Every European country similarly possesses museums, national and municipal, which have for the most part had their origin in the collections of princes and nobles, supplemented in modern times by the deliberate educational policy of national or local governments.
In France the 12 national museums, including pre-eminently the Louvre, are governed by a Council of National Museums, under a director appointed by the President of the Republic on the recommendation of the Minister of Public Instruction. Mu seums under municipal or other local management are numerous.
In Italy no less than 71 museums and galleries are classed as national; to these must be added the great papal museums of the Vatican and Lateran and the municipal museums of Rome, Bologna, Ravenna, Siena, Palermo and elsewhere.
In Germany nearly all museums are the property of the several States, having grown up when they were separate kingdoms or principalities. The most important are the great group of mu seums of art, archaeology and ethnology at Berlin, Munich, Dres den and Nuremberg, with the Roman collections at Mainz and Trier, and museums of industrial art at Berlin and Hamburg. Of the many museums scattered over Europe, northern Africa, and southern Asia, most of them are of national interest only (see section IMPORTANT MUSEUMS AND ART GALLERIES).
In the U.S. the recent growth of museums has been amazing. They illustrate the modern development of museum theory. In stead of having developed fortuitously out of collections origi nally made to gratify the taste of a prince or the curiosity of a traveller, they have been for the most part deliberately created as part of the educational system of the country. Only a very few are national, namely the small group of museums at Wash ington administered by the Smithsonian Institution. A few are State museums, but not more than half a dozen of these are said to be well developed. There are some college and private museums, but the large majority, amounting to nearly i,000 in all, is corn posed of municipal museums, supported partly by municipal funds but still more by private subscriptions and benefactions, the collection of which by organized propaganda forms an important part of the duties of the administration.
Money for buildings has been contributed with great liberality by private citizens, and since all are of quite recent date it is in America that museum planning and architecture can best be studied.
In respect of contents the American museums started at a dis advantage, for the field of free acquisition of Greek and Roman antiquities was closed before they came into existence. Never theless even in these provinces the museums of New York and Boston have succeeded in forming notable collections; while wherever there is an opening either for excavation or for pur chase, American museums have been active and successful. The
Metropolitan Museum has built up a magnificent Egyptian col lection by many years of painstaking and scientific excavation. The American museum of Natural History has sent expeditions into many parts of the world, its most notable recent success having been won in Siberia. Boston and Philadelphia have had expeditions at work in Egypt, Palestine and Mesopotamia; in the latter country the Philadelphia museum has shared with the Brit ish Museum the epoch-making discoveries at Ur. American antiq uities are, of course, their natural province (e.g., the Heye mu seum of the American Indian) ; but they have also taken advantage of the more recent opening up of the Far East to form the finest collections in existence of Chinese and Japanese art and archaeol ogy. For fine buildings in which first-rate collections are shown with a due allowance of space, the traveller must visit the great cities of America rather than the crowded galleries of London, Paris and Rome.
The conception of the museum as the laboratory of the student followed next after the conception of it as a casual collection of objects of beauty or curiosity, and was the result of the spread of archaeological discovery and scientific research, exemplified by the excavations of Layard and Schliemann and the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in the 19th century. The third con ception of it, as an instrument for the education of the general public, is of still later growth. If a date is to be indicated, the Great Exhibition of 1851 (out of which grew, in England, the institutions now known as the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Science Museum) may be taken as marking its commence ment ; but its general recognition and acceptance belongs to the present generation, and perhaps is not fully realized yet. Sir H. Miers' report, already alluded to, shows how much remains to be done in order to qualify most of the local museums of Great Britain to take their place in the educational scheme; but the doctrine is now generally accepted, the press aids with ready pub licity, and the public visit the museums in greater numbers and take a more intelligent interest in their contents.