TIMELINE

1471

Capitoline Museums begin with a donation to the city of Rome by the Papacy (the oldest public collection of art in the world)

1506

Vatican Museums originate with the purchase of Laocoõn and His Sons and put on public display

1581

Uffizi Gallery established

1628

The Gallery of Cornelius van der Geest

1667

First Salon de Paris

1671

Amerbach Cabinet opens in Basel (first and still existing public museum in the world

1683

Ashmolean Museum opened

1690

Cabinet of Curiosities

1694

Musèe des Beaux-Arts et d’archèologie in Besancon established after Abbot Baptiste Boisot gave his personal collection to the Benedictines in order to create a public museum

1710

Frederik Ruysch’s Museum

1727

Kunstkamera opens to the public in Kikin hall in St Petersburg

1743

Uffizi Gallery opens to the public

1748

Salon de Paris becomes the major international art event (until 1890)

1750

Gallerie dell’Accademia opens in Venice

1759

British Museum opens to the public

1764

Hermitage Collection founded by Catherine the Great – required visitors to wear gala dresses until 1866

1779

The Bavarian Royal Collection (now Alte Pinakothek) opens to the public

1781

Belvedere in Vienna opens

1785

Museo del Prado founded by Charles III of Spain

1792

Louvre opens to the ‘common people’

1814

Dulwich Picture Gallery opens as the first purpose-built national gallery in Great Britain

1819

Museo del Prado opens to the public

1824

National Gallery London opens to the public

1830

Königliches Museum (now Altes Museum) opens

1855

Neues Museum opens

1863

Birth of Salon des Refuses

Edouard Manet’s The Luncheon on the Grass

1884

Museum of Fine Art Boston opens

1888

Paul Signet demands exhibits to be hung in a single row

1891

Kunsthistorisches Museum opens in Vienna

1895

First Venice Art Biennale

1906

White walls used for the Jahrhundert-ausstellung deutscher Kunst at the National Gallery in Berlin

1910

Pergamonmuseum opens

Klimt’s solo exhibition at Vienna Secession presents modern practice of white walls

1917

Duchamp submits Fountain to Society of Independent Artists Exhibition

1929

Museum of Modern Art founded

1934

Museum of Modern Art’s opening exhibition presents the white cube as the ‘international style’

1936

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

1937

Große deutsche Kunst-ausstellung in the Haus der deutschen Kunst in Berlin bears witness to the triumph of the white exhibition wall

1938

Duchamp’s installation of bags of coal in the Exposition international du Surrealisme in Paris. Challenged the auratic single-row hanging of exhibits

1943

Frank Lloyd Wright designs the Solomon R. Guggenheim (built between 1956-59)

1955

First Documenta

Ronchamp

1958

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art established in Humlebaek

1964

Arthur Danto’s ‘The Artworld’

Marshal McLuhan’s ‘Understanding Media’

1967

Susan Sonntag’s ‘Against Interpretation’

1968

End of Modern Art

Noam Chomsky’s ‘Language and Mind’

1969

Pierre Boudie’s ‘The Rules of Art’

Adorno’s ‘Aesthetic Theory’

1972

Harald Szeeman’s documenta 5 presents the exhibition as a work of art

1973

Jack Burnham’s ‘The Structure of Art’

1976

Brian O’Doherty’s ‘Inside the White Cube’

1977

Centre Georges Pompidou opens

1981

1983

Jean Baudrillard’s ‘Simulacra and Simulation’

1984

Venice Biennale under Director Maurizio Calvesi - Luigi Nono’s Promoteo installed in disused church of San Lorenzo

1989

1990

1994

Paul Virilio’s ‘The Vision Machine’

1995

100th anniversary of the Venice Biennale director Jean Clair opens Arsenale (formerly the home of Aperto fringe event for younger artists since 1980) and the Biennale expands beyond Giardini

1996

First Manifesta

1998

Nicolas Bourriaud’s ‘Relational Aesthetics’

2001

Lev Manovich’s ‘The Language of New Media’

2004

Miwon Kwon’s “One Place After Another”