Freeland, Chapter 4

In this chapter Freeland discusses museums in the art world today. She talks about how even small towns can support museums. There are all sorts of museums and art museums today are now more commonly including anthropology and sociology. She talks about tribal museums something she classifies as tribal musemums, and how almost every group has their own art museum. She then goes on to talk about Pierre Bourdieu, a french sociologist who studied taste. He wrote a book on taste called "A Distinction: A Cultural Critique of the Judgement of Taste," But says his book is hard to assess being written from the french perspective.
The first public museum was created by the overthrow of the French monarchy after the Revolution. Later around 1793, they nationalized the Louvre and after that museums were built from donations and private collections. In 1965 a shift occurred in museum funding causing the private charitible people to bigger $700 million dollar corporations. This was all done in spite to promote the arts and culture. When the funding changed so did the purpose of museums.
Freeland notes that she could not talk about art and money without noteing how much the pieces of art were selling for. She gives examples such as Van Gogh's Irises sold for $53.9 million dollars. A large price for a poor artist.
She goes on to talk about how some art is "outside this nexus, using public or government funding." She gives and example of the project "Culture in Action," a group who in 1993, took art into the streets of its cities and surrounding neighborhoods.