Krzysztof Pomian, with the book cover.
Credits: Francesca Mantovani, Gallimard.
We are on December 15, 1471 in Rome. On a medieval Capitol, which will be completely remodeled four generations later by Michelangelo, the Palais des Conservateurs welcomes a pontifical donation. No petit fours to celebrate the event. Elected four months earlier, Sixtus IV has however just installed there some particularly important ancient statues such as “The wolf” or “The thorn shooter”. They are “returned and offered to the Roman people”, as another inscription carved in marble says. For Krzysztof Pomian, who has just released “The Museum, A World History” at Gallimard, this is a founding act. It all starts with this simple gesture, renewed on the same Capitol by the creation, in the palace opposite, of a beautiful gallery of ancient sculptures by Benedict XIV in the 18th century.
For five and a half centuries, museums have multiplied in Europe, then in the world. Very slow at first, the pace of their creation has become normal before accelerating to delirium. Until 1520, the Capitol remained solitary. From 1520 to 1620, around ten equivalents were created in Italy. We went to the hundred between 1620 and 1790, when Pomian finished his first volume (out of three) today in bookstores (1). The Revolution, new ideas but above all a quantity of works seeking a destiny increase the number from one hundred to one thousand from 1790 to 1870. It was then that the behemoths were born, from the Louvre to the “Met” in New York. by Victoria & Albert in London. The V&A? The decorative arts are in fact joining the fine arts, while waiting for ever more specialized specializations. From 1870 to 1960, around nine thousand new institutions were created. Everything remains under control. But from 1960 to 2010, seventy thousand other museums sprang from the ground, often where there are already many. The United States for example, where they are now 35,000. I will let you guess the rest … by reminding you that the highest density in the world is in Switzerland. In our country, the museums (French), Museen (German) and musei (Italian) are more than 1100. One every forty square kilometers, Alps included!
A practice more than a theory
What is a museum? No one had the slightest idea in the days of Sixtus IV. The date only became important in hindsight. The word itself took a long time to establish itself. It is not on a theoretical level, but on a practical level, that the idea germinated. First, you need a collection. This notion is not taken for granted. The ancient Greeks only knew the concept of “treasure” (think Delphi!), As did the Middle Ages, where prize works were found in churches and convents. Among the Romans, there were only a few centuries when amateurs collected secular works. We are not in China, where the almost interrupted tradition of surrounding oneself with beautiful objects dates back to the Han, who ascended the throne in the third century BC. Pomian, which hardly evokes Asia, brings back the current spark to us in the 14th century of our era. There is a scholar, Petrarch, and a sovereign, the French Charles V. These two men own books, works of art (and for Charles V jewels) by pure dilection. They manifest a taste. Their.
This is not enough, even if many current foundations are sometimes collections fossilized after the death of their creator. One of the constitutive elements remains the fact that the collection, “grafted on the past, but turned towards the future”, detaches itself from its inventor to become a permanent entity. The Crown, among kings. An intergenerational trust for individuals. A legal person going through time without too much damage. It can take ages. I would point out to you that the handover took place for the English sovereigns with Elizabeth II in 1987. Before her, there were alienations. Something that the Royal Collection Trust prevents today. Hampton Court has been open to visitors since 1838. However, the Queen’s Gallery opened in Buckingham in 1962. What do you want? Not all progress is at the same speed.
The public problem
In order for a museum worthy of the name to exist, it therefore needs a fixed place and visitors. The place, and readers will certainly be able to verify it in Volume II, is at the start of recycling. A deserted palace, a secularized convent, today an industrial wasteland are transformed into exhibition spaces. The Palace of the Conservatives already existed in Rome long before 1471. The construction of a specific building (with “architectural gesture”) will have to wait. Curiously, the first of them will open in 1779 north of the Alps. This is the Fridericianum of Kassel, used for the current “Documenta”. A peripheral city. The landgraves of Hesse-Kassel were not princes of the first rank. Pomian, who has been working on the question for decades (the man is now 87 years old) is also surprised in his book that the most innovative creations have not seen the light of day in major capitals. They hatched in Florence (whose Uffizi have been visited since the 16th century), in Verona, in Oxford or in Haarlem …
What about the public, nowadays the object of all attention? Well, it remains very difficult to pin down in ancient times. The place open to everyone, with a cash desk at the entrance and fixed-price tickets, took a long time to establish itself. Before, you had to ask to see. Who could afford it? Few people, apparently. The offer was aimed at wealthy travelers. To the affluent of the cities. To educated people, and especially well dressed. To artists too, who were to discover great examples from the past. The opening will take place gradually. For group trips and guided tours, it will be necessary to wait until the second half of the 20th century. It is only since the 1980s that the public authorities ask the directors of institutions to “do the numbers”. At this time, well compromised by the interruption of tourism, the idea becomes that the main institutions are self-financing as much as possible. With the commercial excesses that this implies …
Threatened sustainability
At this price, museums should give the idea of sustainability. They would enrich themselves with donations and purchases. Nothing, however, would ever come out. This is a European vision, the most extreme of which would be the Château de Chantilly, where even the hanging cannot be changed. Historically, the reader of “The Museum, A World History” realizes, however, that a collection, even a museum, remains a living organism. It is born, develops and suffers a number of accidents. Looting, which is talked about so much today because of Nazi spoliations or colonial spoils, is constant. I would go so far as to say that some cities have experienced as violent as this in the past. The Swedes seized during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) the treasures of Munich and especially of Prague. The treasure of St. Mark in Venice, which can be visited like any other museum, results from the incredibly violent sack of Constantinople in 1204.
Under these conditions, it becomes possible to imagine that a museum is impoverished. There are the problems of restitution, raised in favor of Africa by intellectual lobbies. There are also financial needs. The New York “Met”, which currently has a $ 150 million cash hole, is considering selling some of its reserves. Other American museums could, because of the pandemic, disappear completely given their private funding. In a more peaceful way, several entities in Winterthur, Switzerland, have joined forces to save money, as I have already told you. Works from New York (or elsewhere) are therefore likely to end up on the market before perhaps joining new public collections. A return to the old order of things. In Pomian’s book, the reader sees the great collections of the past (the Este, the Gonzagas, the Orléans …) being made and undone, thus allowing new ones. After the great vogue of the antiques, the paintings became the most coveted gems, and the paintings have traveled widely over time. And this even if the Offices or the Prado in Madrid have remained relatively untouched. As soon as there is life, there is movement.
A fairly simple reading
I will end this long article, which follows a photo gallery, with a few words about the book itself. Polish in origin as suggested by the number of consonants in his first name, Krzysztof Pomian writes in clear French. Simple. This CNRS researcher in France, where he took refuge for political reasons in 1973, never jargons. He explains. We already knew this thanks to the publication of a reference work such as “Collectors, amateurs and curious, Paris-Venice 16th-18th centuries” by Gallimard in 1990. The man addresses himself if not to all, at least to all those that the subject might interest. Unfortunately, it remains clear that it is better to have basic data before you start reading. The work, which ends with nearly 200 pages of notes and other appendices, includes a dizzying number of names and dates. Suffice to say that the memory of the neophyte would risk being put to the test …
(1) The book is not always that easy to find. Boasted by several newspapers, he was found exhausted after just a few days. Small starting draw. There seems to have been a new one since the end of last year.
Convenient
“The Museum, A World History, I. From Treasure to Museum”, by Krzysztof Pomian, Editions NRF-Gallimard, 691 pages. A photo gallery immediately follows this article.
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