MUSEUMS
The word "museum" is not one of those which explain themselves and
give an indication of what the thing to which they are applied should
be, when it has ceased to be what it was intended to be. In ancient
Greece the word "mouseion" meant "the place of the Muses"--a grove or
a temple--and there was such a place on a part of the Acropolis of
Athens, the rocky temple-crowned hill around which the city was built.
There were other "museums," or seats of the Muses, in ancient Greece;
those on the slopes of Mount Helicon and of Mount Olympus were the
most famous. In modern times a picture gallery and art collection,
that of the Louvre, in Paris, is called "the Musee," whilst "the
Museum" (the Latin form of the same word) is the name distinctively
applied in Paris to the collections of natural history and the
laboratories connected with them in the Jardin des Plantes. In London
"the British Museum," founded in 1753, originally comprised the
national library as well as collections of antiquities and of natural
history. In Heidelberg "the Museum" was the name, when I was there,
for a delightful club, with a garden. It belonged to the professors,
their families, and their friends in the town, and concerts and dances
were given in it. It seems that the Heidelberg "Museum" comes nearest
to the original meaning of the word as "a seat of Muses," for nearly
all those mythical ladies were remarkable for their special patronage
of music, dancing, and song.
Who were these goddesses, the Muses, and what were their names? What
was the speciality of each, and how do they come to have to do with
collections of works of art and specimens of natural history? Two
learned "classical" friends whom I lately met in Paris could not help
me further than by giving me the names of the first three. I was a
little shocked, but the next evening discovered that these goddesses
are, in modern times, very generally neglected and ignored. In an
extremely amusing play, called "Le Bois Sacre"--the Sacred Grove (of
the Muses)--a name applied jocosely to the Ministry of Fine Arts--I
found that the minister of that department was represented as a
pompous and fatuous person who completely fails to call to mind, in
the course of an eloquent speech, the name of more than one. On
ringing for his secretaries and airily asking them to refresh his
memory, he did not succeed in extracting from them more than two
doubtful additions to his list!
I am able, nevertheless (after due investigation), to put my reader in
possession of the facts so unfamiliar to the modern oracles of
classical mythology! Briefly, it appears that in the best period of
ancient Greece nine Muses were recognised, namely, Calliope, the Muse
of epic poetry; Euterpe, of lyric poetry; Erato, of erotic poetry;
Melpomene, of tragedy; Thalia, of comedy; Polyhymnia, of sacred hymns;
Terpsichore, of choral song and dance; Clio, of history; and Urania,
of astronomy. The last two seem to have very little in common with the
addiction to singing and dancing characteristic of the rest, and are
the only ones who can be imagined as feeling themselves at home in a
modern museum, excepting on those evenings when the authorities use
the museum (as is the custom in London) for a "conversazione,"
enlivened by brass bands and songs.
Apollo was said to be the leader and master of the Muses, but was not
related to them. They were in origin the "nymphs" or "genii" of
mountain streams worshipped by an ancient bardic race (resembling our
own sweet-singing Welsh folk), the Thracians. At first the number of
the Muses was indefinite, and they had no names. Then three were
named--one of Meditation (Melete), one of Memory (Mneme), and one of
Song (Aoeide)--a much prettier embodiment of the impression made on a
poetical mind by rock-pools and cascades and leafy gorges than the
formal and redundant nine of later times. One can associate the
primitive three with a museum of natural history; but the later
official goddesses, each insisting on her own department of poetry,
are too clearly representative of the all-appropriating pretensions of
literature in modern seats of learning. They remind me of the
enumeration of studies which a dear old head of an Oxford college
innocently regarded as complete and reasonable when he assured me that
all branches of knowledge were fairly and equally represented on the
college staff. "We have," he said, "a lecturer on Greek literature,
one on Latin literature, one on Greek history, one on Roman history,
one on classical philology, one on modern history, one on mathematics
and one on the natural sciences." What more, he asked, could you wish
for?
