Inventing the national identity in the museum - from Old Regime to Revolution

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From the Old Regime era, patriotic consciousness in French art was manifested in the idea of schools, styles, choice of subjects, mode of expressions, and way of displaying. Once the "past" was considered an evil during the French revolution, the images applauding the revolutionary success replaced the old one. The museum opened in 1793 at the Louvre Palace, was expected as a suitable media for fixing this new national image and visualizing the revolutionary spirits. For all this ideal pronounced frequently by the government, are explicit some rests of the detestable old customs in the discussions of the committees in charge and on the works and classification of the museum display. It should be concluded, from what has been examined by this study, that the political role of the museum, at least in the early stage, of inventing a national identity was rather limited.