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-18th to the early-20th century. On a broader level, it explains the origin and character of the museum's role in modern culture.

"Sheehan covers a wide swath of aesthetic, architectural, and social history in his discussion of the growth, the purpose, and the reception of museums by the public in nineteenth-century Germany...[T]he author deftly presents the role of German art museums in all their complexity, yet succinctly summarizes their importance both for nineteenth-century Germans and their legacy today."--The Historian "James Sheehan is indeed a master of the historical craft. Clear organization, lucid prose, and the ability to balance a broadly sweeping narrative with close readings of specific subjects....This book is especially timely considering the revamping of Berlin museums. Relates such an important and intriguing history that one wishes the story were continued in detail up through the third Reich and into the postwar period."--Central European History "A fine survey...bringing together and properly ordering a wide range of material concerning the intellectual and institutional premises of the changing role of museums in the German art world."--The New Criterion "In this marvelously comprehensive history of German museums, James Sheehan weaves together a wide range of topics, from Kantian aesthetics to Baroque gallery design, from the vicissitudes of eighteenth-century princely patronage to fin de siecle debates over art's function. Museums in the German Art World is certain to become the standard work in the field."--Suzanna Marchand, Louisiana State University "In this superb study, Sheehan delineates the intellectual and social conditions governing the design and use of several of the most important buildings erected in nineteenth-century Germany. In their own time the museums of Schinkel, von Klenze, and Semper defined what a civic architecture should be, making this account of their history a key document in our understanding of the emergence of the public sphere."--Kathleen James-Chakraborty, University of California, Berkeley "Elegantly written and exhaustively researched, [Sheehan's book] traces the rise, triumph and transformation of one of the central institutions of modern culture. Sheehan shows himself to be a masterful cicerone, leading us with a sure hand and keen eye through the tangle of political, intellectual, economic and architectural threads that combined to produce this outcome. Not only will this book serve as a reliable guide for students of German cultural history, but it will also be an invaluable resource for anyone fascinated by the growing prominence of museums throughout the world."--Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley "In brilliantly reconstructing the history of German museums from the time of Frederick the Great to the First World War, Sheehan, a master historian, also explores the vital connections between the place of museums and the world of art, culture, and politics in Germany, with necessary considerations of western cultural generally. A model of cultural history, wise, elegant, deeply researched, and profoundly interpreted, indispensable to historians of German life and the place of art in modern Europe. Scholarship at once informative and inspiriting."--Fritz Stern, University Professor Emeritus, Columbia University "In this handsome, compact, well-written and well-illustrated history, James J. Sheehan...leads us smoothly across the span of German art museum history, from the private court cabinets of German princes, past the emergence of their collections into initial public display, up to 1937, when Hitler opened his cold Munich Haus der Deutschen Kunst, behind which he displayed the modern art he despised and condemned...Museums in the German Art World engages demanding intellects on a broad front, but it is so clearly written that an outsider can read it like an adventure story...[E]njoy the voyage-you are in good hands."--History: Reviews of New Books "A timely corrective to the narrow preoccupation with the French nineteenth-century art world within most art-history curricula."--College Art Association