在查尔斯•索马雷斯•史密斯的领导下，国家肖像馆、国家美术馆和皇家美术学院在建筑方面作了巨大的改造，或对其使命重新进行了思考，这使得他最有资格来探索艺术博物馆在过去一百年间的变化，并研究它们在未来可能会走向何方。

为了这本书，索马雷斯•史密斯对全球各地的艺术博物馆进行了一次漫长的探索。从伦敦的泰特现代美术馆到日本直岛的Benesse House博物馆；从洛杉矶的盖蒂中心到从塔斯马尼亚州的霍巴特乘船前往的新旧艺术博物馆；从巴黎的蓬皮杜中心到上海的西外滩博物馆--他都参观过，他用敏锐的眼光观察了对艺术的体验是如何被容纳它的建筑和展示它的组织原则所影响的。

The National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery and the Royal Academy all saw either radical architectural interventions or rethinks of their mission under Charles Saumarez Smith’s leadership, making him uniquely qualified to explore the ways in which art museums have changed over the past century and examine where they might be headed in the future.

For this book, Saumarez Smith has undertaken an odyssey to art museums across the globe. From Tate Modern in London to the Benesse House Museum on the Japanese island of Naoshima; from the Getty Center in Los Angeles to the Museum of New and Old Art, a ferry-

ride from Hobart in Tasmania; from the Pompidou Centre in Paris to the West Bund Museum in Shanghai – he has visited them all, casting an acute eye on the way the experience of art is shaped by the buildings that house it and the organizing principles by which it is displayed.

What has changed over the past century? Where the public once visited museums to be educated in art history, he argues, they are now more likely to be in search of a private, aesthetic experience. Museum displays that were automatically didactic, chronological and either national or Western in viewpoint are now thematic and global. While museums used to be invariably in city centres, they may now be in remote locations, destinations of cultural pilgrimage. And where architects once created neutral spaces in which to display art, they now build spectacular architectural landmarks, stamping an identity on run-down neighbourhoods and sparking regeneration through cultural tourism.