Notes and Comments. 375 



published in New York, by Longmans, Green & Co.* The 

 writer has spent several years in visiting various European and 

 American museums, and records her impressions in this volume. 

 These are classified under various headings, and her general 

 conclusions are well worthy of consideration, especially by 

 those about to build new museums. She has principally 

 devoted her time to art museums and galleries, but in her 

 visits she has paid rather too much attention to the icing and 

 neglected the cake. For instance, in England, she examined 

 the galleries and museums at London, Liverpool and Oxford 

 only ; on the Continent it is the great national museums that 

 chiefly attracted her attention — and condemnation. 



FUTURE MUSEUMS. 



She says, ' As regards growth, it is to be hoped that the 

 museums of the future are going to be very different from the 

 museums of the past, and that we shall learn that economy in 

 running a large plant is not the only consideration. Such 

 monstrosities as The Louvre in Paris, the South Kensington in 

 London, and the Metropolitan in New York, will no longer be 

 possible, but their places will be taken by museums of moderate 

 size, devoted not to all art from earliest times to the present day, 

 but to different periods or classes of material, and we shall then 

 have museums dotted about in the different quarters of the 

 city, where they will reach a larger number of people and where 

 one can spend, in intimate association with a series of objects, 

 a number of hours, without the overwhelming sense of fatigue 

 that comes to the weary visitor, who knows that although he 

 is now in gallery number 22, there are fifty-seven that he has 

 not seen, and through which he may possibly have to pass 

 before emerging from the building. It is very much more 

 interesting to go to ten different places than it is to go to the 

 same place ten times.' 



ARCHITECTS AND MUSEUMS. 



And again : ' Until our Trustees realize that the architect 

 is not an omniscient being, blunders are going to be made in 

 our museums. So far, few architects have specialized in museum 

 buildings, and the subject is so vast that it cannot be mastered 

 off-hand It is the part of the museum specialist, the director, 

 to guide the architect in the development of the plans. There- 

 fore the first step in planning a new museum is not to open a 

 competition for the designs of the building, but to choose a 

 Director ; who the architect is matters very little after that, 

 provided both he and the Director understand their business.' 



TYPES OF MUESUMS. 



In a museum at Cologne ' the type of case which would 

 best display the object was first considered, then the kind of 



* 280 pp. 6/6 net. 

 1917 Dec. 1. 



