Museum

“ Thousands of statues decorate these temples and the city everywhere,—statues, one of which alone would be sufficient to make the museum where it was placed the first museum of the world. And how beautiful the people are, as they come crowding into the squares, into the streets! ”

“ Museum, this observing the daily life of the populace, and bargain-hunting in the Strada de’ Tribunali, are agreeable enough for a while, but of necessity there comes a time when the mind grows weary of yelling people and of jostling crowds, of stuffy churches and of the chilly halls of the Museum, of steep dirty streets and of glaring boulevards, so that we begin to sigh for fresh air and a change of scene. ”

“ He who goes over this immense building, cannot do so without a feeling of admiration for the men whose energy has brought together this vast and wonderful collection of things, the like of which cannot be found in any other museum in the world. The reflection of the setting sun against a mirror in one of the rooms, told me that night was approaching, and I had but a moment in which to take another look at the portrait that I had seen the previous day, and then bade adieu to the Museum. ”

“ We walked straight into the forecourt of the Museum, where, except that the railings were gone, and the whispering boughs of the trees were all about, nothing seemed changed; the very pigeons were wheeling about the building and clinging to the ornaments of the pediment as I had seen them of old. ”

“ By and by, when the whirligig of time has brought on another revenge, the museum itself becomes a dust-heap, and remains so till after long ages it is rediscovered, and valued as belonging to a neo-rubbish age—containing, perhaps, traces of a still older paleo-rubbish civilization. ”

“ Religion tames the savage; Paganism makes him a crouching sensualist; the Egyptian sees a God in the stars of heaven; and then the mathematician, the musician, the poet, and the painter set to work, and these prophets of mysterious beauties realise civilised mankind. The visitor enters the museum, after ascending a noble flight of steps, by a massive carved oak door, into a fine entrance hall, the ceiling of which is highly coloured, and the general decoration of which is Grecian Ionic. ”

“ If they are tolerably old they are often touching; but they must have a relative antiquity, for I confess I can do nothing with works of art of which the badness is of recent origin. The cool, still, empty chambers in which indifferent collections are apt to be preserved, the red brick tiles, the diffused light, the musty odour, the mementos around you of dead fashions, the snuffy custodian in a black skull-cap, who pulls aside a faded curtain to show you the lustreless gem of the museum—these things have a mild historical quality, and the sallow canvases after all illustrate something. ”

“ The collection of pictures and statuary in the Historical Museum is so overwhelming, and the series of rooms apparently so interminable, that a single visit is inadequate to do more than give the visitor a sort of confused general idea of the whole. ”

“ Museum is the museum belonging to the nation, and instead of only certain things being collected, there are curious and valuable things belonging to every kind of study. For instance, if you were studying the different nations or wild tribes of the earth, you would find things belonging to various tribes of people in the Museum; or if you were interested in rare old books, you would find more of them at the Museum than anywhere; or if you wanted to find out anything in any branch of study, you would find clever men at the Museum who would help you. ”

“ Wandering through Vitré, one seems to be visiting a wonderful and perfect museum, such as must needs please even the exacting, the blasé, and the indifferent. You are met at every turn by the works of the ancients in all their naïve purity and simplicity, many of the houses having been built in the first half of the seventeenth century. ”

“ In this house, designed as a gift primarily to the people of his adoptive city and native State, the urgency of whose release from the bondage of ugliness he was in a position to measure—in this museum of museums, a palace of art which was to show for compact as a Greek temple was compact, a receptacle of treasures sifted to positive sanctity, his spirit to-day almost altogether lived, making up, as he would have said, for lost time and haunting the portico in anticipation of the final rites. ”

“ But, of all places in the world, a Museum is the queerest place in which to raise petty questions of nationality. If it be at all worthy of its name, its contents must have come from the four quarters of the globe. ”

“ BY a museum I do not mean a storehouse of things curious in art or nature—a repository of curiosities, as Worcester defines the word, although in most large towns there are places called museums, and realizing his definition—but a building in which are collected books, and natural or artificial objects that relate to, and are preserved, classified, and conveniently arranged to illustrate, one or more departments of knowledge, and from which objects of mere curiosity are excluded. ”

“ Secondly. The museum is to manifest to these simple persons the beauty and life of all things and creatures in their perfectness. Not their modes of corruption, disease, or death. Not even, always, their genesis, in the more or less blundering beginnings of it; not even their modes of nourishment, if destructive; you must not stuff a blackbird pulling up a worm, nor exhibit in a glass case a crocodile crunching a baby. ”

“ For every house of the Muses, where, indeed, they live, is an Interpreter's by the wayside, or rather, a place of oracle and interpretation in one. And the right function of every museum, to simple persons, is the manifestation to them of what is lovely in the life of Nature, and heroic in the life of Men. ”

“ It is never under any circumstances, however, justifiable to treat an object of art and one worthy of a place in a museum as though it were a part of the decoration of the museum. It may by its nature be a decoration to the room, but it must be so arranged that for light and for space and for general effect it is shown to its best advantage. To cut a piece of sculpture, a painting or a tapestry, as a layman might do, to make it fit a given spot in a museum is to commit a crime. ”

“ The public galleries of a museum, whether of natural history, antiquities or art, should not contain the bulk of the collection, but only special things, carefully selected, and equally carefully placed in case or on wall, with artistic judgment as to space-bordering and colour of background, and with scientific perfection of illumination, so as to produce the "just" impression on the leisurely visitor. ”

