In this chapter we put the history of the art museums in Europe, from the eighteenth century
to the present day, in the broader context of the nation-building process, the political …

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the first modern, public museums of art—
civic, state, or national—appeared throughout Europe, setting a standard for the nature of …

National museums are the result of the negotiated logics between science and politics,
universalism and particularism, difference and unity, change and continuity, materiality and …

This important critical study of the history of public art museums in Austria-Hungary explores
their place in the wider history of European museums and collecting, their role as public …

The character of the European museum does not stem merely from the principle of being a
collection open to visitors. It is also tied to the emergence of a type of public space towards …

Abstract In 1983 Benedict Anderson insisted on the foundational role that museums have
played in the construction of imagined communities. To better grasp the mechanisms at work …

Abstract Ideas such as democracy, socialism, and nationalism began to gain wide currency
in industrializing countries during the 19th century, and they threatened to revolutionize the …

This chapter will analyse national museums as significant national symbols and as nation-
building devices. As part of the nexus of symbolism, used by elites as political tools, national …

It is generally acknowledged that museums were an essential part of the national project in
nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century Europe—and some retain this function even today …

All states have seen major threats, challenges and changes to their political constitution
since the mid-nineteenth century. Everyday life has changed dramatically, with …