It appears that, without any special reference to the attributes of
the Muses, the word "museum" has been adopted in recent times for a
building in which collections of works of art and specimens of natural
history are housed, and even for the collections themselves--in
consequence of the foundation by the Ptolemaic Kings of Egypt of a
splendid institution at Alexandria to which the name museum (mouseion)
was given. It included the great library, apparatus for the study of
astronomy, anatomy, and other sciences, and collections of all kinds.
The most learned men were employed in its management and were lodged
there and provided with the means of study and teaching. It was a
combination of university, learned academy, and temple, and was the
pride of the ancient world. It survived many changes of lordship, but
at last the library and collections were deliberately destroyed by
Moslem invaders in 640 A.D. The precious manuscripts were served out
as fuel for the public baths, and were so numerous that it took some
months to consume them! The destruction of the museum of Alexandria
marks the commencement of the "Dark Ages"; the ancient culture was
dead. Eight centuries of submergence with strange mysterious
upfloatings were its fate until the Renascence, when its fragments
were recovered, and soon did more harm than good to the
fetish-worshipping peoples of Europe.
* * * * *
The first use of the word "museum" in this country for a place in
which collections of ancient works of art and specimens of natural
history were stored and arranged for exhibition was in the early
eighteenth century, when it was applied to the building at Oxford,
erected for Mr. Ashmole's collections, presented to the University.
This was called "Ashmole's Museum," or the Ashmolean Museum.
Previously such a collection and its location were spoken of as "a
cabinet of rare and curious objects." "Museum" was occasionally used
for what we now call a "study," and even to describe lecture-rooms and
library. I have not been able to discover that the word was used in
its modern sense at an earlier date on the Continent than in England.
The first great typical example of a "museum" was the British Museum,
founded in 1753. Montagu House, in Bloomsbury, was purchased by the
State to serve as a "repository" (the word used in the Act of
Parliament of that date) for the vast collections of natural history
made by Sir Hans Sloane, with which were associated certain valuable
libraries and collections of manuscripts, of coins, and antique
marbles. A large part of the money required for the undertaking was
raised by a public lottery, over which the Archbishop of Canterbury,
the Lord Chancellor, and the Speaker presided (according to the custom
of those days in regard to State lotteries), and it is thus that this
remarkable group of great officials became, and have remained ever
since, "the Three Principal Trustees of the British Museum."
Additional trustees were named (since increased to a total of nearly
fifty), and provision was made for the appointment of a principal
librarian and other curators of the collections. The Act declared that
the collections placed in the "repository" (Montagu House) were to
remain there for the benefit and enjoyment of posterity for ever--a
provision which until seven years ago was misinterpreted, so as to
prevent the sending out of unnamed and unstudied collections of small
portable objects like insects, dried plants, and shells, to be named
and compared with other specimens, by foreign naturalists.
Consequently, there was a great accumulation of specimens unstudied
and useless, and a great loss to knowledge. But the late Lord
Chancellor (Halsbury) decided that it was not only legally within the
power of the trustees temporarily to remove specimens from "the
repository" for the purpose of having them named and studied, but
actually their duty to do so.
We now very generally recognise in Great Britain, as in other parts of
the civilised world, the value and importance of public "museums" in
the sense of "repositories of collections of objects of ancient and
modern art and of natural history." Museums, as at present existing,
may be divided into four kinds, according to the nature of the public
or private bodies by which they have been set up and carried on. There
are, first of all, national museums maintained and continually
increased by the expenditure of a great State, and placed in the
capital city; secondly, provincial or local museums, supported by a
municipality or by local munificence; thirdly, academic museums, which
are those related to the instruction and investigations carried on in
a university or a school, and forming part of its regular provision
for study; and, fourthly, the museums of private individuals (which as
a rule, become eventually transferred by gift or purchase to some
existing public museum).
