Page:The museum, (Jackson, Marget Talbot, 1917).djvu/132

108 museum director is going to collect modern pictures, why should he not with equal right collect modern furniture of artistic design or modern glass or modern porcelain or any other thing of modern manufacture which has artistic merit? In speaking of the collections which should be made for the use of the artisan, we must not forget that his inspiration will come not only from the work that has been done in the past but equally from the best work that is being done at present. Just as it is necessary for the painter to keep up with the times by going to the annual exhibitions of the Academy of Design, or the Academy of Fine Arts, or by seeing a selection of the pictures shown, so the artisan should keep abreast of the work done not only in this country but abroad in the same field as his own. In this there is the same difficulty that we find in making the selection of modern paintings. What are we going to consider good and what are we going to consider poor fifty years from now? Very often the museum director will find that it will be possible for him to arrange for transient exhibitions of minor arts in the same way that he arranges for transient exhibitions of paintings, and where it is possible, it obviates the difficulty which arises from buying modern art objects.

The innovation introduced by Bode in the old