> About my only defense of the public museum system would be that
> without it, there would nothing left of the traditional visual arts in
> the US. The public collections would instantly be transformed into the
> pre-eminent objects of capital that they hold in a private auction
> system. That is mostly likely their ultimate fate in any case. So in
> that sense, the masses are definitely not invited. And it is an
> awareness of this capital value, almost the last source of concrete
> value left outside of real estate, that makes public museums pursue
> the policies they do. They are ministers of a public treasury and they
> act like it.
Chuck,
If they closed all the public museums, I wonder if the auction price of art would drop. Part of the attraction, I suspect, of these priceless wonders is the fact that they become tourist attractions... so without the support and demand of the working classes, which feeds the ego and honour of the art exhibiter, I wonder if the demand would exist at all. Certainly to some extent, the crown jewels are always going to be crown jewels... but without the spell binding power of people seeing them and acknowledging their history (whatevA)... they are quite worthless.
> --although it seems to be increasingly threatened by the
self-help racks.
I recently finished marking thirty some book reviews for a course on religion, law and morality. I had the students read any work of pulp fiction - so I ended up with everything from Salinger to Huxley to King and Grisham - from detective novels to Harlequin romance... I was quite surprised by the fact that the moral and legal and religious elements of every single novel (as far as I could tell from the reviews) upheld a personal sense of responsibility and individual freedom (with the possible exception of Huxley) (we are mushrooms, born autonomous, springing forth from nothing). It occurred to me that the novel, as a form, might simply not have the means to escape the aesthetic and moral aftershock of the french revolution (individualist, personal, heroic, sentimental, prepolitical). Of course I'm wrong. I was just kind of shocked by the overwhelming similarities between the narratives.
ken