| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Europe: Early Modern and Modern

Francis Haskell. The Ephemeral Museum: Old Master Paintings and the Rise of the Art Exhibition. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2000. Pp. xiv, 200. $25.00.

This is the late Francis Haskell's characteristically restrained salvo into the debate over blockbuster Old Master exhibitions, which have been a major feature of European metropolitan life since the 1900s. Only the occasional acerbic aside punctuates his erudition, suggesting an intensity of feeling belied by the archival certitudes that underpin his account. This book will appeal to anyone who has winced at an aircraft's bumpy landing, wondering what vulnerable canvas is crated in its hold en route to yet another international exhibition. It seems now de rigeur to see Pissarros from Paris in Tokyo, and in Washington Vermeers from Amsterdam. As Haskell sorrowfully attests, the length of the queue, the volume of loans, and the sums raised in sponsorship are now the criteria by which success is gauged. Overwhelmed visitors often fail to realize that they may view in comfort elsewhere in the gallery equally compelling works from the permanent collection, although, as Haskell recognizes, the very concept of the "permanent collection" is under threat from the apparently unstoppable onward march of the loan exhibition. Yet, as I write, falling share prices are threatening corporate sponsorship, that linch-pin of the blockbuster show; reading between the lines, one suspects that Haskell might have seen this as no bad thing. . . .

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