The word "museum" would, and often does, fitly include picture
galleries, but very usually in Great Britain a museum is not
considered as comprising a picture gallery, and a picture gallery is
treated and managed as something distinct from "a museum." The
distinction is recognised in London, where we have as separate
institutions the British Museum and the National Gallery. Probably the
distinct method of exhibiting and caring for pictures, and the very
large amount of special knowledge connected with the reasonable
employment of public funds in the purchase of these very high-priced
objects, as well as the example of private collectors of pictures, are
the causes which have led in the past to the complete separation of
"picture galleries" from "museums." It is, however, a curious fact
that the British Museum (which once possessed some oil paintings, now
removed to other public galleries) retains and expends money on its
splendid collections of water-colour pictures, drawings, and
engravings, whilst in the latter half of the last century (in
opposition to the custom of separating pictures from other museum
objects) there grew up in London, under the State Department of
Education, a vast collection of all kinds of works of art (pottery,
furniture, lace, metal-work, etc.) of all countries and ages,
including pictures, which is now sumptuously housed in the Victoria
and Albert Museum.
Though I propose to write here with special reference to "museums," in
the more limited sense as repositories of objects which are the bases
of our knowledge of the history of man and his arts, and as the
storehouses of specimens which in the same way are the material by the
study of which we arrive at a knowledge of the history of the earth,
and of the living things which have existed, and of others which still
exist on its surface--yet it is obvious that the general purposes of
all collections of interesting objects (including even pictures) and
their arrangement for public use and benefit must be the same,
although there are special purposes in view in regard to some
collections which do not exist in regard to others. Not long since Mr.
Claude Phillips ably set forth some of the principles which should
guide the arrangement and exhibition of objects in an art museum, and
criticised the plan at present adopted in the Victoria and Albert
Museum. As I hold views in regard to the arrangement of natural
history museums which are very similar to his, I think it may be
useful to explain here what they are.
I may point out that nearly every branch of knowledge should have--in
a civilised well-provided community--its collection of material
objects, either specimens, models, or ancient examples and remains,
which should be "records" to be religiously preserved for future
reference and comparison by expert students, whilst others should be
there to serve as demonstrations of "great" facts of nature or of
human art--direct and straightforward appeals--to the ordinary
intelligent (but not specially learned) man. You might well have (what
does not at present exist!) a museum (in the modern sense) of
astronomy, containing models of the solar system showing the relative
distances and sizes of the heavenly bodies--as well as modern and
ancient astronomical instruments, and the records obtained by their
use. Again, you might have (and to some extent such museums exist), at
the other end of the scale in dignity and age, a museum illustrating
the history and present developments of the smelting of iron and other
metals, their purification, their alloying, and properties--as also a
museum of paper-making and one of the steam engine and its modern
rivals. In such cases the purpose of the museum would be plain enough
and comparatively easy to carry out.
Most museums which have come into existence within the last 200 years
suffer from the fact that they are mere enlargements of the ancient
collector's "cabinet of rare and curious things," brought together and
arranged without rhyme or reason. No one has ever attempted to say
what is precisely the aim and intention as a public enterprise of any
of our great museums, and accordingly there has been no consideration,
discussion, or agreement as to the methods of collection, selection,
arrangement, exhibition, and storage of the objects assembled within
their walls. Thousands, even millions of pounds, have been expended on
the building of museums, on the purchase of specimens, on cases and
cataloguing, and on the salaries of directors, and keepers, and
assistants, yet the museums remain, so far as any declaration of
purpose and principle is concerned, mere "repositories," as in the
words of the old Act of Parliament constituting the British
Museum--for the use and enjoyment of the public, it is true, but
without any expression of a conception of how that use and enjoyment
is to be limited so as to make them something better than a dime-show,
or how any serious purpose is to be achieved by their costly housing
and up-keep. No doubt various directors and keepers have from time to
time shown intelligence and laboured to make museums not only places
of enjoyment and "edification," but also the means of increasing
knowledge and rendering service to the State. But the scope of our
public museums, and the principles and methods by which it may be
realised, have never been agreed upon, and consequently are not
definitely recognised by the State nor by the curiously ill-chosen
committees of managers, or trustees, to whose tender mercies the
ultimate control of these institutions is confided--apparently by
haphazard or misapprehension.
