International studio (33.1907/1908(1908))

New Boston Museum

hold meetings for practical, helpful discussion of
problems of exhibition and management. Experi-
ments have been tried in making departures from
conventional types of museums, as, for example,
the Skansen museum of Swedish history, at Stock-
holm—a group of small buildings in a park, each
structure complete in itself, and all esthetically de-
lightful. In several German museums of art the
attempt has been made to develop backgrounds har-
monious with the period of specific collections dis-
played—a room with architectural ornaments
characteristic of the high Renaissance for exhibi-
tion of paintings by Raphael, Botticelli and Guido
Reni; a Louis Quatorze room for early French
paintings; the simulated interior of a Greek temple
in which to show original Hellenic sculptures. This
particular practice may be bad; some authorities
condemn it as an outgrowth of affectation. The
point, however, is that there is ferment among the
museum experts, undisguised dissatisfaction with
museums that were thought admirable in the middle
and late decades of the nineteenth century.
This dissatisfaction seems up to now to have been
less strongly felt in the United States than in Eu-
rope. Every art museum, at all events, built here
for some years back, including the biggest, which
was very recently dedicated, has been con-
structed on purely conventional lines. Some have
been so badly designed as regards lighting and
other arrangements that they are almost unusable.
Most, however, are negative in their ineffectiveness.
In the architectural planning of practically every
American art museum, one senses lack of big
aggressive ideas, a lack of the evidences of adequate
preparation for an undertaking which involves some-
thing more than securing a good-sized appropria-
tion to turn over to a firm of celebrated and over-
worked architects. Whatever the ultimate merits of
the new plans of the Museum of Fine Arts, they are
at least so thoroughly professional that indifference
to the opinions of museologists is unlikely hence-
forth to be shown in any considerable museum
project.
They are, at all events, an outgrowth of extraor-
dinarily careful preparation. In creating a mu-
seum building embodying new ideas no traditional
type of construction can be accepted as right with-
out proof. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts dur-
ing the whole period of the elaboration of these
plans was fortunate in having a president whose
appreciation of the value of the specialist’s knowl-
edge and opinions is combined with remarkable
ability to lay his finger upon any defect in plan or
special pleading. To Mr. Samuel D. Warren’s

foresight and liberality, as well as to the scholarship
and business acumen of the present president, Mr.
Gardiner M. Lane, much of the credit of the under-
taking is due. The other members of the board of
trustees were without exception men of affairs
accustomed to seek the judgment of experts in any
matters involving the expenditure of large sums of
money.
The opinions of the officers of the museum were
therefore considered as a matter of course, for it
was appreciated that men who are in daily contact
with the collections and who meet the public have
knowledge that can be acquired in no other way.
Printed papers by staff officials, all of whom make
it a part of their professional duty to keep in touch
with museological discussion and progress, were
called for by the trustees. The contentions in these
papers were fortified by reprints and translations
of discussions printed abroad.
The trustees demanded still further information
on which to proceed. A committee from their own
membership, including the director, Mr. Edward
Robinson, and two consulting architects, were sent
abroad. They inspected practically all foreign
museums of any consequence. They made measure-
ments. They collected photographs and working
drawings. They talked with museum authorities.
Upon their return the observations of the tour were
published in a thick volume.
Finally, the whole results of years of study and
investigation, converging upon an absolutely logical
conception of what the museum should be, were
turned over to Mr. Guy Lowell, architect. His
commission was, naturally, very different from one
which an architect might receive in ordinary cir-
cumstances, as at the behest of a building com-
mittee, who should say:
“We have so many million dollars for an art
museum. Draw us some plans and let them be
something big and monumental—something that
will make the great American public talk for a year
and a day.” While given abundant scope for ex-
pression of his own individuality, Mr. Lowell went
to work upon a project that could but have over-
individual value. He was to give body to a set of
simple, distinct architectural ideas. That in doing
so he has exhibited rare professional skill and good
taste is generally agreed.
In order that a public museum may attain great-
est usefulness and attractiveness, its design, ac-
cording to the best museological thought, should
exhibit three main constructional features : division
of collections into “exhibition series” and “study
series”; segregation of departments so that each

LVIII