How do museums confront the violence of European colonialism, conquest, dispossession, enslavement, and genocide?

Paintings by Renaissance masters Lucas Cranach the Elder, Albrecht Durer, and Hans Holbein the Younger are among the works featured in this lavish volume, the first to comprehensively study the largest collection of early German paintings in America. These works, created in the 14th through 16th centuries in the region that comprises present-day Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, include religious images - such as "Virgin and Child with Saint Anne" by Durer and the double-sided altarpiece "The Dormition of the Virgin" by Hans Schaufelein - as well as remarkable portraits by Holbein and the iconic "Judgment of Paris" by Cranach. In all, more than 70 works are thoroughly discussed and analyzed, making this volume an incomparable resource for the study of this rich artistic period.

Combining the history of ideas, institutions, and architecture, this study shows how the museum both reflected and shaped the place of art in German culture from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. On a broader level, it illuminates the origin and character of the museum's central role in modern culture. James Sheehan begins by describing the establishment of the first public galleries during the last decades of Germany's old regime. He then examines the revolutionary upheaval that swept Germany between 1789 and 1815, arguing that the first great German museums reflected the nation's revolutionary aspirations. By the mid-nineteenth century, the climate had changed; museums constructed in this period affirmed historical continuities and celebrated political accomplishments. During the next several years, however, Germans became disillusioned with conventional definitions of art and lost interest in monumental museums. By the turn of the century, the museum had become a site for the political and cultural controversies caused by the rise of artistic modernism. In this context, Sheehan argues, we can see the first signs of what would become the modern style of museum architecture and modes of display. The first study of its kind, this highly accessible book will appeal to historians, museum professionals, and anyone interested in the relationship between art, politics, and culture.

Twenty-first-century views of historical violence have been immeasurably influenced by cultural representations of the Second World War. Within Europe, one of the key sites for such representation has been the vast array of museums and memorials that reflect contemporary ideas of war, the roles of soldiers and civilians, and the self-perception of those who remember. This volume takes a historical perspective on museums covering the Second World War and explores how these institutions came to define political contexts and cultures of public memory in Germany, across Europe, and throughout the world.