Art gallery

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

The Louvre in Paris.

The front of the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.

An art gallery or art museum is a space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art, and usually primarily paintings, illustrations, and sculpture. It is also sometimes used as a location for the sale of art.

The art museum is considered a fairly modern invention, the first being the Louvre in Paris, which was established in 1793, soon after the French Revolution when the royal treasures were declared for the people. Here we see the beginnings of removing art collections from the private domain of aristocracy and the wealthy into the public sphere, where they were seen as sites for educating the masses in taste and cultural refinement. Early Museums in America were often a part of or affiliated with Lyceums, Atheneaums, or Libraries with a broader cultural mission, and were not necessarily devoted exclusively to art. Many Museums are associated with universities or colleges.

Generally, the term art gallery is used to mean buildings or locations dedicated to displaying and/or selling art, though the large rooms in museums where art is displayed for the public are often referred to as galleries as well, with a room dedicated to Ancient Egyptian art often being called the Egyptian Gallery, for example.

Most large urban areas will have several art galleries, and most towns will be home to at least one. However, they may also be found in smaller villages, and quite remote areas, often places where artists have congregated. Examples include the Taos art colony in Taos, New Mexico, and St Ives, Cornwall.

Although primarily concerned with providing a space to show works of visual art, art galleries are sometimes used to host other artistic activities, such as music concerts or poetry readings. Conversely, some works of visual art are not shown in a gallery and, due to their form, never can be. Altarpieces, for example, are rarely shown in galleries, and murals generally remain where they have been painted. Various forms of 20th century art, such as land art and performance art, also usually exist outside a gallery. Photographic records of these kinds of art are often shown in galleries, however.

Similar to an art gallery is the sculpture garden (or sculpture park), which presents sculpture in an outdoor space. Sculpture installation has grown in popularity, whereby temporary sculptures are installed in open spaces during events like festivals.

Architecture

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain.

The architectural form of the art gallery was established by Sir John Soane with his design for the Dulwich Picture Gallery in 1817. This established the gallery as a series of interconnected rooms with largely uninterrupted wall spaces for hanging pictures and indirect lighting from skylights or roof lanterns.

The late 19th century saw a boom in the building of public art galleries in Europe an America, being an essential cultural feature of larger cities. More art galleries rose up alongside museums and public libraries as part of the municipal drive for literacy and public education.

In the late 20th century the dry old fashioned view of art galleries has increasingly been replaced with architecturally bold modern art galleries, often seen as international destination for tourists in their own right. The first example of the architectural landmark art gallery would be the Guggenheim Museum in New York City by Frank Lloyd Wright. More recent outstanding examples include Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and Mario Botta redesign of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Some critics argue that these galleries are self defeating, in that their dramatic interior spaces distract the eye from the paintings they are supposed to exhibit.

Notable Art Museums and Galleries

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Paintings inside the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

The National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia.

Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery at night.