Over the course of these three lectures I will explore “The Promise of Museums.” I will locate its terms in the Enlightenment ideas that informed the founding of the British Museum, and not only because the history of public encyclopedic museums begins with that museum--the world’s first secular, public, national museum--but because those ideas still apply in our current era. Specifically, I will consider the regard for science as a means of inquiry based on the observation and analysis of things; history, as a means of interpretation, of making sense of meaningful relationships between things; and cosmopolitanism as a framework for understanding the implications of such meanings. Each of these ideas has come under considerable pressure over the past century. Confidence in science—in knowing things, discovering truths, and the belief in the idea of progress—has been challenged by discoveries in science itself and the use to which politics has put them. Confidence in history has been challenged as little more than myth-making, a weaving of “master” or meta-narratives to justify positions of power. And cosmopolitanism as intellectually soft, not rooted in reality of modern, state-based geopolitics.
James Cuno has been President and Eloise W. Martin Director of the Art Institute of Chicago since September 2004. Previously he served as Professor and Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London from 2002-2004, and as Professor and Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard University Art Museums from 1991-2002.
A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, James Cuno has written and lectured widely on topics ranging from French caricature of the 18th and 19th centuries to contemporary American art, as well as on the role of art museums in contemporary American cultural policy. He is the author of Who Owns Antiquity?: Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage (Princeton University Press, May 2008). A top flight scholar, with a remarkable reputation here and abroad, he writes extensively on the role of museums – the current state and future of American art museums.