“ Around this street great numbers of celebrated buildings are erected, from the close of the seventeenth century up to the present, including the School of Arts and Sciences, royal stables, universities and palaces of Kaiser Wilhelm I; the old Museum, a beautiful building in Greek style, all abounding in collections of choice antiques, art, in the way of frescos, bronzes, gems, vases, pictures, stationery, and everything on earth to delight the eye of the connoisseur as well as to tire it; so that royalty and its environs lose half their interest when forced to gorge oneself day in and day out. ”

“ It is a very good collection of almost everything that Nature has made,—or exquisite copies of what she has made,—stones, shells, vegetables, insects, fishes, animals, man; the greatest wonders of the museum being some models in wax of all parts of the human frame. ”

“ In the third place, a museum is a permanent exhibition for the instruction of the public, and for the enlightenment of students desirous of obtaining comparative knowledge in any one branch of their work, and for this purpose it should be well supplied not so much with original antiquities as with casts, facsimiles, models, and reproductions of all sorts.
To be a serviceable exhibition both for the student and the public a museum does not need to possess only original antiquities. ”

“ But now the Museum ladies have a magnificent Pantheon sort of place in which they may prosecute their labours quite in a regal way—as undisturbed and as free from all chances of intrusion as though they were in their own drawing-rooms. ”

“ Generally speaking, a museum is a collection of the objects which go towards the formation of a subject, just as a library is a collection of the literature connected with a subject or subjects. The museum is necessary to the material conception of a subject, just as literature is essential as the permanent record of the subject. For example, in tracing the evolution of the printed book from its manuscript forms, one can form an idea of the appearance of such books by reading up the relative literature, and examining a few facsimiles, and so on ”

“ Still let all who enter our museum, go there with the resolve to accomplish something by their visit. Even in the common concerns of life; in the petty matters that wear away the brain at last; in the market-places of the world, this insight is not without its effect. The heart is humbled as the eyes open to the grandeur of the scheme, and to the consequent littleness of individual manhood ”

“ When it happens that the spirit of the Earl meets his rank and his duties, we have the best examples.... These are the men who make England that strong-box and Museum it is; who gather and protect works of art, dragged from amidst burning cities and revolutionary countries, and brought hither, out of all the world.... When I saw that, besides deer and pheasants, these men have preserved Arundel Marbles, Townley Galleries, Howard and Spencer Libraries, Warwick and Portland Vases, Saxon Manuscripts, Monastic Architectures, and Millenial Trees, I pardoned their high park-fences.’ ”

“ The present popular idea of a museum, in this country, differs, indeed, in no degree, from the estimate of an exhibition of giants and dwarfs, or any other vulgar show; nor is this grave error likely to be discarded till the great model museum in London sets the example of a systematic arrangement, devised on some other principle than that of merely pleasing the eye. ”

“ The habit of visiting an art museum in the evening has not been formed, and the moving picture show, where a man can sit at ease in his arm-chair and be amused, is much more attractive than the art museum. ”

“ The Ethnological Museum of the city, better known as the Museum of Northern Antiquities, is considered to be the most remarkable institution of the sort in Europe. Students in this department of science come from all parts of the civilized world to seek knowledge from its countless treasures. One is here enabled to follow the progress of our race from its primitive stages to its highest civilization. ”

“ The old has become more and more a museum, preserved and perpetuated in the midst of the new, but without any further relation to it—it must be admitted indeed that such a relation is considerable—than that of the stock on his shelves to the shopkeeper, or of the Siren of the South to the showman who stands before his booth. ”

“ In a museum, instruction as well as amusement should be aimed at, and museums on a comparatively small scale, by taking up some special branch, and illustrating it by a fairly complete and representative group of objects, may provide much useful information in a very agreeable form. The exhibits should be so arranged that the visitor glancing over them, should, as it were, be forced to unconsciously acquire some general, although perhaps not very profound, knowledge of objects exhibited. ”

“ A museum in connection with the library, either historical or scientific, or an art gallery, may be made a source of attraction, and of much educational value. The collecting of antiquities, or natural history specimens, or rare bindings, or ancient books or manuscripts, is generally taken up by societies organized for such purposes. The library should try to bring these collections into such relations with itself as to add to its own attractiveness, and to make more interesting and instructive the collections. ”

“ To prevent the monotony that attaches to a mere museum arrangement, in which glass cases are ordinarily the most prominent features, the whole of the collected objects, whether of science, art, or nature, were to be arranged in picturesque groupings, and harmony was to reign throughout. ”

“ A Museum, primarily, is to be for simple persons. Children, that is to say, and peasants. For your student, your antiquary, or your scientific gentleman, there must be separate accommodation, or they must be sent elsewhere. [Pg 76] The Town Museum is to be for the Town's People, the Village Museum for the Villagers. Keep that first principle clear to start with. If you want to found an academy of painting in Littleborough, or of literature in Squattlesea Mere, you must get your advice from somebody else, not me. ”

“ There is nothing more discouraging to the would-be museum visitor than to arrive inside the door and find himself confronted by a seemingly interminable flight of stairs which must be mounted before he attains his object. ”

“ In planning, therefore, the division of space in a museum, the committee should always arrange for exhibits of interest to the local industries. In addition there must, of course, be a collection for cultural purposes, which should mean material covering the history of art in all periods and all countries. A collection of reproductions is of inestimable value in the teaching of the history of art. Few museums can hope to possess fine examples of Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Gothic and Renaissance sculpture. ”

“ The Museum, which was first established, was not, as its name might now imply, a collection of curiosities, but an institution of learning, consisting of a body of learned men, who devoted their time to philosophical and scientific pursuits. ”

“ The late G. Brown Goode once said in substance, A good museum is a collection of good labels, illustrated by carefully selected specimens.' Much time and thought has been expended in the endeavor to tell to the observer in simple and intelligible language the truth which the collections are intended to illustrate. ”