The Museum And Intellectual Experiences

Since the 18 th century,museum collections have gradually gained new social identities as public wealth.Under the influence of the paradigm of European historicism,modern museums participated in a large-scale knowledge programme that continuously had been promoting a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of the world.In this process,learning and cognition not only have political significance,but also transformed into an ideology,and the social intellectual experience of knowledge also showed a huge transformation.When human society evolved into a learning society progressively,the knowledge-based economy has been built on ideas and creativity,and the development of new ideas necessarily depends on learning activities.The long-term hesitance between the actual intellectual experience and information presentation has become a major issue that threatens the credibility of the industry and its own survival.In order to accurately understand how and why people had been building museums and similar institutions by degrees and experiencing knowledge in such an environment,it is necessary to trace back the historical context of the intellectual experience that the museum has been participating in and actively promoted.This thesis attempts to reveal the formation of the modern museum and the transformation of organizational concepts by examining the process of knowledge production and the tradition of intellectual patronage which had been shaping the museum space.The first chapter of the thesis expounds the basic situation and main problems of museum studies,as well as the sociological relevance and the important sociological discussion.From the second chapter,the focus of the study is on the circumstances of the knowledge-related experience associated with the collection from the Hellenistic era until the first half of the 20 th century(3rd century to 1950 s BC),and the intellectual patronizing activities of the social ruling class.Particular attentions are given to the issues directly related to the formation of the modern museum during the period from Italian Renaissance to the 19 th century Europe.For museums,the influence of the culture of the classical era on the path choices and achievements of Western cultural development is ubiquitous.The revival of classical culture constituted the main motive for the evolution of the knowledge experience of the Western elite.In other words,the emergence and progress of every important intellectual experience strategy was carried out by large-scale classical culture-revival programs and extensive activities of collecting,collating,textually and critically interpreting the classical culture.The transformation of the civilization of ancient Greece into a systematic cognitive object,led to the birth of the Alexandria Museum;the discovery and interpretation of the classical culture by the humanists of Renaissance,led to the metamorphosis of established collections into modern museums;the institution paradigm of the Louvre was regarded as the official birth of modern museums.The logo was formed under the guidance of the enlightenment humanistic spirit,and the humanism in the Enlightenment period was the continuation of the classical humanistic tradition.This chapter attempts to discuss the above-mentioned intellectual experiences and important historical situations that affect the European collection activities and the changes in the structure of museums since the Hellenistic era,in order to reveal the origins of the modern museum institutions and its behavioral characteristics,as well as the intellectual contexts in which the institutionalization of museums have been fully achieved.The third chapter contributes to the institutionalized practice of the German modern museum,which is the most active test site for many important concepts of modern museums and academic organization,therefore the subject has been given special attention and becomes an independent chapter.The last chapter of this paper is in the form of case studies,which concern the forming of the Chinese art collection of the Metropolitan Museum of New York from the late 19 th century to the beginning of the 20 th century,as well as the historical situation of the American scholars' intellectual experiences of Chinese art history during this period.