Art Exhibitions - History

History

The art exhibition has played a crucial part in the market for new art since the 18th and 19th centuries. The Paris Salon, open to the public from 1737, rapidly became the key factor in determining the reputation, and so the price, of the French artists of the day. The Royal Academy in London, beginning in 1769, soon established a similar grip on the market, and in both countries artists put great efforts into making pictures that would be a success, often changing the direction of their style to meet popular or critical taste. The British Institution was added to the London scene in 1805, holding two annual exhibitions, one of new British art for sale, and one of loans from the collections of its aristocratic patrons. These exhibitions received lengthy and detailed reviews in the press, which were the main vehicle for the art criticism of the day. Critics as distinguished as Denis Diderot and John Ruskin held their readers attention by sharply divergent reviews of different works, praising some extravagantly and giving others the most savage put-downs they could think of. Many of the works were already sold, but success at these exhibitions was a crucial way for an artist to attract more commissions. Among important early one-off loan exhibitions of older paintings were the Art Treasures Exhibition, Manchester 1857, and the Exhibition of National Portraits in London, at what is now the Victoria and Albert Museum, held in three stages in 1866-68.

As the academic art promoted by the Paris Salon, always more rigid than London, was felt to be stifling French art, alternative exhibitions, now generally known as the Salon des Refusés ("Salon of the Refused") were held, most famously in 1863, when the government allowed them an annex to the main exhibition for a show that included Édouard Manet's Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l’herbe) and James McNeill Whistler's Girl in White. This began a period where exhibitions, often one-off shows, were crucial in exposing the public to new developments in art, and eventually Modern art. Important shows of this type were the Armory Show in New York City in 1913 and the London International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936.

Museums started holding large loan exhibitions of historic art in the late 19th century, as also did the Royal Academy, but the modern "blockbuster" museum exhibition, with long queues and a large illustrated catalogue, is generally agreed to have been introduced by the exhibitions of artifacts from the tomb of Tutankhamun held in several cities in the 1970s. Many exhibitions, especially in the days before good photographs were available, are important in stimulating research in art history; the exhibition held in Bruges in 1902 (poster illustrated below) had a crucial impact on the study of Early Netherlandish painting.