Hi!
We've been reading about the history of museums and so I thought I should consolidate some of my learning here. I used to look at Singaporean artist, Donna Ong's art installation, and wondered about the space needed to store her vast collection of objects/ images. In one of her art installations, I remember seeing an open chest titled cabinets of curiosity, it was filled to the brim with objects.
Did you know that museums started out as an early, private Renaissance collections? They were known as Wunderkammern and Kunstkammern of the 16th and 17th centuries, often seen as "distant antecedents of art and natural history museums". These famous cabinets of curiosity laid the foundations for museum collections, including science and enthographic collections. Besides showing the wealth and knowledge of the private collectors, the collections also aim to inspire and instil awe at the "rarity and novelty" of the assemblage. Sometimes, these early modern collections combined natural and man-made objects, "raising important questions about natural things and artefacts".
The British Museum was established in 1753 "as the world's first, public museum", even then, the "public" in this context meant that only the scholars and 'gentlemen' entries were based on request only. This implies that only those who are well-verse in the written language will have access to the museum. Essentially, screening illiterate people out the premises.
To set the context, we need to travel back in time. More museums were created in the 19th centuries partly due of the need for nation-building. The social classes lived radically different lives so one could not assume that people would naturally identify with each other in a nation. Thus, in many Western European countries, nation-building efforts went hand-in-hand with colonialism. Palais du Louvre was a precedent for new museums across Europe to instil the idea that spaces shared by different groups of people might be a means to create a sense of belonging for its citizens. When the South Kensington Museum (now known as the Victoria & Albert Museum) opened in 1857 in London, the "opening hours were argued by social campaigners to be arranged so that the working class people could visit" (Mason 2018). Henry Cole organised The Great Exhibition, housed in the Crystal Palace at Hyde Park, in 1851, setting a "benchmark in changing popular attitudes towards Britain's colonial possessions" (Barringer 1998). During the 19th century, London was the world's biggest city, social reformers then used museums as a way to align the working class with the elites, and "distract them form drink and radical politics" (Bennett 1995). Thus, the development of museums and galleries was related to ideas about civilisation and self-education.
According to MacKenzie, the 19th centuries museums were often build with wealth acquired from colonialism, and these acquisitions allow them "to expand into overseas territories". But, it poses problems even to the present. Even though the objects obtained could be through treaties or seized through force, what was acquired through legal means could have been deemed illegal or unethical in today's terms. Due to the fact that the acquiring country at that time was a colonial power, the descendants of the colonised people may exercise their rights now to say that their former colonisers no longer have the right to own the object(s). When an object is taken out of its cultural context, the meaning may be altered depending on how it is presented in a cultural institution.
Bennett, Tony. The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. Routledge, 1995.
Gerritsen, Anne, and Giorgio, Riello. The Global Lives of Things: The Material Culture of Connections in the Early Modern World. Routledge, 2016.MacKenzie, J.M. Museums and Empire: Natural History, Human Cultures and Colonial Identities. Manchester University Press. 2009.
Mason, Rhiannon, et al. Museum and Gallery Studies: The Basics. Routledge, 2018.
