Description:
National Galleries looks at national art museums globally and considers how - as pieces of architecture, curated spaces and collections of artworks - they entangle art and nation. Are national galleries different from other kinds of art gallery or museum? What value is there for the nation in a collection of international masterpieces? How are national galleries involved in the construction of national art? This is a book that travels the world and considers how art is made to perform differently in each place. It is a book about looking and thinking afresh.
Review Quotes:
"The book is a welcome contribution to the project of 'making strange' the naturalized cultural forms, practices and assumptions associated with national galleries. In an eminently readable and engaging compendium of thematic perspectives and critical accounts, Knell reveals some of the vast and usually unremarked differences between national galleries. Through a comparative framework he attends sensitively to their situated peculiarities and to their political contexts and roles, providing new insights into the ways in which interrelated ideas of art and the nation have historically been constructed in the institutional remits, rhetoric, collections and space of museums. Achieving a uniquely wide and comparative perspective only available to the near-constant traveller, Knell has provided a landmark study for the understanding of national galleries." Christopher Whitehead, Professor of Museology, Newcastle University, UK
"A welcome survey of the development and meaning of national galleries of art beyond the familiar institutional histories of western Europe and the United States of America." Professor Helen Rees Leahy, University of Manchester
"Covering a broad range of histories and institutions, Knell tackles the subject of national galleries with clarity and aplomb. The text is supported by 41 black-and-white images and 15 color plates, many taken by the author, a thorough index, and ample notes... Useful to those interested in museum studies, collecting histories, national identity, material and cultural heritage, and related fields in the fine arts.Summing Up: Recommended"-- J. Decker, CHOICE Reviews