Art
Art names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Art METROPOLITAN MUSEUM F
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM F, the chief art museum of New York City and the largest and most inclusive in the United States. It was established in 1870 and in the following year the State Legislature appropriated $500,000 for a building at Central Park. The first building of the museum was completed in 1879, and the center portion of the Fifth Avenue front was finished in 1902. It was built from designs prepared by Richard Morris Hunt and cost $1,200,000. A further appropriation was made in 1904 for the north part of the Fifth Avenue front. Additional extensions were made in 1907 and in years following. The total cost of the buildings of the museum is about $20,000,000. The museum is governed by a Board of Trustees selected from the Fellows of the institution which compose a corporation. It is administered by a director, secretary, treasurer, and other officials. The city appropriates about $200,000 annually toward its support, while the remainder of the expenses, which amount to about $500,000, are met through contributions and through sums received for ad- L mission on certain days. The museum possesses collections of the first rank. The department of paintings is especially notable for Flemish, Dutch, Old English, French, and American masters. Many of the finest col- A lections of antiquities are housed here. 19-Vol. I-Cyc These include the Cesnola collection of Cypriote antiquities; one of the largest Egyptian collections in the world, and many important and representative collections of sculpture, examples of decorative arts, and a notably large and fine collection of medieval armor. The museum has received from time to time large sums of legacies and bequests. These include Jacob H. Rogers' bequest of about $7,000,000 in 1901, a bequest from Francis L. Leland of $1,- 000,000 00 in 1912, a bequest from Frederick T. Hewitt of $1,000,000, and other bequests and gifts from other friends of the institution. The museum has held many notable exhibitions. Among the most important of these was the Hudson-Fulton Memorial exhibition of Dutch paintings and early memorial art, in 1909. There have also been displayed from time to time important loan collections including those of old masters and other objects of art of J. P. Morgan. Following the death of Mr. Morgan, his son gave to the museum a large portion of the wonderful collections of his father. To house these collections an additional wing was built called the Pierpont Morgan Wing. This was completed in 1918. The museum receives important accessions to its various collections each year. It carries on educational courses and it is yearly visited by an increased number of people. The director from 1910 was Edward Robinson, who succeeded Sir Caspar Purdon Clark. ARTABANUS (-bā'nus) IV., the last of the Parthian monarchs. Having incited his subjects to revolt, he was captured in 226, and put to death. Thus ended, in the 3d century, the Parthian empire.
Art the power of doing something not taught by nature or instinct
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the power of doing something not taught by nature or instinct; as, to walk is natural, to dance is an art;power or skill in the use of knowledge; the practical application of the rules or principles of science. A system of rules to facilitate the performance of certain actions; contrivance; dexterity; address; adroitness. In esthetics, art as distinguished from science consists of the truths disclosed by that species of knowledge disposed in the most convenient order for practice, instead of the best order for thought. Art proposes to itself a given end, and, after defining it, hands it over to science. 1 Science, after investigating the causes and conditions of this end, returns it to art, with a theorem of the combination of circumstances under which the desired end may be effected. After receiving them, art requires whether any or all of those scientific combinations are within the compass of human power and human means, and pronounces the end inquired after obtainable or not. The grounds of every rule of art are to be found in the theorems of science. An art can then only consist of rules, together with as much of the speculative propositions (which lose all their speculative look as soon as they come into the artist's hands) as comprises the justification of those rules. Though art must
Art METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF 275 assume the same general laws as science does
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF 275 assume the same general laws as science does, yet it follows them only into such of their detailed consequences as have led to certain practical rules, and pries into every secret corner, as well as into the open stores of the household of science, bent on finding out the necessities of which she is in search, and which the exigencies of human life demand. The several arts may be arranged in two groups (a) the mechanical, and, (b) the liberal or fine arts. The mechanical arts are those which may be successfully followed by one who does not possess genius, but has acquired the facility of working with his hands which long practice imparts. Such are the arts of the carpenter, the blacksmith, the watchmaker, etc. They are often called trades. The liberal or fine arts are such as give scope not merely to manual dexterity, but to genius; as music, painting, sculpture, architecture, etc. The seven liberal arts, which, in the palmy days of Rome, plebians were not allowed to study, were thus divided: (1) The Trivium-viz., grammar, rhetoric, and logic. (2) The Quadrivium viz., arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's put the Metropolitan Museum's whole plant at about $20,000,000 in 1921 and praised the Cesnola Cypriote antiquities as a crowning holding; the museum now keeps some two million objects, draws several million visitors a year, and added the Cloisters branch for medieval art in 1938. What Collier's could not foresee is that provenance would become the museum's hardest problem: it returned the Euphronios krater to Italy in 2008 and has since sent back dozens of other antiquities, while the Cesnola collection itself is studied as much for how it was dug and sold as for what it shows. The other half of this entry, sorting the arts into "mechanical" trades open to anyone without genius and "liberal or fine arts" open only to genius, is the part that reads as most dated — photography, film, performance and the mass-produced readymade all became art in the century after 1921, and the old ranking of hand against mind has largely gone from teaching. The definition of art as "the power of doing something not taught by nature" survives mainly in phrases like "the art of medicine."
Written for this edition, 2026.