The notion of a town corporation, or of the central government at this
or that date, has been that museums are best controlled and public
money expended in connection with them by persons who know nothing
about the real importance of the collections, and receive no guidance
from any scheme or statutable declaration of specific purpose drawn up
by a competent authority. I will endeavour to state what those
purposes should be.
When one tries to estimate what is really the value to the community
of public "museums," one is led inevitably to the conclusion that
their most important purpose--whether they are museums of natural
history, of antiquities, or of art--is to serve as safe and permanent
"repositories" (the old word used in the British Museum Act of 1753)
for specimens which are costly and difficult to obtain--not to be
either "picked up" or readily "housed" by everybody, and at the same
time of real importance as "records." The first and most commanding
duty of those who set up and maintain a public museum is to preserve
actual things as records--records of the existence in this or that
locality of each kind of plant and animal, records of the former
existence of extinct plants and animals, with irrefragable certainty
as to the locality and the exact strata in which they were
found--records of prehistoric man, his weapons and art, and of the
animals found with them, records of modern times. Everyone is familiar
with this duty of the State and of local public bodies, when it is a
matter of preserving written and printed records. They are preserved
in various public offices and libraries, and are continually being
studied by experts (volunteers or official) and copied in print, so as
to furnish us with accurate knowledge of the past.
It is the first and leading business of museums to collect and
preserve, with great accuracy as to the locality and circumstances in
which each was found, the actual concrete things which are the records
of nature, and of the various stages of man's art and industries in
every region of the world, just as a library or the Record Office
preserves manuscripts and printed documents and books. Collections of
such specimens are often made by private individuals, and become too
cumbersome for him or his heirs to keep in order. They are then
frequently given to a public museum, and I regret to say in many
provincial museums are neglected and become mere rubbish, even if they
were not so when first given. Often such gifts are rubbish before they
are received, and should never have been accepted. But in a great many
instances the local museum of a country town is nothing but a
rubbish-heap, because the townspeople will not spend the money
necessary to obtain the services of a capable curator and to provide
cases, labels, catalogues, and attendance. The town councillors
usually know nothing about the museum or the value of the objects
gathered there, and do not recognise the duty of making it an orderly
and carefully tended storehouse of the records of Nature and antiquity
of the neighbourhood. Too frequently the town museum is made the means
of gratifying the vanity of some local collector, who hands over all
sorts of ill-chosen, badly preserved specimens to its ignorant
guardians, and is advertised by labels on the cases and by votes of
thanks, whilst valuable records placed there in a previous generation
are swept into a corner or broken and cast into the cellar in order to
make space for the new rubbish!
Unless funds are found to place a specially educated man at the head
of a local museum, the museum had better be shut, and such of its
contents, as may be desired, offered to one of the big city museums or
to the National Museum in London. It is no child's play, maintaining
and guarding efficiently a museum which contains "records." It would
be a good thing were a committee of naturalists and antiquaries to
visit the local museums of the United Kingdom and report on the
efficiency of their guardianship and the state of the treasures which
they contain. I know two provincial museums very well in which
extremely valuable records of prehistoric man and of wonderful extinct
animals--found in the neighbourhood and preserved by those who
established the museums fifty years ago--are utterly neglected and
destroyed by loss of the labels and mixing up of the specimens, in
consequence of the death of the persons originally interested in the
museum and of the refusal of the town councils to find money to pay
for the care of the collections. There can be little doubt that in the
present state of local interest in such matters all really important
record specimens should find their way to the British Museum in
London, where, if accepted, their preservation, so far as it is
humanly possible, is assured. That is the distinctive and most
creditable feature of our great State-supported museum. At the same
time it seems obvious that the records of a provincial area can be,
and should be, kept in the county town museum, with a detail and
completeness impossible elsewhere, and that it should be the pride of
the county to be able to show to a stranger full records of the
distinctive features of its natural history and antiquities.
