Observation of the satisfactory French ex perience in connection with the democratization of art galleries had four results in other lands: (1) It popularized the theory that art-educa tion must, so far as possible, be provided for all the people; (2) the number of art galleries was greatly increased; (3) systematic efforts were made to utilize such galleries for the pro motion of artistry in every form; and (4) gal leries and museums of art began to extend their good offices far beyond their walls. They are at present concerned not only with the persons who may come to them seeking instruction but also with the study, registration and conserva tion of objects — the artistic, the historically valuable and the beautiful things in their neighborhood. Mr. Benjamin Ives Gilman, secretary of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. writes: "Let each American museum of art take its neighborhood for its province, acquir ing and imparting information about any local works of art, public or private, whose owners may offer them for the purpose. A knowledge of what we have is the necessary and often sufficient condition of its preservation' This excellent program expressly includes the accurate and complete registry, by description, measurement, photography and otherwise, of such buildings, monuments, paintings, sculp tures, etc., in the locality as the officers of the museum may consider of public interest from an artistic point of view; and this may be taken as the last word, up to 1917, in regard to the extension of any art gallery's or art museum's influence beyond its own walls.
But even more noteworthy than such extra mural activity is the intramural; and here the most important subjects are the following: (1) The advanced thought of the day in regard to the adequate installation and exhibition of ob jects of art, especially paintings; and (2) the development of educational features. As for the first of these subjects, the best usage at present authorizes the propositions that the several collections or groups in a large gallery or museum of art should be arranged in chronological order, to bring out the historical, as well as the aesthetic, relationships; but that, within each of the large groups, the purely esthetic arrangement should be preferred to the chronological. The effect of this is, that a visitor can observe and study the history of art, from the earliest times to our own day, simply by making intelligent use of his eyes in one gallery after another, taking the rooms or galleries in the prescribed sequence and con sulting such catalogues as will give in compact form the last word in competent connoisseur ship. That ideal may not indeed be fully real ized, but that it shall be approximated is clearly the purpose of the most enlightened and pro gressive art directors.
In order to appreciate the value of the principle involved, let us note its application to the arrangement and display of paintings only, rather than to the entire museum with all its collections, embracing architecture, sculpture, etc., as well as the pictures. The advanced
thought in regard to adequate installation and exhibition of paintings is that we should do our best to make it convenient for visitors to look at them in the way it was intended (by their makers) they should be looked at — not contenting ourselves with merely having them numbered or labeled and hung in serried rows in a gallery no better suited to the purpose than are some of the European art galleries and museums. A distinguished art expert writes that the public collections of Europe seem to put every possible or conceivable obstacle in the way of our enjoyment. He believes that each masterpiece should be isolated in a special niche like the image of a jealous god, and he complains that, on the contrary, it is often stuck like a postage stamp on a wall covered with paintings that have little or nothing but arch eological interest to recommend them. Another art critic, looking backward to the times when altar-pieces and easel-pictures (now in our galleries) were visible in the very places for which their painters had designed them —and therefore in their own sympathetic surround ings— manifests an art-lover's longing for the restoration of surroundings that might at least suitable, although, naturally, never again nude the same. Progressives who hold that it is not practicable to isolate every masterpiece in a special niche, nevertheless advocate the construction of galleries with wall-space so ample that even those pictures which lack some thing of the superlative quality we revere in the greatest masterpieces need not be crowded to gether; since it is very difficult to appreciate fully any single painting when others in the same field of vision compete with it for our attention. Summarizing the conclusions reached by authorities in this field, we may say that, for the better enjoyment of all the oldest paintings, it is desired to reproduce, so far as practicable, such surroundings as they had originally. With only a small collection, this certainly can be done; how far, then, can such a principle of reform apply to large galleries? Admittedly it is possible to achieve, even with very large collections, vastly better results in the future than any to which we have hitherto attained. It is well understood that eventually the reform must be thorough going; that, for example, a systematized collection of paintings in the midst of unorganized collections of architectural and sculptural examples could never produce its proper effect. It must be a part of the harmonious development that shall prevail in every part of the art gallery of the future.