Museums and Their Functions

Abstract

In antiquity a museum (mouseion) was an institution devoted to the encouragement of literature and learning and included a regular cult with priests and ritual for the worship of the Muses. It served as a center for scholars and poets, philosophers and scientists-chiefly mathematicians and astronomers-and until the emperor Caracalla, noted scholars and scientists were supported there by public endowment. At the heart of such an institution were the library and the observatory. The most famous museum of antiquity was the literary academy founded at Alexandria in the first half of the third century B.C. by Ptolemy Philadelphus, which survived until the civil wars at the time of Aurelian in the third century A.D. There was no Muse of painting and sculpture but, as in other shrines, the works of figurative art which the museums contained were there primarily in an ex voto capacity. Prominent artists were employed to paint murals for municipal buildings and temples. The famous and popular artist Polygnotus, for example, who was active in the fifth century B.C., received Athenian citizenship for painting free of charge The Capture of Troy and The Battle of Marathon for the Stoa Poikile. He also painted, among other things, a Sack of Troy and a Descent of Odysseus to the Underworld for the great assembly hall of the Cnidians at Delphi and a Fight between Greeks and Amazons and another Battle of Marathon for the temple of Theseus at Athens. Sculptors also worked for the embellishment of cities, made commemorative statues of famous men, Olympic victors, and so on. Such works of visual art, particularly those intended for the glorification of cities and shrines,

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 8 citations exist upstream.