Museum Author(s): Georges Bataille and Annette Michelson Reviewed work(s): Source: October, Vol. 36, Georges Bataille: Writings on Laughter, Sacrifice, Nietzsche, UnKnowing (Spring, 1986), pp. 24-25 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778543 . Accessed: 14/12/2012 00:19 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
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Museum
the firstmuseum in the modern sense According to the GreatEncyclopedia, of the word (meaning the firstpublic collection) was founded in France by the ConventionofJuly27, 1793. The originofthe modernmuseum is thuslinkedto the developmentof the guillotine.Nevertheless,the collectionof the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford,foundedat the end of the seventeenthcentury,was already a public one, belonging to the university. The development of the museum has obviously exceeded even the most optimistichopes of its founders.Not only does the ensemble of the world'smuseums now representa colossal piling-upof wealth, but the totalityof museum visitorsthroughoutthe world surelyoffersthe verygrandiose spectacle of a humanityby now liberatedfrommaterialconcernsand devoted to contemplation. We must realize thatthe halls and art objects are but the container,whose contentis formedby the visitors.It is the contentthat distinguishesa museum froma privatecollection. A museum is like a lung of a great city; each Sunday the crowd flowslike blood into the museum and emerges purifiedand fresh. The paintingsare but dead surfaces,and it is withinthe crowd thatthe streaming play of lightsand of radiance, technicallydescribed by authorized critics,is produced. It is interestingto observe the flowof visitorsvisiblydriven by the desire to resemble the celestial visions ravishingto their eyes. Grandvillehas schematizedtherelationsofcontainerto contentwithrespect to the museum by exaggerating (or so it would appear) the links tentatively formedbetween visitorsand visited. When a native of the Ivory Coast places an axe of neolithic,polished stone withina water-filledreceptacle, then bathes in thatreceptacleand offerspoultryto what he takes to be thunderstones(fallen fromthe skyin a clap of thunder),he but prefiguresthe attitudeof enthusiasm and of deep communion with objects which characterizesthe modern museum visitor. The museum is the colossal mirrorin which man, finallycontemplating himselffromall sides, and findinghimselfliterallyan object of wonder, abandons himselfto the ecstasy expressed in art journalism. 1930
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Grandville.The Louvre of the Marionettes.
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