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  3. "Museum" is a slippery word. It first meant (in Greek) anything consecrated to the Muses: a hill, a shrine, a garden, a festival

"Museum" is a slippery word. It first meant (in Greek) anything consecrated to the Muses: a hill, a shrine, a garden, a festival

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问题     "Museum" is a slippery word. It first meant (in Greek) anything consecrated to the Muses: a hill, a shrine, a garden, a festival or even a textbook. Both Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum had a mouseion, a muse’s shrine. Although the Greeks already collected detached works of art, many temples— notably that of Hera at Olympia (before which the Olympic flame is still lit)—had collections of objects, some of which were works of art by well-known masters, while paintings and sculptures in the Alexandrian Museum were incidental to its main purpose.
    The Romans also collected and exhibited art from disbanded temples, as well as mineral specimens, exotic plants, animals; and they plundered sculptures and paintings (mostly Greek) for exhibition. Meanwhile, the Greek word had slipped into Latin by transliteration (though not to signify picture galleries, which were called pinacothecae) and museum still more or less meant "Muses-shrine".
    The inspirational collections of precious and semi-precious objects were kept in larger churches and monasteries—which focused on the gold-enshrined, bejewelled relics of saints and martyrs. Princes, and later merchants, had similar collections, which became the deposits of natural curiosities: large lumps of amber or coral, irregular pearls, unicorn horns, ostrich eggs, fossil bones and so on. They also included coins and gems—often antique engraved ones—as well as, increasingly, paintings and sculptures. As they multiplied and expanded, to supplement them, the skill of the fakers grew increasingly refined.
    At the same time, visitors could admire the very grandest paintings and sculptures in the churches, palaces and castles; they were not "collected" either, but "site-specific", and were considered an integral part both of the fabric of the buildings and of the way of life which went on inside them—and most of the buildings were public ones. However, during the revival of antiquity in the fifteenth century, fragments of antique sculpture were given higher status than the work of any contemporary, so that displays of antiquities would inspire artists to imitation, or even better, to emulation; and so could be considered Muses-shrines in the former sense. The Medici garden near San Marco in Florence, the Belvedere and the Capitol in Rome were the most famous of such early "inspirational" collections. Soon they multiplied, and, gradually, exemplary "modern" works were also added to such galleries.
    In the seventeenth century, scientific and prestige collecting became so widespread that three or four collectors independently published directories to museums all over the known world. But it was the age of revolutions and industry which produced the next sharp shift in the way the institution was perceived: the fury against royal and church monuments prompted antiquarians to shelter them in asylum-galleries, of which the Musee des Monuments Francais was the most famous. Then, in the first half of the nineteenth century, museum funding took off, allied to the rise of new wealth: London acquired the National Gallery and the British Museum, the Louvre was organized, the Museum-Insel was begun in Berlin, and the Munich galleries were built. In Vienna, the huge Kunsthistorisches and Naturhistorisches Museums took over much of the imperial treasure. Meanwhile, the decline of craftsmanship (and of public taste with it) inspired the creation of "improving" collections. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London was the most famous, as well as perhaps the largest of them.
Modern museums came into existence in order to________.
选项 A、protect royal and church treasures
B、improve existing collections
C、stimulate public interest
D、raise more funds
答案A
解析 本题关键词是Modem museums，问题是：现代博物馆产生的目的是什么?可以定位于第五段。根据第五段第二句，当时革命频发，工业兴起，导致人们看待这些机构的方式接下来突然发生了变化：人们对皇室和教会的愤怒(the fury against royal and church monuments)，促使古文物收藏者将古文物藏在美术馆里避难(shelter them in asylum—galleries)。这说明人们害怕皇家和教堂的珍宝遭难，所以把它们收藏在美术馆，从而有了现代博物馆，所以选项A与原文是相同含义，是正确选项。选项B来自第五段第五句。工艺(及公众品位)退步，催生了“改进式”的收藏 (“improving” collections)。没有提及现代博物馆，所以选项B答非所问。文章并没有提及公众兴趣 (public interest)，所以选项C无中生有。选项D来自第五段第三句，十九世纪上半叶，由于资金充裕(museum funding took off)，博物馆大量涌现。这说明博物馆的资金宽裕，并不需要募集资金，所以选项D曲解文意。
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