Marble Palaces, Temples of Art ― Art Museums, Architecture, and American Culture, 1890-1930

This work is an investigation of the sociocultural phenomenon of the American art museum in the decades between 1890 and 1930 when these institutions experienced a building boom. The author concludes that the classicizing art museum of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had significance for the cultural and social aspirations of several generations of Americans who desired change and improvement in their social and cultural landscape.