The visitors of the Alte and Neue Museum in Berlin -1880

虽然我们现在对柏林最早建成的两个博物馆——老博物馆和新博物馆——的建筑、藏品的历史和它们的展示，以及它们的基础理念都很了解，但我们对当时这些机构的参观者的了解却恰恰相反。这在初始阶段尤其如此。这就引出了这个研究项目的主题。目的是识别柏林最早的两个艺术博物馆——老博物馆（1822-1830年）和新博物馆（1841-1859年）的游客，他们的原始博物馆布局。打算讨论的问题是，这些博物馆在老博物馆和新博物馆的安排是针对谁的，以及游客如何看待它们？第二个目标是发现博物馆的公众是否主要来自文化精英，或者是否也包括不太富裕的社会阶层的代表。关于这项研究的内容，主要的问题是博物馆在多大程度上遵守了它们的人道主义原则方案，以及它们采用了什么手段来接近公众。问题的另一面也将被探讨，即游客对博物馆官员可能的教学问题的反应程度，哪些展品特别吸引他们，这些偏好是否随着时间的推移而改变，如果是，为什么和何时。这种方法应该导致柏林前两个艺术博物馆原始布局的全面历史。由于从19世纪80年代起，应用艺术、史前和人种学的收藏就从新博物馆外包出去，导致对原始概念的严重侵犯，因此该项目将集中于1830年至1880年之间的时期。我们掌握的研究表明，柏林老博物馆和新博物馆的博物馆官员都相信，他们的博物馆布局具有提升道德的功能。这项研究计划旨在对这些崇高的道德主张进行系统的检查，这是迄今为止尚未开展的工作。这项研究将为博物馆历史领域的国际历史学家提供重要的新信息，大大增加了对这些机构公众的当代研究。

While we are by now well-informed about the architecture, the history of the collections and their presentation in the first two Museums to be built in Berlin, the Alte and the Neue Museum, as well as the ideas underlying their foundation, the opposite is the case with our knowledge of the visitors to these institutions at that time. This is especially the case with the initial period. This leads to the subject of this research project. The aim is to identify the visitors of the two first Art Museums in Berlin, the Alte (1822-1830) and the Neue Museum (1841-1859), in their original museum layout. The issues intend to discuss are, who were these museum arrangements at the Alte and Neue Museum aimed at and how were they perceived by the visitors? The second object is to discover out whether the public for the museum came predominantly from a cultural elite or whether attendance also included representatives of less well-off social classes. With regard to the contents of the study, the main question is the extent to which the museums lived up to their principled humanist programme and the means they used to approach their public.The opposite side of the question will also be explored, namely the degree to which visitors responded to the possibly pedagogical concerns of the museum officials, what exhibits appealed to them in particular and whether these preferences changed over time and, if so, why and when. This approach should result in a comprehensive history of the reception of the original layout of the first two Art Museums in Berlin.Because the collections of the applied arts, the prehistoric and the ethnographic collections were outsourced from the Neue Museum from the 1880s onwards, resulting in drastic encroachments on the original concepts, this project will concentrate on the period between 1830 and 1880.The studies at our disposal show that the museum officials of both the Alte and Neue Museum in Berlin were persuaded of the morally uplifting function of their museum layouts. This research proposal aims at a systematic examination of these high moral claims, something that has hitherto not been carried out.This study will provide important new information for international historians in the field of museum history, substantially adding to contemporary research into the public of these institutions.