There are no
lectures nor any classes, there are no handbooks to teach the history
of the Fine Arts and to illustrate the collection in the museum. There
is not, incredible to say, even a catalogue. _There is no catalogue_.
Imagine an exhibition without even an official guide to its contents.
Here, says the Department, is the Bethnal Green Museum with its doors
wide open: let the people walk in and inspect the contents.
So, if we invited the people to inspect a collection of cuneiform
inscriptions, we might just as well expect them to carry away a
knowledge of Assyrian history; or by exhibiting an electrical machine
we might as well expect them to understand the appliances of
electricity. It is not enough, in fact, to exhibit pictures: they must
be explained. It is with paintings and drawings as with everything
else, those who come to see them having no knowledge carry none away
with them. The visitors to a museum are like travellers in a foreign
country, of whom Emerson truly says that when they leave it they take
nothing away but what they brought with them. The finest wood carving,
the most beautiful vase, the richest classic painting, produces on the
uncultivated eye no more valuable or lasting impression than the sight
of a sailing ship for the first time produces on the mind of a savage.
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