public discourses. The arts were no longer treated as mere illustrations of the political power and its intentions. I focus on the main contributions to aesthetics of music of the so-called creative Marxism written by three internationally acknowledged Hungarian scholars of this period: Jozsef Ujfalussy, Denes Zoltai and Janos Marothy. Selected texts are analized from theoretical points of view and interpreted in the context of the Hungarian cultural policy and the national and international career of their authors as well.

Democrazy—Dem Go Craze, O: Monitoring the 1999 Nigerian Elections

1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-33
Author(s):  
Darren Kew
Keyword(s):  
Transition Program ◽  
The Political ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Soccer Match ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Military

In many respects, the least important part of the 1999 elections were the elections themselves. From the beginning of General Abdusalam Abubakar’s transition program in mid-1998, most Nigerians who were not part of the wealthy “political class” of elites—which is to say, most Nigerians— adopted their usual politically savvy perspective of siddon look (sit and look). They waited with cautious optimism to see what sort of new arrangement the military would allow the civilian politicians to struggle over, and what in turn the civilians would offer the public. No one had any illusions that anything but high-stakes bargaining within the military and the political class would determine the structures of power in the civilian government. Elections would influence this process to the extent that the crowd influences a soccer match.

The Refusal of Politics

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurent Dubreuil
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Second Moment ◽  
The Arts

Laurent Dubreuil provocatively proposes an extremist rethinking of the limits of politics – toward a break from politics, the political and policies. Rather than yet another re-articulation, he calls for a refusal of politics, suggesting a form of apolitics that would make our lives more liveable. The first chapter situates the refusal of politics in relation to different contemporary theoretical attempts to renew politics, and makes the case for a greater rupture. The second moment takes up what is liveable in life by way of apolitical experience, in contrast to appropriations of the collective, including a discussion of the arts. Finally, Dubreuil draws up an incomplete inventory of means: forms of existence – often frail and fleeting – that make an exit toward atopia.

Facing the Challenge of Democracy

2011 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Democratic Representation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Party Polarization

Citizens are political simpletons—that is only a modest exaggeration of a common characterization of voters. Certainly, there is no shortage of evidence of citizens' limited political knowledge, even about matters of the highest importance, along with inconsistencies in their thinking, some glaring by any standard. But this picture of citizens all too often approaches caricature. This book brings together leading political scientists who offer new insights into the political thinking of the public, the causes of party polarization, the motivations for political participation, and the paradoxical relationship between turnout and democratic representation. These studies propel a foundational argument about democracy. Voters can only do as well as the alternatives on offer. These alternatives are constrained by third players, in particular activists, interest groups, and financial contributors. The result: voters often appear to be shortsighted, extreme, and inconsistent because the alternatives they must choose between are shortsighted, extreme, and inconsistent.

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