The Monument and The Museum, The Enduring Tension in Public Architecture

“ As far as the outside world—particularly perhaps England and the United States, but hardly less Latin America—was concerned the New Louvre was the prime architectural glory of Second Empire Paris and the symbol, par excellence, of cosmopolitan modernity. Burghers in Amsterdam and Montreal, vacationers in Yorkshire and silver-miners in the Rocky Mountains all expected to find echoes of it in the sumptuous new hotels they frequented; Latin Americans continued to emulate it even into the twentieth century. ”

“ A traveller, if he looks at the thing selfishly, ought to wish him a long reign and arbitrary power, since he makes it his policy to illustrate his capital with palatial edifices, which are, however, better for a stranger to look at, than for his own people to pay for.
We have spent to-day chiefly in seeing some of the galleries of the Louvre. I must confess that the vast and beautiful edifice struck me far more than the pictures, sculpture, and curiosities which it contains,— the shell more than the kernel inside ”

“ The old palace was still inhabited by a number of artists and their families. David had his studio there, and most of the painters who had made for themselves a tolerable reputation had apartments in the Louvre. It was reserved for Napoleon to turn them all out, and to give to the Louvre the character which it has since preserved—that of a national palace of art treasures.
The galleries of the Louvre profited greatly by the Napoleonic wars. All continental Europe was laid under contribution by the victorious French armies, but especially Italy and Spain. ”

“ It requires the labor of a day even to saunter through the innumerable rooms of this magnificent abode. But it will never again resound with the revelries of kings and queens. Royalty has forsaken it forever. Democracy has now taken strange and anomalous possession of its walls. It is converted into the most splendid museum in the world—filled with the richest productions of ancient and modern art. ”

“ After this the moyen-age Louvre, attributable to Saint Louis and Charles V, with its great tower, its thick walls of stone and its deep-dug moats, came into being. With Francis I came a more sympathetic, a more subtle era of architectural display, a softening of outlines and an interpolation of flowering gables. It was thus that was born that noble monument known as the New Louvre, which combined all the arts and graces of a fastidious ambition. ”

“ But if a more expensive building is attempted, it will result like the Louvre, which has never been finished. The parks are first to be considered, their boundaries determined and inclosed. I wish this new palace to be somewhat handsomer than the Elysee; and although that cost less than eight millions, it is one of the most beautiful palaces of Paris. That of the King of Rome will rank next to the Louvre, which is itself a magnificent palace. It will be, so to speak, only a country seat for one residing in Paris, for of course the winters would be passed at the Louvre or the Tuileries. ”

“ Interesting as the Louvre may be by its ancient history, the old palace is above all famous in the present day for its admirable picture {201} gallery, first thrown open to the public in the darkest, most sanguinary days of the French Revolution. The modern collection was formed by Francis I., who, during his Italian campaigns, had acquired a taste for Italian art, and who not only invited celebrated Italian artists to his court, but gave princely orders to those who, like Raphael and Michel Angelo, were unable to visit France in person. ”

“ Its magnificence and splendour speak to every eye, and are calculated to attract the attention of foreigners from the four quarters of the globe; while, as a source of improvement, it presents to students the finest models that the arts and sciences could assemble. In a philosophical point of view, such a Museum may be compared to a torch, whose light will not only dispel the remnant of that bad taste which, for a century, has predominated in the arts dependent on design, but also serve to guide the future progress of the rising generation. ”

“ The annual picture expositions in the Champs Elysées are always crowded to suffocation, especially on free days, showing that the common people are not wholly indifferent to art, but for some reason which has never been satisfactorily explained, the celebrated museum, the one-time residence of the Kings of France, with all its historic memories, its priceless pictures and endless rooms filled with sculptures and antiquities is treated with indifference and neglect. ”

“ The first things to be reserved for the king are the Louvre and the Tuileries, monuments of grandeur and of indigence, whose plan, whose façades, are due to the genius of art, but whose completion has been neglected or rather forgotten by the wasteful carelessness of a few kings. Each generation expected to see this monument, worthy of Athens and of Rome, at last finished; but our kings, fearing the gaze of the people, went far from the capital to surround themselves with luxury, courtiers, and soldiers. ”

“ Art is in fact the symbolic currency of the world. The possession of rare and much coveted works of art is regarded as a sign of national greatness. The growth and development of the Kaiser Friedrich museum was due to the active support of the late Emperor, a man whose distaste for genuine art is notorious, but whose sense of the symbolic was highly developed. Large and expensively ornamented buildings become symbols of municipal greatness. The amount of useless ornaments on façades of their offices is a valuable symbol of the financial exuberance of big commercial undertakings ”

“ When the Allies entered Paris in 1815, they found in the gallery of the Louvre about two thousand works of art—the gems of the world in painting and antique sculpture—mostly the spoils of war, deposited there by the Emperor Napoleon. The selection of these works was entrusted to a commission, at the head of whom was the Baron Denon, who accompanied the Emperor in all his expeditions for this purpose. The Louvre, at this time, was the acknowledged emporium of the fine arts. The grand determination of Napoleon to place France highest in art among the nations, did not rest here. ”

“ No greater harm is done to the true advancement of architecture than this insistence that exterior effect is the sole end to be desired. More than any other cause it has operated to depress the art, and helped to make people question the utility of intrusting their interests to the architects. ”

“ If the public really desired great and impressive works of architecture they would have them; but neither the British public nor its mouthpiece the government, care anything about it. Their highest ambition is to get convenient and economical buildings. And as to the theory of the new school, that we should throw overboard all precedent in architectural detail, that is intellectually impossible. We are not made so that we can invent everything de novo, or escape the effect on our minds of what has preceded us; the attempt can only lead to baldness or eccentricity. ”