It is clear that whatever failures in this respect may be inevitable
in those hopelessly starved and mismanaged "museums" at present
surviving to bear witness to the decay of public spirit and
intelligent culture in our country towns, the prime duty of the great
London museum is to preserve "records" with the greatest nicety and
readiness for reference, whilst the duty of actively adding to these
records from all parts of the Empire, and, therefore, of the world,
and that of minutely studying and reporting upon the collections so
obtained and guarded, follow as a matter of course. These collections
are the absolutely necessary foundation for the building-up of our
knowledge of Nature and of man. We can never say that this branch of
scientific knowledge is valuable and that another is a mere fanciful
pursuit. Every year it becomes more and more clear that unexpectedly
some apparently insignificant piece of detailed scientific knowledge
may become of value to the State and to humanity at large. Everyone
knows that geology has a great practical value in mining, water
supply, and various kinds of engineering, also that botany, as
represented by the great State institution at Kew, is of immense
value to those who introduce useful plants from one part of the
world for cultivation in another. But of late we have seen that
entomology--"bug-hunting" as it is scornfully termed--is a science
upon which hang not only the revenue of an Empire, but also the lives
of millions of men. Destructive insects must be known with the utmost
accuracy in order to stop their injury to crops in the distant lands
which they inhabit, and also in order to check the diseases carried by
them which sweep off vast herds of costly cattle. The mosquitoes and
the tsetze flies have been, only recently, proved to be the causes,
the carriers, of diseases--malaria, yellow fever, and sleeping
sickness--which annually have killed hundreds of thousands of men,
colonists as well as natives. I was able to bring together at the
Natural History Museum collections of mosquitoes from every part of
the world, amounting to thousands of specimens and to some hundreds of
kinds. The study of these and of the tsetze flies by skilled
entomologists employed in the museum has been a necessary part of the
steps now being taken everywhere to preserve human population from
the attacks of certain deadly kinds among them, distinguished from
the others which are harmless.
Thus, then, it seems that the first and most important purpose for
which great "museums" exist is that of "the making of new
knowledge"--the increase of science--by furnishing carefully gathered
and preserved "specimens" of all kinds, and by working out the history
and significance of those collections. But there is a second and
distinct purpose which is often ignorantly put in the first place. It
is of less importance and quite unlike the first in the methods
necessary for its attainment, and yet is conveniently and
satisfactorily carried out in conjunction with the first. This second
and distinct purpose is the exhibition of such portions of the
collections in a museum as are suitable for exhibition (only a smaller
portion are so) in public galleries, so chosen, arranged, lighted and
labelled as to afford to the public at large the maximum of enjoyment
and edification. This is, as it were, a readily accessible enjoyment
given to the public in recognition of the large sums of public money
expended on the severer and less easily appreciated enterprise of the
museum. 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. The
public "exhibit" should be arranged so as to draw attention to a
series of important facts of structure or quality clearly shown by the
specimens, whether they are natural products or works of art, and
these facts should be described in printed labels fully, and the
reason for attaching importance to them explained at sufficient
length. The man who arranges the public galleries (as distinct from
the closed study-rooms) of a public museum, should have a special gift
of exposition in plain language, and be able to separate (both in
regard to his words and to the specimens he selects) the essential
from the non-essential, the significant from the redundant.
It is important to make a complete distinction between an exhibition
intended for the general public and that intended for advanced
students in schools, colleges and universities. The confusion of these
two kinds of exhibition is the cause of the failure of many museums
and of the dislike with which most people regard a visit to them. The
public museum--metropolitan or local--should not include in its
purpose the "academic" instruction of schoolboys and university
students. That requires a different kind of museum, which is (or
should be) provided by the school or university, though, of course,
the students should also visit the more popular museums. The funds and
staff and space required for the one are not sufficient for both. If
both are attempted, the unpopular academic, or scholars', exhibition
will get the upper hand and suppress the other, since it is a far
easier thing to carry out successfully (for the class aimed at) than
is the carefully planned exhibition intended for the "edification" of
the greater public. The university museum aims at imparting a much
greater amount of detailed and elaborate information than does the
great public museum, and requires from the student who uses it a
special previous study of the subject, and an exceptional amount of
attention and pains in examining the objects exhibited.
