Public libraries have strangely never been the subject of an extensive design history. Consequently, this important and comprehensive book represents a ground-breaking socio-architectural study of pre-1939 public library buildings. A surprisingly high proportion of these urban civic buildings remain intact and present an increasingly difficult architectural problem for many communities. The book thus includes a study of what is happening to these historic libraries now and proposes that knowledge of their origins and early development can help build an understanding of how best to handle their future.

Walter Gropius associated standardisation with promoting civilisation in 1935, yet Andrew Carnegie’s influence on the proliferation of pattern book public library plans internationally predated these observations by 50 years. Through the first twenty years of his programme, he supported the erection of almost three thousand public buildings across Britain and America. Though better acknowledged in the US than the UK, this philanthropic contribution radically extended the scope of public provision and remains incomparable in its scale and scope in both nations. Frequently engraved with the self-deifying slogan Let there be Light , open access to navigate these new interior public spaces after work coincided with the first provision of electric light. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, professional groups had sought to specify minimum standards of natural light and air for schools and hospitals. However, the commercial quantification of electricity accelerated the development of a readily comparable vocabulary to prescribe adequate quantities of light for all tasks regardless of their location or orientation. Seeking to gauge the extent of universal values, this book concentrates on the design and performance of a handful of early Carnegie library buildings in Britain and America, identifying their response to contemporary design theory, but also by contrast to their respective local environmental contexts. It examines whether their standards of provision were equitable and if these privately financed public buildings were the first roots of generically standardised public environments to be shared transatlantically. The book also argues that the public library building type can provide a datum for acknowledging the twentieth century legacy of shared international environmental standards for public spaces more broadly.

Museums and collecting is now a major area of cultural studies. This selected group of key texts opens the investigation and appreciation of museum history. Edward Edwards, chief pioneer of municipal public libraries, chronicles the founders and early donors to the British Museum. Greenwood and Murray provide informative pictures of the early history of the museum movement. Sir William Flower, Director of the British Museum (Natural History), takes a pioneering philosophical approach to the sphere of natural history in relation to museums. Similarly, Acland and Ruskin discuss and explore the relationships of art and architecture to museums.

The Private Collector’s Museum connects the rising popularity of private museums with evolving models of collecting and philanthropy, and new inter-relationships between private and public space. It examines how contemporary collectors construct museums to frame themselves as cultural arbiters of global distinction. By exploring a range of in-depth contemporary case studies, the book aims for a more complex understanding of the private collector’s museum, assessing how it is realised, funded and understood in a broader cultural context. It examines the ways in which this particular museum model has evolved within a historical Western tradition of collecting and museum-building, and considers how private museums will endure alongside their public counterparts. It also sheds light on the shifting patterns of collecting, such as the transition of personal art collections into the public sphere. The developments are situated within the wider context of private–public engagement in general. Providing a new analysis of philanthropy, public access and the museum, The Private Collector’s Museum is essential reading for scholars and students interested in the private museum, and key reading for those interested in related issues.