All museums have a history to tell.
They are more than "containers" of information
Above: Frontispiece depicting Ole Worm’s cabinet of curiosities, from Museum Wormianum, 1655. Ole Worm was a Danish physician and natural historian. Engravings of his collection were published in a volume after his death.
They are complex reflections of a culture's values; their politics; their social sturctures and systems of thought
"Museum" = 9 Muses of the Classical world -> a source of inspiration
- Ancient Romans exhibited their war booty
- Medieval church treasuries exhibited their sacred and valued objects
- Non-Christian places of worship exhibit objects to draw patrons to their stories of beief
Lenvin Vincent’s
1706
Wundertonel der Natur
Arranged for aesthetics and scholarly research.
A place to have and to hold – to possess nature, remove it from one context to another establishes a place for memory keeping, sentimentality and a possible need for possessing nature.
Albrecht Durer, The Rhinoceros, from verbal accounts of a ‘beast’ never seen, woodcut, 1515
> Note fabricated second horn at shoulder and stylized armor-plate skin.
Detail of an imaginary cabinet by Georg Haintz, 1666-72 Germany
Wunderkammern: Cabinets of Wonders
- All-encompassing; ideally including every kind of object
- Natural and artificial (made by human hands)
- Objects from the world over
- assembled by wealthy elite
- scholars
- curious nobles
- places of display to exhibit one's wealth, and thus power
- places of entertainment and education
- typically assembled in a private palace open only to the collector, the immediate "friendship" circle, occasional visitor
- Objects thus had an intimacy about them; objects could be removed, juxtaposed into another context and returned to their 'storage'
- Literal cabinets filled with plant, animal, mineral and cultural treasures
- In the Western world Wunderkammern were seen as "microcosms"
- Cosmos = Greek for universe
Wenzel Jamnitzer
c.1550
Collection of Ferdinand of
Tyrol at Schloss Ambras
Cabinets of Curiosities, or rooms of wonder, were the astonishing creation of collectors who wished to gather together EVERYTHING, all knowledge – animal, vegetable or human made objects --- housed in a single space….
An entire universe in miniature.
Wunderkammeron were intended to deepen people's knowledge through the presentation of things
The collector “senex puerilis” translates to “a childish old man.”
Psychologically contributing to the idea of the individual with a need for completeness.
By taking objects out of context and thus time, collectors, in a sense try to master reality.
15th c. Renaissance
Time of reasoning
Scientific discovery and understanding
Time of great transcontinental travel
Mid 18th c. Rise of the Enlightenment period
- An intellectual movement aimed to make sense of the world
- put things into perspective - from the perspective of the Europeans who were colonizing places around the world, that is
- Thus, new objects were being introduced to European audiences
- Enlightenment thinkers demanded new explations and interpretations
- Encylopedias were another produce of the 18th c.!
The British Museum London 1846-47
- The British Museum embodies such ideals of this period
- Founded in 1750 as a gift from Sir Hans Sloane
- Collection consists of specimens he acquired as a medical doctor inthe the West Indian colonies inccluding plants, birds, seashells
- The building itself was design to reference the classical temples of Ancient Greece and Rome - for good reason!
One key thing these collections shared was a scheme of linear, didactic layouts dedicated to narrative of development or progress.
- Division of objects
- "Putting a neat and tidy box around collections"
- Chronological arrangements that were subdivided
The British Museum: The Zoological Galleries c. 1845
The Brooklyn Museum . NYC 1897
Charles Willson Peale
The Artist in His Museum
1822 oil on canvas
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
Charles Wilson Peale, 1822 created a museum of American flora and fauna in Philadelphia and painted himself drawing a curtain to reveal it.
Perhaps the curtain, a metaphor for the membrane of the imagination?
Recall the Wizard of Oz?
The US: 19th c.
American cities were expanding to emulate European models
modeled their museums after European and mimic approaches to collections types, layout and installation
The Art Museum
Dedicated to serve the intellectual spiritual, social, demands of a diverse community
Yet, remains a reflection of the world that produces such ideas
One thing that that separated them from their Euoropean counterparts was the idea of the "white cube"
MoMA interior gallery
- 1930's The Museum of Modern Art in NYC under Alfred H. Barr, its director @ 11 West 53rd
- minimizing visual distraction
- anticipation to experience art in a "pure experience" not interputed by outside influences
- Rooted in Modernism: a philosophy that aimed to liberate art and ideas from the conservative forces of history
- Is the "White Cube" philosophy in itself a vehicle of cultural control?
Van Gogh's Starry Night MoMA NYC
RE: Kahn Academy