Museums in London
Abstract
JACK SIMMONS Drawings by GlYnn Boyd Harte HAT is a museum? It is, in modern usage, a place for assembling objects that seem to be worth preservation: pictures or other works of art, curiosities, things that are rare or historically important. They are not only collected and preserved in a museum; a selection of them is displayed there to visitors. Defined thus, the word has made its way from its origin (which was a good deal different) in fourth- century Alexandria to take its place in every modern European language. But in Britain its meaning has come to be, in one way, peculiar. Here a 'museum', in ordinary usage, may contain anything except oil paintings. For them the place is a 'picture gallery'. The distinction is a curious one, taking its origin, at least in some measure, from the snobberies of the art world; and snobbery is always a particularly powerful force in Britain. On the Continent one goes to see pictures in the Rijksmuseum, the Musee du Louvre; the proper title of the Prado is the Museo Nacional de Pintura. But in London you will not find oil paintings in the British Museum. They are in another institution,