Conspicuous presumption
Subtitle: the National Gallery of Great Britain's Board of Trustees and the decline of aristocratic cultural authority, 1890--1939.
Published: 2005
Language: eng
Number of pages: 303
Description: This thesis is a case study of the Board of Trustees of the National Gallery from 1890 to 1939. It seeks to examine the British aristocracy's authority through a micro-history of the jousting for power at a major art institution. I argue that while the old landed aristocracy retained numerical dominance on the Board of the National Gallery (notwithstanding the isolated appointments of industrialists and financiers and even men in trade) the aristocracy maintained only the appearance of cultural power. The decline of aristocratic cultural authority at the National Gallery can be seen in: the growing disregard shown the aristocratic Trustees by both the Treasury (which held the National Gallery's purse-strings) and the Gallery's Director (the professional expert who advised the Board of Trustees); press reports and letters to the editor which reveal a steadily growing sense on the part of the educated British public that the ostensibly distinguished aristocratic guardians of Britain's artistic heritage were but dithering amateurs; the establishment in 1903 of the largely middle-class National Art-Collections Fund; and the profile of donors who tended to be wealthy businessmen who served on the Board of Trustees rather than old aristocrats. The increasingly ubiquitous presence of aristocrats on the boards of the nation's most important cultural institutions was not evidence of the exercise of cultural authority, as arguably their economic and political authority waned, but another mark of their "ornamental" character.
Notes: Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

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Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-06, Section: A, page: 2354.