Public Access to Art in Paris explores public accessibility to art (mainly painting and sculpture) on exhibit in Paris from the High Middle Ages to the year 1800. The topic is important, because from such displays emerged the familiar institutions and practices of the modern world: public museums and sculpture gardens, exhibitions of contemporary art, and popular art journalism. This book traces the origins and development of these familiar components in the city of Paris, where Robert Berger believes all the crucial elements first appeared together. The documentary format offers the reader an extensive array of source writings, many translated for the first time.

This book focuses on the settings where art objects were on view to a general public, whether these objects were monumental carvings permanently affixed to church facades, or small cabinet paintings temporarily displayed at an exhibition. Berger is interested in how the visual arts were made available to a public that, by and large, did not commission art, did not purchase or collect it, and was not concerned with it in a scholarly or intellectual sense, but, like the public of today, approached art as pleasurable entertainment or distraction. During the eighteenth century in Paris, this public came to be recognized as a force influencing the display of art and its critical reception. Public Access to Art in Paris both documents how this decisive shift in culture occurred and offers a panorama of artistic life in Paris over seven centuries.