The last artist viewers encounter on exiting the exhibition “The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect” is the eighteenth-century French painter Hubert Robert (1733–1808). During his lifetime, Robert achieved renown for his paintings of architectural ruins, a niche in which he displayed an academician’s proficiency and a modicum of melodrama. His lasting influence in the arts was not as a painter, however, but as Garde du Musoeum of the Louvre. Helping to shape, inventory, and install the museum’s collection, Robert took an operative role in the establishment of the Louvre as a public institution. (Robert even made the museum his home for a time.) His Imaginary View of the Grand Galerie in Ruins (1796) is a portrayal of the Louvre centuries hence. This picture of physical and cultural devastation, complete with eminent works of sculpture scattered amongst the rubble, was, one imagines, something of a lark for a painter whose passion for art was lifelong and devout. Certainly, anyone who cares about the life of art could hardly wish on a museum the fate as conjured up in such a melancholy jest of a picture.
Yet Imaginary View of the Grand Galerie in Ruins, as seen at MOMA, serves as a punch-line to the malicious joke that is “The Museum as Muse.” The show’s title would seem to imply that the museum is a touchstone for inspiration. For the many artists (and non-artists) who regularly visit places like MOMAit is, of course, just that. Yet, the