Английский язык. Хрестоматия по чтению специальных текстов «Famous World Museums» для студентов 1-2 курсов специальности 070503 «Музейное дело» дневно
.pdfconcerned directly with the public services provided, in preparing exhibitions, catalogs, and other publications; or with promoting a better understanding of the region it serves. In large museums and in university museums in particular, pure and applied research may be of national or international significance and may be associated with fieldwork or study visits. Active research and publication on a given topic, apart from contributing to the academic standing of the institution, may attract further collections relevant to the topic.
Many museums provide facilities, apart from those used by casual visitors, for researchers to study collections and associated documentation. These may include study rooms with a supporting library and equipment to assist in the examination of collections. Certain museums have accommodations for visiting foreign scholars; this is particularly helpful at on-site museums that are difficult to reach.
EXHIBITION
Many museums have abandoned the traditional approach to exhibition, by which storage and display are ends in themselves, in favour of an approach that enhances the setting of the object or collection. Museums have sought the expertise of a number of specialist designers, educators, sociologists, and interpreters to improve communication through objects. The result has been a remarkable transformation in the presentation of information, both in permanent collections and in special exhibits. Far greater use is made of colour and light (within the bounds prescribed by conservation requirements), in the way material is interpreted through a variety of mediums (sound, video, interaction between visitor and exhibit, as well as more traditional methods), and in the provision of a more relaxing environment in which to enjoy the exhibits. A result of museums' increased awareness of the needs of their visitors has been a considerable increase in museum attendance.
As the museum's cultural role has developed, so its exhibition work has diversified. Large international exhibitions have been organized by cooperating nations and have been shown in the major museums of the participating countries. Exhibitions organized for national circulation are also increasingly common. Museums concerned with a particular region have arranged topical exhibitions to tour the area, and in places without suitable premises for display, or in sparsely populated areas, exhibitions have toured in specially adapted buses or trains. Some countries have developed
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multipurpose cultural centers, and collaboration with museums has resulted in exhibition programs successfully reaching a wide audience.
The marked increase of interest in the historic and natural environment globally has involved museums in the preservation and interpretation of sites, monuments, and landscapes. A museum responsible for a historic property has the opportunity to reenact events associated with the property, such as period battle scenes and banquets, to demonstrate industrial or craft techniques, or to use theatre and son et limier performances to interpret the site.
EDUCATIONAL SERVICES
The contribution that museums can make to education, both formally and informally, is widely acknowledged. The majority of their clientele learn by looking at exhibitions and displays. There has been, however, a long association among museums and schools, and many museums provide services specifically designed to meet schools' needs. Services include facilities for use both in the museum and at the school, many of which are administered by separate departments of museum education employing teachers for the purpose.
Special rooms equipped for teaching and for handling specimens are provided in many museums. By allowing the study and handling of objects from its collections, the museum can give substance and form to the bare facts of art, history, and science. Some museums build special collections for this purpose. Teaching may be undertaken by the museum's educational staff or, more often, by the schoolteacher, who will have been advised and instructed by the staff. Apart from such facilities, schools and colleges also make use of public displays to teach specific topics. For advanced studies, particularly in subjects like archaeology and geology, the availability of museum collections can be indispensable.
Part IV
Museums of Britain
ART GALLERIES
If you stand in Trafalgar Square with your back to Nelson's Column, you will see a wide horizontal front in a classical style. It is the National Gallery1. The National Gallery, comprising one of the richest and most extensive collections of paintings in the world, stands on a terrace overlooking
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the north side of Trafalgar Square. The collection admirably covers all schools and periods of painting, but is especially notable for its examples of Rembrandt1 and Rubens and its representation of the Italian schools of the 15th-16th centuries. The British school is only moderately represented as the national collections are shared with the Tate Gallery where also the 20thcentury European paintings and sculptures will be found. The National Gallery now possesses over 4,500 paintings; some 2,000 of the more important are now displayed in the main galleries (extended in 1976), but other pictures may be seen in the Lower Floor galleries. The room-to-room arrangement is by the national schools, an order followed in the description below.
