R.I.P. Ashton Hawkins - Michael Gross mgross.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from mgross.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The great American museums are great largely because people with the means to collect art and artifacts, or accumulate books and manuscripts and antiquities, have been rescuing, buying, collecting, and protecting them in great quantities since the Civil War. And they are so widely and readily accessible because certain people with knowledge and means, as well as social skills and business acumen, have steered, maneuvered, and charmed the great American collections into those great American museums.