The historiography of the fine arts museum in Europe is a narrative that has mostly followed the arc of the developing nation-state after the French Revolution. This approach has often focused on the ...emergence of the public museum as part of an ‘exhibitionary complex’ that helped to shape an ‘imagined community’ of patriotic citizens during the long nineteenth century. For the most part these nationally-based perspectives have been extremely productive, but they cannot do justice to many of the museums that emerged in the Austro-Hungarian Empire before its collapse. Indeed, the three authors of this excellent volume remind us that many of the ‘national’ fine arts museums of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire took shape well before the outbreak of war in 1914 and only took on their official status as representatives of their specific ‘nations’ in the years after 1918. Thus, the historiography of museums in central Europe needs a more nuanced approach. As the volume’s editor and contributor Matthew Rampley writes, ‘current state boundaries are not a meaningful framework for the study of museums in Habsburg Central Europe.’ This volume both suggests and models that new framework. To make their point the authors use several, more complicated (social, trans-national, and local) approaches to demonstrate how museums in the Empire’s important cities (Lemberg, Prague, Budapest, Cracow, and Zagreb) emerged from a complex set of Imperial, local and, as the century progressed, civic and nationalist ambitions. Together the authors unanimously argue in favor of viewing Austria-Hungary as a ‘shared cultural space’ with complex interactions that formed a web of relationships across the many nationalities of the Empire—a web that remains invisible to the post-1945 observer. This invitation to complexity is both convincing and compelling and it opens a broad field of new research possibilities. Well-written and exquisitely researched, the volume also inadvertently highlights one of the greatest challenges to future scholars: fluency in the local languages. We are grateful to these authors to have given us this volume in English. Insofar as it models several museological approaches, it can be useful to any scholar who is interested in the historiography of museums in Europe’s long nineteenth century.
Alois Riegl was one of the seminal art historians of the early twentieth century, but very little is known about his career as adjunct-curator of textiles at the Austrian Museum for Art and Industry. ...He worked at the Museum from 1884 and combined this position with University teaching until he left this post to become a full Professor of Art History at the University of Vienna in 1897. While interest in Riegl has shown no signs of abating in recent years, most scholars continue to debate Riegl’s theories and methods. The aim of this paper, however, is to demonstrate just how much of Riegl’s theorizing was brought into focus by practical issues at the Museum for Art and Industry. As recent studies have indicated, Riegl was much more than an ivory tower theoretician; his work reverberated with the type of cross-disciplinary cultural criticism we associate with the intellectual life of fin-de-siècle Vienna. Another goal of this paper is to contribute to our expanding understanding of Riegl in his social and institutional contexts. Finally, it traces ways in which Riegl used his early exposure to Nietzsche, particularly Nietzsche’s second Untimely Meditation (The advantages and disadvantages of History to life) to craft his responses to contemporary artistic and social crises in the final decade of the nineteenth century.
Alois Riegl was one of the seminal art historians of the early twentieth century, but very little is known about his career as adjunct-curator of textiles at the Austrian Museum for Art and Industry. ...He worked at the Museum from 1884 and combined this position with University teaching until he left this post to become a full Professor of Art History at the University of Vienna in 1897. While interest in Riegl has shown no signs of abating in recent years, most scholars continue to debate Riegl's theories and methods. The aim of this paper, however, is to demonstrate just how much of Riegl's theorizing was brought into focus by practical issues at the Museum for Art and Industry. As recent studies have indicated, Riegl was much more than an ivory tower theoretician; his work reverberated with the type of cross-disciplinary cultural criticism we associate with the intellectual life of fin-de-siècle Vienna. Another goal of this paper is to contribute to our expanding understanding of Riegl in his social and institutional contexts. Finally, it traces ways in which Riegl used his early exposure to Nietzsche, particularly Nietzsche's second Untimely Meditation (The advantages and disadvantages of History to life) to craft his responses to contemporary artistic and social crises in the final decade of the nineteenth century. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Founded in 1863, the Austrian Museum for Art and Industry was the first institution on the continent to implement the principles of design reform originating from London's South Kensington Museum. ...This article analyses the debates that emerged in the 1870s between curators at the Museum and German theorists regarding historicism in arts and crafts reform. The nationalist fervour associated with the northern German Neo-Renaissance in the Wilhelmine Empire prompted Viennese theorists to search for ways of creating a similar patriotic focus for the many nationalities within Cisleithania. The models they promoted included the Italian Renaissance, folk arts and the Austrian Biedermeier. Das Österreichische Museum für Kunst und Industrie, gegründet 1863, war das erste Institut seiner Art auf dem europäischen Festland, das die Prinzipien des Kunsthandwerks implementierte, wie sie am Londoner South Kensington Museum formuliert worden waren. Dieser Artikel analysiert die in den 1870er zwischen den Kuratoren am Museum und deutschen Theoretikern ausgebrochene Debatte über die Rolle des Historizismus in der Reform des Kunsthandwerks. Die nationalistische Leidenschaftlichkeit, mit der die norddeutsche Neo-Renaissance im Wilhelminischen Reich gepflegt wurde, trieb die Wiener Theoretiker dazu an, einen ähnlich patriotischen Ansatz für die verschiedenen Nationalitäten Cisleithaniens zu finden. Sie lehnten sich dabei an die italienische Renaissance, die sogenannte 'Volkskunst' und den österreichischen Biedermeier an.
The Museum Age in Austria-Hungary: Art and Empire in the Long Nineteenth Century, by Matthew Rampley, Markian Prokopovych, and Nóra Veszprémi, University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State ...University Press, 2021, 290pp., 47 b. & w. illus., $99.95 hdbk, $39.95 pbk ISBN 9780271087108. ...the three authors of this excellent volume remind us that many of the 'national' fine arts museums of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire took shape well before the outbreak of war in 1914 and only took on their official status as representatives of their specific 'nations' in the years after 1918. ...the historiography of museums in central Europe needs a more nuanced approach. In a set of six essays the authors consider several significant museological topics and how they changed throughout the century: the interaction between the rise of urban identities and the formation of municipal museums with divergent, often competing goals (Prokopovych), the museum as an architectural monument within the rapidly-changing urban landscape (Rampley), the increasing professionalization of museum workers-largely due to the rise of art-historical scholarship in Vienna (Veszprémi), the gulf between a museum's idealized collection and the material realities of its gallery space and specific holdings (Veszprémi), and the elusive 'publics' each museum attempted either to attract or control (Prokopovych). (95) and neo classical architecture remained de rigueur for two subsequent institutions in Budapest: The House of Art (1896) and the Museum of Fine Arts (1899-1907), even as historicism was giving way at the end of the nineteenth century.
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