Too many of the public museums of Europe aim at the "instruction" of
the special student rather than at the "edification" of the general
public, whilst most aim at nothing at all except showing, without
explanation or comment, a vast mass of specimens or pictures, at the
sight of which the patient but bored public gapes with wonder. The
public galleries of the Natural History Museum in London have been
arranged more distinctly with a view to the edification of the public
than those of any other museum which I know. But they still contain
too large a number of specimens, and still require an immense amount
of work in weeding, selection and labelling, and in deliberately
making the specimens exhibited tell a tale which is worth remembering,
and can be remembered. Except in the case of the larger specimens, and
especially those of fossilized skeletons and shells of extinct
animals, it must be remembered that the bulk of the specimens (and,
indeed, all the valuable skins of animals and birds, and the vast
series of insects and such small things) in that, as in every other
large museum, are contained in cabinets protected from the destructive
action of light, and arranged for the most part in rooms to which
access is obtained only by serious workers after special application.
The fishes and other animals preserved in alcohol are kept in a
special fire-proof "spirit-building."
A provincial public museum, even if it does not aim at the
guardianship of important local "records" of natural history and
antiquity, should aim at the edification of the public--the grown-up
public--and not at the instruction of school children. The notion that
museums are meant for children, which exists, I am sorry to say, even
in regard to so splendid and expensive a display of wonderful things
as that to be seen at the Natural History Museum, is due to the bad
tradition justified by the condition of other museums, where a child
may enjoy being astonished, but a grown-up person can take in nothing
which appeals to the intelligence. A new city museum is, it is
reported, to be established at Birmingham. We may hope that it will
not contain the usual unsatisfactory series of badly stuffed exotic
animals, birds, and reptiles, and trophies of South Sea islanders'
clubs and spears. It should contain first-rate specimens of the living
and extinct fauna of Warwickshire, and specimens of foreign animals
carefully selected to compare with them and throw light on them; also
local prehistoric and antiquarian specimens, illustrated by comparison
with the work of savage and remote races. The excellent suggestion has
been made that it should contain specimens of the insect-pests of
Warwickshire crops. It should also exhibit the minerals from which
manufactories of Birmingham draw their metals, and should show the
stages of their preparation. It should appeal, not to the boys and
girls of Birmingham in the first place, but to the adults, and to do
this it should be placed under the care of a really first-rate and
ingenious man, who might possibly do for the Birmingham Museum what
skilful arrangement and sound knowledge have done for its Art
Gallery--an institution intended to appeal not to school children, but
to the reasonable adult population of the city.
The principle of exhibiting permanently in public galleries a portion
of our great national collections and of preserving another and larger
portion in smaller rooms, where they can be more closely but not less
carefully disposed and brought out into perfect light and position
when required, should be applied to collections of pottery,
metal-work, carving, embroidery and such objects, and also to pictures
as well as to collections relating to natural history. The chief
reason for this is the enormous space required in order to place
permanently "on exhibition" all the objects contained in our national
art collections, which are continually growing. The vast size of the
galleries required, if the entire collections are to be exhibited so
that the public may walk in and see anything and everything in it,
permanently displayed on walls or in cases--entails gigantic and
ever-increasing expenditure of public funds.