“ A magnificent decadence, however, for the ancient Gothic genius, that sun which sets behind the gigantic press of Mayence, still penetrates for a while longer with its rays that whole hybrid pile of Latin arcades and Corinthian columns.
It is that setting sun which we mistake for the dawn.
Nevertheless, from the moment when architecture is no longer anything but an art like any other; as soon as it is no longer the total art, the sovereign art, the tyrant art,—it has no longer the power to retain the other arts. ”

“ The building for the Museum is one which can never excite high admiration, never touch any chord of poetic sentiment, never arouse in the student within its walls any feeling save that of mere convenience and utility. ”

“ Of all the emotions that can be raised by architecture, grandeur is that which has the greatest influence on the mind. It ought therefore to be the chief study of the artist, to raise this emotion in great buildings. But it seems unhappy for architecture, that it is necessarily governed by certain principles opposite to grandeur: the direct effect of regularity and proportion, is to make a building appear less than it is in reality. Any invention to reconcile these with grandeur, would be a capital improvement in architecture. ”

“ Nor is there any ground for saying that the fault is in the builders,—that the old builders met the demands of their time, and would equally satisfy the demands of our time, without sacrifice of their art. The first demand in the days of good architecture was, that the building should have an independent artistic value beyond its use. This is what architecture requires; for architecture is building, pure,—building for its own sake, not as means. ”

“ But considering the double aim of architecture, a fine as well as an useful art, there is no good reason why ornaments may not be added to please the eye without any relation to use. This liberty is allowed in poetry, painting, and gardening, and why not in architecture considered as a fine art? A private dwelling-house, it is true, and other edifices where use is the chief aim, admit not regularly any ornament but what has the appearance, at least, of use: but temples, triumphal arches, and other buildings intended chiefly or solely for show, may be highly ornamented. ”

“ Yet after all, when all is said, the great and noble buildings, the highest and grandest triumphs of architecture are the only ones which profoundly affect the imaginations and kindle the artistic aspirations of men; and when a community becomes so pervaded with the artistic spirit that works of art furnish the readiest, most natural and complete expression of its ideals and enthusiasms, great works will result whenever there are enthusiasms and ideals worthy of monumental expression. ”

“ All the other peoples of antiquity devoted themselves to the rearing of religious and sepulchral monuments, and to the construction of palaces for their sovereigns. Their political organization did not lend itself to development in other directions. So long as a people is not considered as an individual there can be no thought of erecting for its comfort or education structures of any considerable importance; so long as it has no existence as a civil body there can be no call for the building of edifices wherein to discuss its own affairs or the affairs of State. ”

“ Beauty alone is not sufficient to constitute architectural excellence. Architecture is the art of building, and utility is the first consideration. If the architect be an artist, endowed with an appreciation of form and color, he will so combine the materials at his command that he will produce a building at once useful and beautiful. Exterior ornament should be sparingly used on cottages, and, if at all, should be so employed as to emphasize the design. But it seems more sensible in an economical dwelling to keep the exterior quite simple. ”

“ May we not hope to see our native granite reposing in the ever-during strength of the Doric, or springing up in the grand and lofty Gothic, in forms which beauty and utility, the eye and the judgment, taste and devotion, shall unite to approve and to admire? But while we regard sacred and civil architecture as highly important, let us not forget that other branch, so essential to personal comfort and happiness,—domestic architecture or common house-building. ”

“ As a setting for this work, the museum building should be simple in construction and planned with a view to economical management. Elaborate decoration or architectural effects are not desirable. Money can be expended to better advantage in other ways. Problems of lighting, construction and arrangement of cases, and the distribution of material call for careful attention. The general color effect and the background for objects are important elements in adding to the attractiveness of the collections. Cleanliness, neatness and abundant light are the cardinal virtues of the museum. ”

“ A great museum has two objects, neither of which can be subordinated to the other. It aims, on the one hand, to arrange exhibits which are instructive and interesting to the public and, on the other, to advance science by its expeditions and the study of its collections. ”

“ New timber must be planted, or any institution will soon lose its prestige. Worthy collections should be housed in suitable buildings, but the crown of the whole is the strength of the staff of curators. They come first in the judgment of the world as opposed to local opinion. When one names the great museums of Paris one forgets the specimens in the revered memory of Lamarck, Cuvier, Humboldt, the Saint-Hilaires and the Milne-Edwards. ”

“ Such a change is in the nature of an adaptation to the new surroundings, and is necessary for the vigorous life and propagation of the modern type of museum. How great the change is may be realized by contrasting, let us say, the American Museum of Natural History, which not only arranges attractive exhibits, but makes them known by its popular Journal, with some museums in Europe that still appear to be maintained in the interests of their staff, while the public is only admitted for a few hours each week, to gape at an unorganized crowd of objects which it can not comprehend. ”

“ In a museum the collection is the essential; the building is the mere accident of the surroundings of the collection, and it should completely conform to all the requirements. Yet can it be believed that, even in the last year or two, enormous national museums—as at Cairo and131 Brussels—have been built without the smallest regard to the collection, or the opinions of the curators? The result at Cairo is the most deplorable sacrifice of the art and history of a great country to the follies and childish vanity of an incompetent and unsympathetic architect. ”

“ No other qualities can possibly atone for defects of lighting in a museum. No building with a bad light can be called properly a museum; it may be an architect’s triumph, a civic ornament, a costly patchwork, a marvel of folly, but a museum it is not, if it is unfit for the first requirements of a collection. ”

“ Marble doorways and baseboards should never be used in exhibition galleries. The reasons for this are, that the museum Director is hampered, in choosing the color of his decoration, by the color in the marble, and, as stated before, the museum must not be in itself so grand as to rival in interest the exhibits. ”