A Quote by Virginia Postrel

The Elgin Marbles were supposed to be on the Parthenon. For many works of art, a museum is an artificial setting - a zoo, not a natural habitat.

Virginia Postrel

Quote Topics

Art Artificial Habitat Many Marbles Museum Natural Parthenon Setting Supposed Supposed To Be Were Works Works Of Art Zoo

Quote Author

Virginia Postrel
American - Writer
Born: January 14, 1960

My mother took me to the British Museum aged five. I had thought people from the past weren't as good as we were, and then I saw the Elgin marbles. Suddenly, the world seemed more complicated.

Mary Beard

The only creature on earth whose natural habitat is a zoo is the zookeeper.

Robert Breault

I first drew the attention of my future husband when we were fourteen, on the freshman school bus for an epic field trip from Riverside, Calif. to Los Angeles, where we were taken to the L.A. Zoo as well as the Natural History Museum.

Susan Straight

There are no such things as the Elgin Marbles.

Melina Mercouri

[My] excursions provided a unique opportunity for observing [the gorillas' behavior] in their natural habitat... Then, all too soon, the infants were demanded for their trip to the zoo. ... [H]appily the babies did not know they would never see their mountain home again

Dian Fossey

Many say an art dealer running a museum is a 'conflict of interest.' But maybe the art world has lived an artificial or unintentional lie all of these years when it comes to conflicts of interest.

Jerry Saltz

What I never wanted in art - and why I probably didn't belong in art - was that I never wanted viewers. I think the basic condition of art is the viewer: The viewer is here, the art is there. So the viewer is in a position of desire and frustration. There were those Do Not Touch signs in a museum that are saying that the art is more expensive than the people. But I wanted users and a habitat. I don't know if I would have used those words then, but I wanted inhabitants, participants. I wanted an interaction.

Vito Acconci

The Parthenon without the marbles is like a smile with a tooth missing.

Neil Kinnock

Each living art object, taken out of its native habitat so we can conveniently gaze at it, is like an animal in a zoo. Something about it has died in the removal.

Daniel J. Boorstin

If I'm a national treasure, does that mean I'm like the Elgin Marbles and will get repatriated at some point?

Bill Bailey

They are works of art that can be considered works of art but don't have to be in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum.

Michael Heizer

Zoo is an artificial territory, an approximation. Civilization is our natural territory.

Yann Martel

I like nature but not its substitutes... Mondrian opposed art to nature saying that art is artificial and nature is natural. I do not share this opinion... Art's origins are natural.

Hans Arp

I know in London a Welsh hairdresser who has striven so vehemently to abolish his accent that he sounds like a man speaking with the Elgin marbles in his mouth.

Dylan Thomas

Chicago is a wonderful area because it's blessed with a tremendous number of museums of various sorts, not only the Art Institute of Chicago but the Field Museum of Natural History, the Oriental Museum on the south side.