ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at two of the most important public art museums in Europe, the Louvre Museum in Paris and the National Gallery in London. The transformation of the palace into a public space accessible to everyone made the museum an especially pointed demonstration of the state’s commitment to the principle of equality. Equality of access to the museum in no way gave everyone the relevant education to understand the works of art inside, let alone equal political rights and privileges; in fact, only propertied males were full citizens. Historians of museums often see the new art-historical hang as the triumph of an advanced, Enlightenment thinking that sought to replace earlier systems of classification with a more rational one. The importance of the Louvre Museum as a model for other national galleries and as an international training ground for the first community of professional museum men is everywhere recognized.