The most important works only; can be mentioned, though almost every picture merits detailed examination. On the left of the ENTRANCE HALL IS the cloakroom, where umbrellas, etc., must be given up, and farther left is the bookstall, while to the right is a counter where various reproductions of the paintings may be purchased. Staircases ascend from the hall to Vestibules whose floors are decorated with mosaics showing contemporary figures. The vestibules usually contain some of the recent acquisitions and a representative selection of other works, both British and foreign. The paintings are listed below in alphabetical order of artists, as changes are made from time to time in the arrangement of the rooms.
The most famous works among them are 'Venus and Cupid' by Diego Velazquez2, 'Adoration of the Shepherds' by Nicolas Poussin3. 'A Woman Bathing' by Harmensz van Rijn Rembrandt, 'Lord Heathfield' by Joshua Reynolds, 'Mrs Siddons' by Thomas Gainsborough.
There are British school, early German school, Italian schools, Florentine school, Venetian school, Dutch school, Flemish school, Spanish school, French school and later 19th century Impressionists and PostImpressionists.
In 1897 the Tate Gallery was opened to house the more modern British paintings. Most of the National Gallery collections of British paintings were transferred to the Tate, and only a small collection of a few masterpieces is now exhibited at Trafalgar Square. Thus, the Tate Gallery exhibits a number of interesting collections of British and foreign modern painting and also modern sculpture. The collection of Turner's4 paintings at the Tate includes about 300 oils and 19,000 water-colors and drawings. He was the most traditional artist of his time as well as the most original: traditional in his
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devotion to the Old Masters and original in his creation of new styles. It is sometimes said that he prepared the way for the Impressionists.
The modern collection includes the paintings of Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and Salvador Dali5, Francis Bacon and Graham Sutherland, Peter Blake and Richard Hamilton6, the chief pioneers of pop art in Great Britain. Henry Moore7 is a famous British sculptor whose works are exhibited at the Tate too.
1.Harmenzs van Rijn Rembrandt – Харменс Ван Рейн Рембрант, голландский художник.
2.Diego Velazquez – Диего Веласкес (1599-1660), испанский живописец.
3.Nicolas Poussin – Никола Пуссен (1594-1665), французский живописец классицизма.
4.J.M. Turner – Уильям Тернер (1775-1851), английский живописец и график.
5.Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dali – Анри Матисс, Пабло Пикассо, Марк Шагал, Сальвадор Дали – всемирно известные художники.
6.Francis Bacon, Graham Sutherland, Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton – Френсис Бекон,
Грэхем Сазерленд, Питер Блейк, Ричард Хамилтон – современные английские художники.
7.Henry Moore – Генри Мур (1898-1986), английский скульптор.
TATE GALLERY1
The group of museums in England that houses national collections of British art and modern art from around the world. The Tate comprises four museums: Tate Britain and Tate Modern in London; Tate Liverpool in Liverpool, England; and Tate St. Ives in Cornwall.
The original Tate Gallery, now known as Tate Britain, was founded in 1897 as the National Gallery of British Art. It was designed to house the collection of modern British paintings that had been bequeathed to the nation in 1890 by British sugar magnate Sir Henry Tate. The gallery's original collection also included some
British paintings transferred from the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. At first the trustees of the National Gallery controlled the Tate Gallery, but an act of Parliament in 1954 separated the two museums and officially established the Tate as an independent institution.
