Museums - Louvre,Heidi Weber, Tate Modern

History of the Museum, Modern Museums, Museum Aims and Architecture

Sep 25, 2009
Dawn Denmar

Example of Prehistory display in Museums - kconnors

Museums - Louvre, 1793 to Tate Modern, 2000 housed in a former power station. The museum is one of most visited & educational world attractions & can be architectural gem

From the establishment of the first truly public museum, the Louvre in France, to the diversity of the collections and displays of modern museums, visitors have flocked to these public history exhibition sites to view arts and antiquities and to increase their knowledge of the natural and prehistoric worlds.

Aims of Museums

Museums can inspire, inform and educate, providing collections which shape the national, cultural and local identity. Indeed, the best museums are said to be those that “nourish the local and illuminate the global”.

First Public Museum, the Louvre in Paris

Certainly the establishment of The Louvre Museum in France was an instant success. The Louvre was the first public museum, established in 1793 to display collections of art and antiquities which had been confiscated during the French Revolution from collections built by the French Royal Family, the aristocracy and individual collectors.

The museum offered the opportunity for all members of the general public in France, irrespective of wealth or status, to view the fantastic treasures amassed by the wealthy aristocrats over centuries of collecting. The collection was added to substantially by Napoleon as he confiscated treasures and works of art from all of his European conquests

The Louvre is an architectural treasure in itself, built in the 12th century as a fort and evolving into a royal palace. It is situated in central Paris, on the banks of the Seine.

The Louvre holds over 35,000 works of art, including of course the magnificent Mona Lisa, and is reputed to be the most popular museum in the world, with over 6 million visitors annually.

The Modern Museum

The museum has been referred to as the “building most representative of the late 20th Century” or even, heretically, the "cathedral" of the 20th Century. With around 80 million visits annually to museums in the UK it is not hard to understand the reason for this.

Certainly, from an architectural point of view, the buildings themselves can be outstanding representations of architecture from different time periods, thus showcasing their exhibits in a worthy setting. The Tate Modern, in London, for example is a disused power station, housing an outstanding collection of international modern art, including minimalist, cubist and surrealist works. Situated in central London, opposite St Paul's Cathedral, the Tate Modern is one of the UKs top visitor attractions.

The Heidi Weber Museum in Zurich, is a centrepiece for the work of the Swiss architect, Le Corbusier. An exciting and stunning modern piece of architecture, built with stone, steel, glass and concrete and utitlsing subtle colours, the museum houses various works, designs and sculptures of Le Corbusier.

In themselves, modern museums can often consist of stand alone collections of diverse items ranging from dinky toys, holocaust memorabilia, childrens museum, cartoon museums, car museums and many more. Certainly, the Museums Association of the UK states that there are 2,000 to 2,500 museums in the UK and the figure varies dependent upon what criteria are used to decide what is or is not a museum.

Visits to Museums in the UK

Around 43% of people in England have visited a UK museum in the past year, and, as previously mentioned, there are around 80 million visits to UK museums annually.

The Museum as a Tool for Propaganda

Finally it has to be stated that museums can also be used for overt political aims, such as those which were established as a form of social indoctrination in the former Communist bloc.

See Also: Le Corbusier's Five Point Architecture for detail on this architect