Art Museum As Ritual Summary

The Art Museum as Ritual is an article written by Carol Duncan that questions the role and function of public museums. In this article, Duncan shows his dissatisfaction with the way museums use objects of art to come up with particular political meanings aimed at achieving a certain purpose. According to her, some nations came up with western style museums to be perceived as having desirable diplomatic or political allies. This essay summarizes the main ideas in the article by Carol Duncan, highlights my visit to a museum and analyzes two works of art stored in the museum.
Duncan notes that political nature of museums started during the French revolution and the formation of the first ever modern public museum. During that time, museums were …show more content…
Duncan argues that this is what binds a community together by in a civic body through identification of its highest values, its truest truths and proudest moments. It is through this way that museums achieve a ritual quality that is usually associated with certain religious institutions. In addition to sometimes mimicking the architecture of classic temples, Duncan suggests that museums work like shrines or temples. She is of the opinion that when visitors arrive at a museum, they have certain expectations as well as willingness to learn and compensate. Museum’s spaces are marked as special in a way that they require a certain degree of contemplation, just like religious spaces. Both religious and museum spaces require the same kind of performance by visitors. Within museums, this performance is often carried out alone to its completion, through reliving narratives, following a recommended route around a certain exhibit or going through a structured experience that experience that related to the exhibit’s meaning or history. The exhibits in a museum are organized in a manner that they construct and convey pre-determined narratives of a version of history that only suits the interests of individuals in