Although the founders of the Tate Gallery intended the collection to represent only modern British art, the Tate's collection now encompasses British art from the 16th century to the present as well as international modern
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art. The collection of historic British art features important works by William Hogarth, William Blake, and John Constable. Highlights of the international collection include works by Spanish artists Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali, French artists Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp, and American artists Andy Warhol and Mark Rothko. The Tate's collection also includes a bequest by 19th-century English artist J. M. W. Turner of his paintings and watercolors. In addition to displaying its own permanent collections, the Tate mounts important exhibitions of British and modern art from collections loaned by other museums and galleries. In 2000 the Tate opened a new museum, Tate Modern, in a remodeled power plant in London to display its collection of international modern art. The original museum, renamed Tate Britain, gained space to exhibit its collection of historic British art.
Tate Liverpool was the Tate's first branch gallery. It opened in 1988 and is entirely devoted to modern art. The collections are displayed in a section of the Albert Docks, a 19th-century waterfront warehouse specially converted into a gallery by British architect James Stirling. Displays consist of works on loan from the London Tate's permanent collections, as well as exhibitions of contemporary art and touring shows from Britain and abroad.
Tate St. Ives, which opened in 1993, is a modern gallery overlooking Porthmeor Beach, in the center of St Ives. The gallery features the work of the many famous artists of the St Ives School who came to live and work in and around St. Ives beginning in the 1920s. These artists include Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, and Naum Gabo. Temporary displays show the work of younger artists associated with St Ives today.
1.Tate Gallery – национальная галерея живописи Великобритании.
BRITISH MUSEUM
The British Museum was founded in 1753, and in 1759 it was opened to the public. Nowadays it is one of the most visited museums in Europe. The number of visitors is about five million per year!
Sir Hans Sloane was a physician and naturalist. He had a collection which consisted of a library, herbarium, and some antiquities including coins and medals. The library contained books and manuscripts, prints and drawings. Overall, Sloane's collection contained over 60,000 objects. Upon his
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death, Sloane gave his collection to the nation in return for the payment of 20,000 pounds to his heirs.
The building of the museum has a quadrangular form and was designed in the 19th century especially for the museum by Sir Kobert Smirke. Nowadays the museum attracts great crowds of all ages who are eager to learn about the world's ancient and living cultures.
There are departments of Medieval and Later Antiquities, Asiatic Antiquities, Prehistoric and Roman-British Antiquities, and the Department of Asia.
There are collections of items excavated in Greece arid Egypt, Assyria and Turkey: sculptures of the Parthenon, antiquities, ethnographic items, etc. The total number of all items is around seven million.
THE TOWER OF LONDON
The Tower on the north bank of the Thames is one of the most ancient buildings of London. It was founded in the 11th century by William the Conqueror1. But each monarch left some kind of personal mark on it. For many centuries the Tower has been a fortress, a palace, a prison and royal treasury. It is now a museum of arms and armour,–and, as one of the strongest fortresses in Britain, it has the Crown Jewels.
The grey stones of the Tower could tell terrible stories of violence and injustice. Many sad and cruel events took place within the walls of the Tower. It was here that Thomas More, the great humanist, was falsely accused and executed. Among famous prisoners executed at the Tower were Henry VIII's wives Ann Boleyn and Catherine Howard. When Queen Elizabeth was a princess, she was sent to the Tower by Mary Tudor ('Bloody Mary') and kept in prison for some time.
The ravens whose forefathers used to find food in the Tower still live here as part of its history. There is a legend that if the ravens disappear the Tower will fall. That is why the birds are carefully guarded.
The White Tower was built by William the Conqueror to protect and control the City of London. It is the oldest and the most important building, surrounded by other towers, which all have different names.
The Tower is guarded by the Yeomen Warders, popularly called 'Beefeaters'2. There are two letters, E. R., on the front of their tunics. They
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stand for the Queen's name Elizabeth Regina. The uniform is as it used to be in Tudor times3.
Their everyday uniform is black and red, but on state occasions they wear a ceremonial dress: fine red state uniforms with the golden and black stripes and the wide lace-collar, which were in fashion in the 16th century.
The soldiers are still there, primarily to protect the Tower s chief attraction, the crown jewels. A handful of army regulars put in a day or two at a time, staying in the imposing Waterloo Block, built in 1845 to accommodate a thousand men.
