The Problematics of Collecting and Display, Part 2

Abstract

Part of a special section on the problematics of collecting and display. A discussion of modern French painting and the art museum. In contrast to America, with some exceptions, in European museums, 19th-century French painting is either segregated from earlier art or is almost entirely absent. In the last generation, however, international scholarship on Impressionist and Postimpressionist French painting has tried to rethink, reattribute, redate, retitle, and research virtually every artist, medium, artistic movement, and critical stance in French art from 1850 to World War I. This has affected the permanent collections in British and American museums, leading, ironically, to a situation in which an art created in opposition to general art museums is no longer avant-garde. The writer examines the role of museums in the canonization of Impressionist and Postimpressionist painting and the need for art museums to reappraise their installation strategies.