Museums and Wealth

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Critically analyzing contemporary art collecting and the value form. Nizan Shaked shows why the current museum system, based on the nonprofit model, is unfit to administer our common collections. a history of how collections gradually turned public gives context. In the late Renaissance, externalizing collections helped legitimize the prince's right to rule, and later, with the bourgeois revolutions, public display consolidated national identity. But the rise of the museum in the United States reversed this trajectory, re-privatizing the collection such that individuals benefit from the public purse reputationally, politically, and financially. By the 21st century, this has became an international trend. A materialist description of the museum as a model institution of the liberal nation state reveals constellations of imperialist social relations. The book offers solutions for redistributive restructuring and diversity reform. Book jacket.