单项选择题
| In the history of arts
patronage(资助，赞助), entrepreneurs-turned-connoisseurs(艺术品鉴赏家，行家) are a young
development. The world’s greatest museums the Louvre, Hermitage, Prado began as
lavish civilization-is-power statements by monarchs and emperors; private
individuals did not emerge as significant museum patrons before the 19th
century. Until a generation ago. those wanting to leave their mark in bricks
usually did so in a room of their own in a state museum: the Duveen Galleries at
Tate Britain, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Gallery at New York’s Museum of
Modern Art. But in the past 15 years, that has changed: worldwide, collectors
seek immortality in glass and steel, through a museum of their own, designed by
an architect of their choosing. These are not latter-day Henry Tates or Pavel Tretyakovs, democratic visionaries who paid for buildings and donated core collections to kick-start evolving national, state-run institutions. Museum builders of the 1990s and 2000s, by contrast, are products of late capitalism, dedicated to more personal projects, with an individualistic flavor. They represent the legacy of Thatcher-Reagan words of choice, private philanthropy (慈善机构), me-generation celebrity. Together, these and scores more bring diversity and flatten old geographical hierarchies. In Istanbul, collector Sakip Sabanci’s museum, founded in 2002, is the first ever to show western modernism in Turkey. Thanks to Dominique de Menil, the greatest collection of paintings by Cy Twombly, who lives in Italy, is on permanent show in Houston, Texas, in a gallery designed in 1995 by Renzo Piano. In 1996 the late collector and dealer Heinz Berggmen launched his Museum Berggruen in Berlin, giving Germany its only Picasso collection. Is all for the best in the best of all possible worlds Certainly, more private museums mean more art on display for more people to see. Today’s collectors are reluctant to bequeath (遗赠) to established museums, where space shortages mean works may go straight into storerooms and stay there. By contrast, a dedicated museum maintains the integrity of a collection, keeping together outstanding groups of works, assembled with personal flair, in buildings designed to enhance them. Renzo Piano’s light, see-through 1997 construction for Ernst Beyeler’s cherry-picked modernist paintings in Basel is the shining European example. For contemporary work, private collectors have particular advantages: free of state bureaucracy, they can respond quickly to the fast pace, and show work in ways that are too radical for traditional museums. |