TY - BOOK ID - 30688891 TI - Curators and culture : the museum movement in America, 1740-1870 PY - 1990 SN - 0817382178 0817304754 0817312048 9780817382179 9780817312046 9780817304751 PB - Tuscaloosa : University of Alabama Press, DB - UniCat KW - Museums KW - Museum curators KW - Popular culture KW - History. KW - Culture, Popular KW - Mass culture KW - Pop culture KW - Popular arts KW - Curators, Museum KW - Public institutions KW - Cabinets of curiosities KW - Communication KW - Intellectual life KW - Mass society KW - Recreation KW - Culture KW - Employees KW - United States KW - History UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:30688891 AB - This volume argues that a small, loosely connected group of men constituted an informal museum movement in America from about 1740 to 1870. As they formed their pioneer museums, these men were guided not so much by European examples, but rather by the imperatives of the American democratic culture, including the Enlightenment, the simultaneous decline of the respectability and rise of the middle classes, the Age of Egalitarianism, and the advent of professionalism in the sciences. Thus the pre-1870 American museum was neither the frivolous sideshow some critics have im ER -