The Art Museum

This upper-level course takes the art museum as its subject. It will examine the history of the art museum and its roots in late 18th century ideas about knowledge, display, and democratic politics, and trace the growth of the art museum over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries in the context of changing cultural notions of the public, philanthropy, and modernist and avant-garde art practice. The course will be supplemented by visits to local art museums. This course also serves as a prerequisite to TAB 336T: Three Weeks in the Louvre.