Museums of the Western World

Question: Even though the Rosetta Stone was discovered (August 1799) by a Frenchman (Bouchard [or Boussard]), it resides in which museum?

Answer: The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian stone bearing inscriptions in several languages and scripts. Their decipherment led to the understanding of hieroglyphic writing. After the French surrendered Egypt to the British in 1801, the Rosetta Stone passed into British hands, and it is now in the British Museum in London. While not technically considered a work of art, it is a museum piece with great historical significance.

Question: The Old Guitarist by Pablo Picasso resides in which museum?

Answer: Picasso began this work in 1903 while he lived in Barcelona. The painting, depicting a bent and weak elderly man, is one of many examples of the artist’s Blue Period. The piece was donated to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1926 by art collector Frederic Clay Bartlett.

Question: Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker is found in the garden of a museum in which city?

Answer: Auguste Rodin was a French sculptor of sumptuous bronze and marble figures. Some critics have considered him to be the greatest portraitist in the history of sculpture. The Thinker (1880) was originally conceived as a seated portrait of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. It is showcased in the gardens of the Rodin Museum in Paris.

Question: The tomb of Napoleon I is located in which museum?

Answer: Nearly two decades after Napoleon’s death, a magnificent funeral was held in Paris in December 1840, and his remains were conveyed through the Arc de Triomphe, in the Place de l’Étoile, to the Hôtel des Invalides. There they were eventually placed in a massive red quartzite sarcophagus beneath the Dôme des Invalides, now part of the Army Museum.

Question: Which museum hosts Michelangelo’s David?

Answer: David is a marble sculpture executed from 1501 to 1504 by the Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo. The statue was commissioned for one of the buttresses of the cathedral of Florence and was carved from a block of marble that had been partially blocked out by other sculptors and left outdoors.

Question: The Sistine Chapel is located in which of these tiny countries?

Answer: The Sistine Chapel is the papal chapel in the Vatican Palace in Vatican City. It was erected in 1473–81 by the architect Giovanni dei Dolci for Pope Sixtus IV (hence its name).

Question: Which city hosts the Hermitage Museum?

Answer: The State Hermitage Museum, or the Gosudarstvenny Ermitazh, is an art museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great as a court museum. The Hermitage holdings include nearly three million items dating from the Stone Age to the present. Among them is one of the world’s richest collections of western European painting since the Middle Ages, including many masterpieces by Renaissance Italian and Baroque Dutch, Flemish, and French painters.

Question: Charles Lindbergh’s aircraft Spirit of St. Louis is on display at which museum?

Answer: The Spirit of St. Louis was returned from Europe to the United States aboard a ship, and Lindbergh flew it extensively throughout North, Central, and South America to promote interest in aeronautics before donating it to the Smithsonian Institution.

Question: Which museum holds Rembrandt’s Night Watch and several self-portraits?

Answer: The Night Watch (1640/42), also known as The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch, is an oil painting on canvas by Rembrandt van Rijn in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.