“Art is not an end in itself, but a means of addressing humanity.”
Modest Mussorgsky
As philosopher Richard Wollheim says, art is “one of the most elusive of the traditional problems of human culture.” In its simplest manifestation, art is a form of communication that serves as a vehicle for the expression of emotions and ideas. As ideas and beliefs are culturally specific and constantly changing over time, there really is no generally agreed definition of what constitutes art. That being said, the classical branches of the visual arts are identified as painting, sculpture and architecture. Literature and poetry are considered part of the humanities or as one of the arts, while music, alongside theatre, film and dance belong to the performing arts. In this section you will discover not only specific explorations of individual art forms, but also a more detailed probing of the relationship between the visual arts and music, including painting and music, sculpture and music and architecture and music. Originally, poetry and music were treated as a unity, but gradually they have become more independent. Nevertheless, the two art forms have never forgotten their shared genetic makeup, and been intertwined for millennia. Art and music have engaged in a dynamic relationship that reveals a diverse range of human activity intended to be appreciated for their beauty.
The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) was founded in 1885 and benefitted from the Detroit philanthropists such as the Dodges, the Firestones, and the Fords, i.e., the leaders of the American automotive industry, known collectively as the Auto Barons. Charles
Considered the first and oldest art museum and art school in the United States, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) was founded in 1805. Known for its collections of 19th and 20th century materials, it also has a strength
The Swiss symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901) was born in Dusseldorf and studied at the Dusseldorf Academy. His teacher sent him to Antwerp, Brussels, and Paris to study the old masters and develop his potential. In 1850, after a stint
The Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston was founded in 1870 with most of its initial collection coming from the Boston Athenaeum, where the Museum was housed. With over 450,000 items in its collection, it’s one of the largest
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is the largest art museum in the Western United States, holding a collection of more than 142,000 objects. We’ll continue our museum ramblings in through this wide-ranging collection that covers more than
Known more for his abstract works, Max Reger decided to take, as he described it, ‘an excursion in the realm of program music’ in 1913 when he created his 4 Tondichtungen nach Arnold Böcklin (4 Tone Poems after Arnold Böcklin).
The J. Paul Getty Museum, aka the Getty, is housed in Los Angeles. Founded by Jean Paul Getty, the museum opened in 1974. Getty’s collecting had started in the 1930s, after the depression hit, when European art was readily available
The collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London is idiosyncratic, to say the least. Within the British national collections, that V&A holds sculpture and applied arts. The first musical piece of applied art is an 18th century work
