At a time when public museums are struggling due to budget cuts and the need for renovations, the opening of many private foundations marks a shift in the Parisian museum landscape. Against this backdrop, G. Adam offers a comprehensive overview of the issues surrounding the rise of private museums.
Though primarily a visual experience, the museum nonetheless depends on a number of invisible tasks. V.A. Lépinay’s book uses the Hermitage Museum as a field of investigation and reveals the scientific work done on the collections, their composition and their presentation to the public
Adopting an ethnographical approach on the world of museums, Peggy Levitt explains how, as a crucial link between past and present, the local and the global, they play a political role in addressing questions of nationalism and cosmopolitanism.
Charlotte Guichard highlights the role of the amateur d’art in the XVIIIth century art market. Although he played a key role in the rise of French art in the last half century of the Ancien Régime, the amateur was strongly criticized for his aristocratic notion of artistic taste.
