Summary/Summary - History of Museums Leiden University Year 2
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Module
History of Museums
Institution
Universiteit Leiden (UL)
This is a summary of the course "History of Museums". It includes all lectures, with accompanying pictures of the museums and artworks that come in handy while studying.
The idea of a museum developed in early modern Europe.
What is an object?
A museum object is different from other objects. Jean Braudillard wrote a lot about this.
It can have 2 functions, mutually exclusive: it can be utilized, or it can be possessed.
➔ Utilization: asserting practical control within the real world.
➔ Possession: enterprise of abstract mastery whereby the subject seeks to assert
himself as an autonomous totality outside the world: in this world, it has another
function than in the real world. It is autonomous.
➔ If it is used, it is not a museum object, the options are exclusive.
Once the object stops being defined by its function, its meaning is entirely up to the subject.
All objects in a collection become equivalent (example: multiple displayed pencils are there
for the same reason). The values have to do with meaning, they are not (only) defined by the
economy. The collection offers us a paradigm of perfection.
Example of a hoarder’s attic: there is no order, there seems to be no connection between the
objects (randomness), it is not meant to be seen by anybody, there is no narrative.
➔ We do not recognise this as a collection, but we see it as junk.
Egg cups: they are not used, they are a paradigm of perfection. They are still a bit random,
but we see this more as a collection than the attic.
What is a collection?
Krysztof Pomian thought that a collection is a number of objects:
- They are made by nature or by humans.
- They are temporarily or definitively kept out of the circuit of economic activities
- They are being protected and displayed
Characteristics of collections:
- owner
- provenance (history of the objects in the terms of the owners)
- display
- category (for there to be order and logic in a collection, there need to be categories,
who are made by the owner/curator/etc), conservation
- research (history of objects: use, age, where it came from, etc)
- biography (where has it been, how did it developed, how did it travel, etc)
- trade (objects were acquired, stolen, exchanged, given to a collection)
- posterity/legacy/permanence.
Why is it important to know about the history of collections?
Museums contain heritage, and if you want to understand these museums, the history of
collections is important. The collections make the museums. The collections were there
before the museums.
,What is a museum?
ICOM definitions:
Before 2022 After 2022
“A museum is a non-profit, permanent “A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent
institution in the service of society and its institution in the service of society that
development, open to the public, which researches, collects, conserves, interprets
acquires, conserves, researches, and exhibits tangible and intangible
communicates and exhibits the tangible and heritage. Open to the public, accessible
intangible heritage of humanity and its and inclusive, museums foster diversity
environment for the purposes of education, and sustainability. They operate and
study and enjoyment.” communicate ethically, professionally and
with the participation of communities,
offering varied experiences for education,
enjoyment, reflection and knowledge
sharing.”
Museum studies has become a thing since the 1990s. It is not an entirely new subject, but
there is a new way of thinking. An important book was “the origins of museums”.
Etymology of “museum”:
What did the word originally mean? Wat became in meaning of the world in early medieval
times? Was there a complex of terms that mean almost the same?
- Traditionally: location of the (9) muses
➔ The temples of the muses, in ancient times, wee enclosed places.
- Specifically: museion (Greek word) in the Library of Alexandria (300 b.c.)
➔ Large research institution that was part of the library was called the Mouseion.
Museums are places where knowledge is produced. It is a place of research, like in the
Mouseion. The objects are not only there for display.
Ordering the world: early types of museums:
Collecting started in the Renaissance because they rediscovered texts, but there were no
illustrations with these texts. Other objects from antiquity, that related to these texts, were
collected by humanists.
The royalty also started with creating collections this was a part of social prestige, to show
off. It was used for political power.
The piles of information, scattered throughout the world, might be shown to mean something
were they be brought into the study and compared: collecting was about the confrontation of
ideas and objects, as old cosmologies met new ways of perceiving.
At first, people did not believe the information that came out a printing press. They had much
more trust in handwritings. Today, we saw the same happening with the invention of internet
vs. books.
Collections can have different connotations, like: religion, wealth, scholarship (words in
combination with things), power. We sees these connotations also in older collections, before
the early modern period.
