Institutional Blessing: The Museum as Canon-Maker

Abstract

Since the eighteenth century, museums have played a prominent part in constituting the artworld, populating itw ith inhabitants and assigning value to them. Museums have the institutional function of collecting and preserving objects identified as having a certain cultural value. Unlike private collectors, who can indulge their personal tastes independently of the public, museums are obliged to make depersonalized judgments that are normative. Museums are expected to be both archival and celebratory. They are managed by expert staffs whose function it is to use public and/or private funds to select, study and exhibit those items whose aesthetic and historic interest merits special custodial and scholarly attention. Museums are thus implicated in the dissemination of cultural canons and, I contend, of their formation as well.