American art museums of the Gilded Age were established as civic
institutions intended to provide civilizing influences to an urban
public, but the parochial worldview of their founders limited their
democratic potential. Instead, critics have derided nineteenth-century
museums as temples of spiritual uplift far removed from the daily
experiences and concerns of common people. But in the early twentieth
century, a new generation of cultural leaders revolutionized ideas about
art institutions by insisting that their collections and galleries serve
the general public.
Things American: Art Museums and Civic Culture in the Progressive Era
tells the story of the civic reformers and arts professionals who
brought museums from the realm of exclusivity into the progressive fold
of libraries, schools, and settlement houses. Jeffrey Trask's history
focuses on New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, which stood at the
center of this movement to preserve artifacts from the American past for
social change and Americanization. Metropolitan trustee Robert de Forest
and pioneering museum professional Henry Watson Kent influenced a wide
network of fellow reformers and cultural institutions. Drawing on the
teachings of John Dewey and close study of museum developments in
Germany and Great Britain, they expanded audiences, changed access
policies, and broadened the scope of what museums collect and display.
They believed that tasteful urban and domestic environments contributed
to good citizenship and recognized the economic advantages of improving
American industrial production through design education. Trask follows
the influence of these people and ideas through the 1920s and 1930s as
the Met opened its innovative American Wing while simultaneously
promoting modern industrial art.
Things American is not only the first critical history of the
Metropolitan Museum. The book also places museums in the context of the
cultural politics of the progressive movement--illustrating the limits
of progressive ideas of democratic reform as well as the boldness of
vision about cultural capital promoted by museums and other cultural
institutions.
