单选题 At the Prado Museum in Madrid visitors can peer into the past in a new exhibit of 19th century photographs, which show artworks crammed on the walls wherever they would fit. Lithographs, paintings and plans chart the higgledy-piggledy development of one of Europe's best-loved art-treasure troves.
Similarly, London's British Museum opened a new Enlightenment Gallery this year to celebrate the historic role of museums as centers of learning, displaying—among other things—intricate catalogs of 17th century botanical specimens.
While such exhibits enshrine the past, ambitious new plans for the future are transforming the dusty halls of some of Europe's most revered galleries. In Germany, Spain, Italy and Britain, museums are scrambling to create bigger, more-dazzling exhibition spaces, smart new restaurants and shops, study centers and inviting public areas.
The push reflects a shift in how the public regards its artistic institutions. "People want more
than the old-style museum," says John Lewis, chairman of the Wallace Collection, a gallery of 17th and 18th-century paintings, porcelain and furniture in London, "We are driven to become more an arm of the entertainment and education industries rather than the academic institutions we used to be." New galleries will increase the museum's current exhibition space to more than 160,000 square meters - not including the 13,000 square meters for cafeterias, restaurants, theaters and offices, all linked by tree-lined paths.
No European museum expansion is more ambitious than Berlin's restoration of Museum Island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the city center. The $2.1 billion project slated for completion in 2015 aims to turn the island into the largest art complex in Europe, covering all the major cultures in six museums filling 88,000 square meters.
The Alte Nationalgalerie, an ornate classical temple built in 1866, reopened two years ago, displaying 19th-century artists, including German Romantics. Renovation of the neighboring Bode Museum, with its collection of Medieval and Renaissance art, is well underway, and the Neues Museum is being rebuilt to house Egyptian and prehistoric works.
There are even plans to reconstruct the adjacent Hohenzollern Palace to showcase Berlin's extensive collection of non-European art. And British architect David Chipperfield has been commissioned to create a striking new entrance to the whole complex.
These institutions are hoping to repeat the triumph of London's Tate Museum, which spent $243 million to convert a disused power station into a gallery of modern art. When the Tate Modern opened in 2000, director Sir Nicholas Serota described its creation as part of a "sea change" in culture, with visual arts becoming the most popular creative medium. His remark has proved amazingly prescient: in 2002, the top two attractions among foreign tourists to London were the Tate Modern and the refurbished British Museum. A year after the Tate Modern opened, its impact on the local economy was estimated at nearly $200 million—far higher than the $42 million the Mc Kinsey consulting firm first estimated the museum would contribute when it developed the business plan in 1996.
Smaller galleries, too, are hoping to cash in. Italian Culture Minister Giuliano Urbani plans to transform Florence's charming Uffizi Gallery into a world-class cultural destination. When completed in 2006, the "nuovo Uffizi" will accommodate 7,000 visitors daily, nearly double its current capacity. "We will surpass even the Louvre," predicts Urbani.
Expansion helps show off prized works to maximum effect. In Berlin, collections divided between east and west Germany are being united, and expanded gallery space will allow them to be shown together. The Uffizi renovation will enable some of the museum's most famous pieces, by Giotto and Cimabue, now scattered throughout the building, to be displayed together at the second-floor entrance. At the Prado, a new lecture hall and temporary exhibition galleries mean the permanent collection will no longer have to be partly stored when short-term traveling shows come to town.
Some purists oppose the idea of turning museums into glitzy consumer complexes. "My reservation is whether we lose that calm and that moment of reflection, that sense of civic space," says Tristram Hunt, author of Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City.

单选题 According to the passage, a new Enlightenment Gallery was held in British Museum to ______

A. celebrate the completion of the new galleries.
B. show the development of the museum.
C. honor the role museums had played in various aspects.
D. exhibit some 17th century botanical specimens.

单选题 New plans for the future of the museums aim to______

A. restore the original appearance of the museums.
B. help the museums regain their historic roles.
C. rebuild the museums' dusty halls.
D. make the museums less academic but more entertaining and educational.

单选题 According to Sir Nicholas Serota, what is part of a "sea change" in culture?

A. The visual arts growing to be the hottest creative medium.
B. The success of London's Tate Museum.
C. A conversion of a disused power station into a modem gallery.
D. The Tate Modem's impact on the local economy.

单选题 According to the passage, what is the significance of the museum expansion?

A. It has brought more economic profit than it is estimated.
B. It has benefited smaller galleries tremendously.
C. It has created more world-class cultural destinations.
D. It has provided more space for the best-loved artworks.

单选题 What's the author's attitude towards the museum expansion?

A. Opposed.
B. Objective.
C. Positive.
D. Indifferent.