Locks are also an important motive in collections → relation between private and public.
Collections can function as instruments of power → who can see them and who cannot? →
inclusion and exclusion (sometimes done with doors as motive)
,15th and 16th century: scholar in his study theme (Jerome → translator of
the bible)
Reading wheel in the 16th century: to study multiple texts at once. People
could compare texts this way, too.
Information was spread through words, but also through objects.
The bible was a reflection of the world, but these new objects showed a
different view from the bible. They wrote these objects into the bible or
they figuratively made 2 books: the bible and the book of nature, and
they both came together.
Princely collections in private studies: studiolos (little studies)
This was an Italian invention. The
objects were visible in a small
room, in which the objects are shut away behind
walls/cabinets. They are closed off by intarsia walls.
On these panels, elements (related to study) are
depicted.
Sometimes, allegorical paintings are made in
studiolos. They refer to crafts, faculties, stages of life,
etc. together, they form a world of illusions.
➔ The alchemist’s studio: the
collector (Francesco the Medici)
is depicted in the painting, as
an alchemist. It shows that he combines all kinds of things in
his studiolo to gain knowledge. Alchemy was seen as a serious
science. It was a form of chemistry. The craft was all about
transformation. Transformation was a key subject of the time. It
also has a religious connotation (transformation of water into
wine). In nature, an example of transformation is the caterpillar
changing into a butterfly. It was seen as a wonder of God & as
a wonderful transformation.
How did the museum make the transition from private to public?
Was there a dichotomy between the 2 concepts as there is today?
First representation of a Wunderkammer, taken
from a book: Ferrante Imperato, Historia
Naturalis, 1599 (name inspired by Pliny)
It was the first pictorial representation of a
renaissance humanist’s displayed natural
history collection. Ferrante wrote natural history
that was based on his collection. There is not
so much art, it is focused on the natural world.
Some elements are true, others are not.
, Crocodiles were put on ceilings to ward off evil, and it was also a big animal that was difficult
to put on a table.
Front page of a book, Continuatio
rariorum et aspect dignorum varii generis
(1622): the author points at a text: he
thinks that the objects in the
wunderkammer should be preserved from
destruction.
The idea of the muses should be applied
to all kinds of knowledge, people thought.
College 2: The collection as a
Wunderkammer
Naturalis historia, Pliny the Elder: he treated topics according to materials. He tells the story
of the things that are out there. it was a combination of history and descriptions. It served as
an encyclopaedia of the known world. The book was one of the first printed books. The book
was seen as a blueprint for a collection, on the same level as the bible.
Kunst and Wunderkammern:
- Term was founded in the 16th century, by Ferdinand II. In his Ambras castle, he made
a special collection. In his testament, he talks about this collection as his Kunst und
Wunderkammer (circa 1590)
- Kunst: artificialia: everything that is man made.
Artificialia can also make you wonder → example: an ivory candelabra → ivory is
exotic, what is it?
- Wunder: mirabilia (objects you do not understand at first glance, wonderful things) →
Naturalia (things we find in nature)
English reference: I wonder if… → you ask yourself, because you want to gain
knowledge. It is a form of curiosity, a positive version.
One of the aims of human nature is to understand the wonder of God’s creation.
- Hybrid categories:
• exotica (outside Europe)
• mirabilia
• scientifica (man-made instruments, like locks, machinery, elements of technology)
- In a wunderkammer, we find artificialia and naturalia.
- The wunderkammer was not just one room, but a part of a complex.
Wunder was seen as a method to understand the world (god’s creation), leading to new
insights and understandings, recreating sapeintae veterum (wisdom of the ancients)
Important elements:
- Transformation (alchemy) and contradiction: the alchemy of the natural philosophers
of the 15th and 16th centuries was principally a search to understand the materiality
and structure of the world, to discover the hidden secrets of nature, a noble proto
science that engaged equally with theory and practice. These natural philosophers
relied on the theoretical framework of classical texts. With Plato, they believed that
both inanimate and organic matter was dynamic and living.
→ example: marble fruits, a form of contradiction: it is what it is, and it is not what it is.
- Use of the senses (view, touch, smell, taste, hearing)
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