But this is not the only objection to these great galleries. The
multitude of objects--it may be of pictures--exhibited creates a state
of mind in the visitor which prevents his enjoyment of the works of
art so exhibited. He is overwhelmed by the vastness of the series
offered for his examination and confused and distressed by the close
setting of things which require isolation and appropriate surroundings
each in its own special way, if they are to be duly appreciated. Not
only this, but pictures, as well as other works of art, are, in
consequence of the necessity of placing them all in the great public
galleries used for the purpose, rarely placed in the most favourable
conditions of lighting, and are very often so ill-lighted as to lose
all their beauty even if they are not nearly invisible. More public
money would be available for the proper care and study of works of art
were less spent on the land, building and up-keep necessary for huge
galleries.
The desirability of separating a large unexhibited portion from the
well-chosen and well-shown exhibited portion of works of art,
exclusive of pictures, is, I believe, generally admitted. In the case
of pictures the opinion has been expressed that there would be great
difficulty in managing a reserved unexhibited portion of our national
collections so that the pictures could be properly cared for and yet
readily brought into view when required. One can well believe that a
similar difficulty was anticipated when it was first proposed to keep
books on shelves instead of on tables. Those who take this objection
have overlooked the resources of modern engineering. Reserved pictures
could be affixed in perfect security in appropriate groups on large
screens, and these disposed, like the scenery above a stage, upright
and in series, each screen 4 ft. distant from its neighbours. There
could be three or four floors of such closely packed screens arranged
in two rows, twenty in a row. On a lower floor there would be provided
a room with the most perfect light possible for seeing, enjoying and
studying a single one of these screens. They would all be numbered and
the pictures on each catalogued. A person duly authorised and approved
desires to see such and such a picture. He is given a seat in the
special exhibition room. The attendant or assistant in charge touches
the appropriate button, and by simple electric-lift machinery the
screen upstairs carrying the desired picture travels automatically
into position and then gently descends into the special exhibition
room. There the other pictures on the screen may be, if it be so
desired, covered by drapery, the light may be varied in intensity or
direction, and, in fact, the most perfect examination of the picture
in question may be made. When another button is touched, the
picture-screen returns automatically to its place upstairs.
It seems to me that in the case of the growing collection of pictures
known as "The National Portrait Gallery," this treatment would not
only avoid the necessity of constantly providing new galleries for new
acquisitions--but would enable the Trustees to separate those
portraits, which are of more general interest and suitable for
permanent exhibition in a good position, from less important
portraits, which nevertheless must be acquired and preserved as public
records. From time to time special groups of the reserved or
unexhibited portraits might be put for six months in one of the public
rooms--thus providing a change and variety of interest for the general
public.
The same plan might be adopted with regard to the pictures in the
National Gallery--though no doubt a large number of splendid pictures
would be permanently placed in the exhibition rooms. Three things
should be remembered in regard to the disposal of these pictures:
Firstly, that not one in a hundred among them was intended by the
painter to be hung in a gallery closely side by side with other
pictures; secondly, that no picture should be exhibited in a public
gallery unless it is worthy of the best lighting and surroundings;
thirdly, that it is reasonable that the expert and the student should
be asked to take some special trouble in order to see special pictures
not on public exhibition, and that "the man in the street" who says
that he likes to walk in and see all his pictures at any time and
without any trouble, will value his collection more when he can only
see some of it on special occasions.
The heavy and sometimes fragile character of the "frames" affixed to
large pictures has been made an objection to the proposal that they
should be fixed to screens moved by electric gear. I cannot venture to
discuss the subject of picture frames here. I am aware that it is a
very serious and important subject, and that a great deal of the
effect of a picture depends on its being bordered by a frame of
sufficient size and dignity and one which is really and artistically
fitted to allow the finer qualities of the picture to become apparent.
How often is such a frame seen? Who is there who has an adequate
understanding of picture-frames as adjuncts to, or necessary
accompaniments of, great pictures? The splendid carved and gilded
wooden frames of some great pictures have a value of their own as
examples of design. But how many of them are really suited to the
picture which they surround? How much attention has been given by art
experts to the question of the best possible "exhibitional"
surroundings--nearer and more distant--for this, that and the other,
among the great pictures of Europe?