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S#*t Your Professor Says
100
What three New York museums were among the first to adopt modern architecture?
MOMA, Guggenheim, Whitney.
100
What French military leader captured large numbers of cultural objects for French museums as a result of conquests?
Napoleon
100
What has been the complaint by artists and others about some of the more unusual architectural designs and materials used for more recent art museums.
Interferes with the aesthetic contemplation of art.
100
The first European museum open to the public was founded in 1683. What was it and where was it located?
The Ashmolean in Oxford, UK.
100
What family's collection and fortune was used to found the Museum of Modern Art, New York?
The Rockefeller family.
200
What style of architecture commonly employed in American museums through the 1930s is characterized by motifs from ancient Greece, Rome, the Renaissance and Baroque palaces?
The Beaux Arts style.
200
What national leader discouraged viewing of some kinds of art that he called "degenerate"?
Hitler
200
What justification did the French authorities offer for the confiscation of Italian paintings during Napoleon’s campaign of 1796-1797?
Conservation and restoration
200
What was the first public building constructed specifically as a museum? When was it completed?
The Altemuseum in Berlin, 1830.
200
One architect had all his teeth pulled in order to win the opportunity to design a museum. Who was the architect and which museum did he design?
F. L. Wright; Guggenheim Museum, NY.
300
Why were early museum architects so fond of using castles, palaces and cathedrals as models for the buildings they designed?
The chosen architectural styles and types helped American industrialist founders re-invent themselves as aristocrats.
300
The National Gallery in London was started with only a thirty-eight picture collection of what person?
John Julius Angerstein
300
Compare and contrast the views of Benjamin Ives Gilman and John Cotton Dana regarding the proper function of the art museum. With whom do you agree?
Open discussion: aesthetic contemplation vs. education.
300
What was the first public art museum in the US and when was it founded?
The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT, 1842.
300
In which museum was a fictional shootout between a journalist, his NYC cop friend, and various nefarious types hired by a large multinational bank?
The Guggenheim Museum, NY.
400
Schwarzer cites three related historical developments that led museums to adopt modernist or "international style" architecture. What were they?
1) Classicism became associated with fascism, 2) prominent European anti-fascists influenced American architecture, 3) it is a cheaper style to build.
400
During which presidential administration(s) did the WPA maintain, repair and expand museums? (Looking for the name of a president.)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, during the New Deal (1930s).
400
What are the “culture wars” that Schwarzer discusses, and how have they affected American museums? What exhibitions does she offer as examples of those demonstrating the impact of the culture wars?
Open discussion: disagreements over topics and information exhibited in federally-funded museums, "offensive" exhibitions, ideologically sensitive exhibitions. Examples: The West as America (expansion/genocide), The Last Act (Enola Gay/atom bomb), The Perfect Moment (Mapplethorpe/sexually explicit images), etc...
400
What was America’s first large-scale historic theme museum/attraction and who funded it?
Colonial Williamsburg, VA. Funded by the Rockefeller family.
400
Nineteenth-century American cultural elites felt inferior to their European counterparts because America lacked a similar material cultural history. What did Americans use to try to match European cultural treasures?
National parks were created in which natural wonders are exhibited to the public.
500
What recent style of museum architecture is characterized by resurrection of “ornament, whimsy, and more attention to popular taste”?
Postmodernism.
500
Who founded the Mouseion of Alexandria?
Ptolemy Soter
500
What is "the Bilbao effect" and why is it controversial? Explain how museums are involved in "urban renewal" or gentrification? Provide argument for and against.
Museum architecture becomes more important than a museum's contents. "Archi-tourism" develops. Gentrification of urban areas may provide opportunity for some people but rising property values push out lower income residents. Jobs are usually low-paying service jobs. And so on...
500
Why is Schwarzer, your textbook author, so obsessed with "firsts"?
No correct answer. The question is to promote discussion.
500
Which famous and influential museum first opened in a five-story brownstone (or townhouse) in mid-town Manhattan, a residential district at the time.
Museum of Modern Art, New York.