By day the soldiers wear scarlet uniforms and tall bearskin hats, pacing their beat or standing at ease by the black wooden guard boxes. At night they patrol the darkened Tower in green battle fatigues, toting automatic rifles and demanding the password from anyone out for a stroll.
History and tradition also collide head-on in the Bloody Tower. Ushering reverential tourists to its base, the beefeaters – never fail to relate the grim genesis of its name: the deaths of the two young princes, supposedly on the orders of their uncle, Richard III. Shakespeare, and before him Thomas More4, blamed Richard, contending that his henchmen smothered the boys in.
The fact is no one can be sure just what happened to the boys. After their arrival at the Tower in 1483 they were declared illegitimate and ineligible for the crown. The princes were then seen less and less frequently, until finally no one saw them again. Two small skeletons were found buried under the White Tower stairs 191 years later, but they cannot be positively identified, and nobody has been able to pin the deaths on Richard.
Of the crown jewels, are displayed behind thick glass, the crowns and scepters are arranged in a blinding series of still lives. The more spectacular pieces, including the Imperial State Crown and Imperial Crown of India, are embedded with thousands of diamonds each. Tourist eyes were drawn - or perhaps averted by glare - to the simple St. Edward's Crown, with its plain gold surfaces and semiprecious decorative stones. Dating in its present form from the reign of Charles II, it is used only at the climax of the coronation ceremony and illustrates the importance of this collection to Britain's heritage.
There is no insurance on the jewels. «They're priceless,» curator Bob Melling said. Beyond the metals and stones, how do you put a price on antiquity, on the fact that every king and queen of England has worn them?»
In 1671 the crown jewels were kept in the Martin Tower-the tower farthest from the main gate - and it was there that the only attempt to steal the
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jewels was made. An Irish adventurer named Thomas Blood, who liked to be called Colonel Blood, disguised himself as a clergyman and befriended the keeper of the jewel house. He arrived one morning with three friends, asking to see the jewels. As the keeper unlocked the door, the foursome overcame him and ran off with St. Edward’s Crown and the royal orb.
The thieves made it out the Tower gate, but three of them, including Blood, were captured with their loot along the wharf outside.
With a diet including raw meat, the black scavengers are the true beefeaters of the Tower - six official ravens and two on reserve.
«There is an old legend that should the ravens leave the Tower of London, the White Tower would crumble and the monarchy would fall,» Yeoman Warder David Cope told me.
As Ravenmaster, Cope's responsibilities include clipping the birds' wings so they cannot fly. It is absolutely painless; Cope trims back the feathers under only one wing.
«That causes less lift on that wing, so the best they can do is fly in an arc.» Ravens are a protected species in Great Britain, and the Tower has its own breeding program. When the first Tower-grown raven hatched in 1989,
children around the country submitted names. The winner: Ronald Raven. Every night at 10 p.m. at the Tower of London the Ceremony of the
Keys or locking up of the Tower for the night takes place. It goes back to the Middle Ages. Five minutes before the hour the Headwarder comes out with a bunch of keys and an old lantern. He goes to the guardhouse and cries: 'Escort for the keys'. Then he closes the three gates and goes to the sentry, who calls: 'Halt, who comes there?' The Headwarder replies: 'The Keys'. 'Whose Keys?' demands the sentry. 'Queen Elizabeth's Keys', comes the answer. 'Advance Queen Elizabeth's Keys. All's well'. The keys are finally carried to the Queen's House where they are safe for the night. After the ceremony everyone who approaches the gate must give the password or turn away.
1.William the Conqueror - Вильгельм Завоеватель (1028-1087), норманнский герцог, король Англии.
2.Yeomen Warders 'Beefeaters' – лейб-гвардейцы Лондонского Тауэра. «Бифитеры» - «мясоеды», прозвище стражников Тауэра.
