专业英语八级考试试题与答案(5).pdfVIP

专业英语八级考试试题与答案(5) TEXT D “Museum” is a slippery word. It first meant （in Greek ） anything consecrated to the Muses: a hi , a shrine, a garden, a festival or even a textbook. Both Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum had a mouseion, a muses’ shrine. Although the Greeks already co ected detached works of art, many temples - notably that of Hera at Olympia （before which the Olympic flame is sti lit ） - had co ections of objects, some of which were works of art by we -known masters, while paintings and sculptures in the Alexandrian Museum were incidental to its main purpose. The Romans also co ected and exhibited art from disbanded temples, as we as mineral specimens, exotic plants, animals; and they plundered sculptures and paintings （mostly Greek ）for exhibition. Meanwhile, the Greek word had slipped into Latin by transliteration （though not to signify picture ga eries, which were ca ed pinacothecae ） and museum still more or less meant “Muses’ shrine”. The inspirationa co ections of precious and semi-precious objects were kept in larger churches and monasteries - which focused on the gold-enshrined, bejewe ed relics of saints and martyrs. Princes, and later merchants, had similar co ections, which became the deposits of natura curiosities: large lumps of amber or coral, irregular pearls, unicorn horns, ostrich eggs, fossil bones and so on. They also included coins and gems - often antique engraved ones - as well as, increasingly, paintings and sculptures. As they multiplied and expanded, t supplement them, the skill of the fakers grew increasingly refined. At the same time, visitors could admire the very grandest paintings and sculptures in the churches, palaces and castles; they were not “collected” either, but “site-specific”, and were considered an integral part both of