Public Museums Essay

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Progressivist Museums

The progressivist philosophy of culture, which posits that advancements in science, technology, social, and economic development are crucial in the development of advanced societies, and that societies advance from a state of barbarism toward a more civilized state, is evident in the modes of display of some of the most popular museums in the world. These museums, The Louvre in Paris, Pitt Rivers in Oxford, and the Smithsonian in D.C., use the progressivist ideology to promote both a cultural theory and a strident nationalism rooted in the belief that its citizens are advancing towards the promise of a better tomorrow. This paper will show how these museums do so.

As Andrew McClellan states, "the public for art is diverse and divided by interests and levels of knowledge."

Appealing to and uniting these diverse interests is what a progressivist museum must do in order to guide its public to its cultural goal. Thus, one sees in the Louvre a "multi-cultural" display of art work that reaches across ethnic boundaries and draws its multi-cultural public to a single focus under one roof. From its Greek treasures from Rhodes to its classical European masterpieces of painting to its collection of Islamic art and near-Eastern antiquities, the Louvre offers something for everyone.

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So while the museum highlights its distinctly Parisian place among the world's stages of cultural elitism (it is in possession of some of the greatest European works of art in the world), it does not dismiss the multi-cultural aspect of progressivism. And because the culture of Paris is dynamic and changing with the free migration of different ethnicities in the 21st century, the museum's progressivist mode of display is as fluctuating and dynamic as the world around it.

This sense of "progressivism" is distinct from that which Henry Balfour wished to cultivate in 1904 at the Pitt Rivers Museum, where he "laid plans for what he called a museum of national culture."

Here, Balfour understood progressivism as a nationalist movement which viewed the world from a British perspective and identified persons and places in terms of British interests. It was progressive in the sense that it rallied Britons around the celebration of the arts, crafts, ideas and beliefs of people whose lands had been colonized by the British. It was one part recognition of British achievements and one part preservation of cultures of different backgrounds, ethnicities, and customs. This is….....

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