Andrew McClellans well-conceived, thoughtfully argued book provides a much-needed history of the art museum as well as an astute assessment of critical issues facing museums today. There has been a pressing need for a synthetic, even-handed overview like this one. It will find a large readership among those concerned with museums, art history, and cultural policy, and I predict it will be widely used in courses in museum and curatorial studies.--Martha Ward, author of Pissarro, Neo-impressionism and the Spaces of the Avant-Garde The Art Museum from Boullee to Bilbao is extremely important to the growing field of museum studies. It will make an excellent text and will also be important to museum professionals, who must be aware of the complexity of the critical issues it covers. It is the only book that addresses museum architecture, ideals and missions, collecting and display, restitution and repatriation, commercialism, and the public.--Harriet F. Senie, author of The Tilted Arc Controversy: Dangerous Precedent? The increasing number of people interested in the history of museums have benefited greatly from Andrew McClellans contributions over the past two decades. In this exemplary volume, McClellan summarizes and extends his perspectives on museums as institutions of hope and aspiration as he establishes a much needed context for the rhetoric of celebration and critique emanating from within and without these organizations. It is a useful as well as an important book and one that will be read by many--students and lay public alike--as they attempt to make sense of these institutions and the sometimes conflicting accounts of their purpose and programs.--MichaelConforti, Director of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Combining powerful critique with a grounded utopianism, Andrew McClellan dissects the art museums past in order to identify its emancipatory potential for the future. The result is a tour de force that reinvigorates our sense of why art museums matter. This is a book that will leave its mark on debates about the social role of museums for some time to come.--Tony Bennett, Director, ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-cultural Change With its long historical view of ongoing controversies and deba