Towards a Transnational History of Museums. An Introduction

Abstract

An IntroductionThe time has come to call into question a historiographic construct.According to a widely-held opinion, museums since the nineteenth century have been loci for the construction of identity, mirrors of competing national cultures, products of national affirmation -to name just a few of the recent museum-historical research themes.No one would deny that at least since the French Revolution the museum per se has been in the grips of a powerful tide of national pathos.¹The future museum should contain the development of the whole wealth of drawings, paintings, sculptures, and other monuments of art.[…] This will be a national monument.[…] France will extend its glory over all times and all the peoples of the world; the national museum will comprise a total of the most wonderful knowledge and will command the admiration of the whole universe […].It will have such an influence on the mind, it will so elevate the soul, it will so excite the heart that it will be one of the most powerful ways of proclaiming the illustriousness of the French Republic, wrote the French minister of the interior Jean-Marie Roland in his frequently cited, programmatic letter of 1792 to the painter Jacques-Louis David.²Museum rhetoric such as this was to have far-reaching consequences for the development of European museums in the nineteenth century.But yet, thorough studies of correspondence, administrative records, travel activity, statements by museum experts and visitors, and even the architectonic and drama turgical language of the museums all suggest that European museal reality includes the existence of another, more complex, multi-facetted level -one that is marked by transnational cross-fertilizations.If these sources are given credence, then

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