3.Tudor times – времена правления династии Тюдоров (1485-1603).
4.Thomas More – Томас Мор (1478-1535), английский гуманист, государственный деятель иписатель.
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STONEHENGE
The great stone monument of Stonehenge1 is the best known and most remarkable of prehistoric remains in Britain. It has stood on Salisbury Plain for about 4,000 years. No written records exist of its origin, and it has always been surrounded by mystery. There have been many different theories, but still nobody knows why it was built.
One theory is that it was a place from where stars and planets could be observed. It was discovered that the position of some stones was related to the movements of the sun and moon, so that the stones could be used as a calendar to predict such things as eclipses.
At one time people thought that Stonehenge was a Druid temple. The Druids were a Celtic religious group before the Norman Conquest. Some people believe that the Druids were a group of priests who practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism.
Another theory is that the great stone circle was used to store terrestrial energy which was then generated across the country through the so-called lay lines, which are invisible channels for a special kind of power.
Besides the theories of scientists, there are local legends. One of them tells that Stonehenge was built by the devil in a single night. He flew forwards and backwards between Ireland and Salisbury Plain carrying huge stones one by and setting them in place. As he worked, he laughed himself. «That will make people think. They will never know how the stones came here!» But a friar was hiding in a ditch nearby. The devil saw the friar and threw a stone at him which hit the friar on the heel. The stone which the devil threw is known as the heel stone, and people will show it to you lying by the side of the road.
1. Stonehenge – Стоун Хендж – самый больший в мире комплекс, состоящий из огромных отдельно стоящих каменных глыб в виде круглых или квадратных оград.
VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM
The Victoria & Albert Museum was established in 1852. Originally it was known as the South Kensington Museum. In 1899 it was renamed in honor of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The museum houses one of the world's greatest decorative and applied arts collections.
The museum is located in South Kensington, west London. South Kensington is called London's «museum quarter». Besides the Victoria and
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Albert Museum, there is also the National History Museum and the Science Museum.
A number of prominent architects and designers decorated the galleries of the museum and started a series of mosaic figures and frescoes, as well as other architectural details. In late 1880s the authorities of the museum decided to extend the museum. During this period the main facade was constructed consisting of a series of arches supported by slender columns. There are also figures of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert as well as busts and figures of British artists whose works are represented at the museum. At the museum's main entrance there is a 9-meter high chandelier made of glass. It welcomes its visitors and opens 145 galleries which hold over four million items.
The museum has galleries for ceramics and glass, gold and silver ware, sculpture, textiles and dress, furniture, as well as drawings, paintings, and photographs. There is also Islamic Middle East, Indian and South-East Asian Sections, and the Art Library. The collection of paintings and drawings is especially known for its numerous oil paintings, water colors, miniatures and pastels, drawings and prints. Works by Paul Cezanne1, Edgar Degas, Eugene Delacroix and other masters of the past and modern times attract tourists from all over the world.
Probably the best known and surely the most powerful artistic rendering of England's foremost pre-Roman monument, Stonehenge, is Constable's2 watercolour of 1835. This markedly dramatic portrayal of the prehistoric ruin shows the painter in an overtly romantic veinevident above all in the overpowering, cataclysmic sky, the most singular aspect of his interpretation.
Here Constable strives for utmost expressive intensity rather than maximum meteorological truth. No other representation features so awesomely turbulent a setting albeit once graced by the delicate, ephemeral presence of a double rainbow. And only Constable's version does ample justice to that sense of «the Sublime» which his and the preceding generation found in Stonehenge.
Its literal representation as a «stone quarry» has been often enough done.» He is here differentiating his own expressive approach from the purely descriptive topographical one characterizing the majority of Stonehenge views. But he may also be alluding to the fact his version was a distant view father than the more usual close-up one. His removed, panoramic viewpoint greatly accentuates the appearance and mood of stark isolation and lonely endless
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