The Met and the Masses in Postwar America: A Study of Popular Art Education by the Museum

This book explores the collaborations, during the mid-20th century, between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Book-of-the-Month Club. Between 1948 and 1962 the two institutions collaborated on three book projects-The Metropolitan Museum of Art Miniatures (1948-1957), The Metropolitan Seminars in Art (1958-60), and a print reproduction of Rembrandt’s Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer (1962)-bringing art from the Met’s collections right into the homes of subscribers.

The Met and the Masses places these commercial enterprises in a variety of contemporary and historical contexts, including the relation of cultural education to democracy in America, the history of the Met as an educational institution, the rise of art education in postwar America, and the concurrent transformation of the home into a space that mediated familial privacy and the public sphere.

Using never before published archival material, the book demonstrates how the Met sought to bring art to the masses in postwar America, whilst upholding its reputation as an institution of high culture. It is essential reading for scholars, researchers and curators interested in the history of modern art, museum and curatorial studies, arts and cultural management, heritage studies, as well as the history of art publications.

Mitchell B. Frank, Director of the School for Studies in Art and Culture at Carleton University in Ottawa, is the author of German Romantic Painting Redefined (2001) and Central European Drawings from the National Gallery of Canada (2007). He co-edited German Art History and Scientific Thought (2012) and History and Art History: Looking Past Disciplines (2020). He is currently editor-in-chief of the Canadian art historical journal RACAR (Revue d’art canadienne / Canadian Art Review).