The history of the word museum

A museum ( mew-ZEE-əm; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance.^[1] Many public museums make these items available for public viewing through displays that may be permanent or temporary.^[2] The largest museums are located in major cities throughout the world, while thousands of local museums exist in smaller cities, towns, and rural areas. Museums have varying aims, ranging from the conservation and documentation of their collection, serving researchers and specialists, to catering to the general public. The goal of serving researchers is not only scientific, but intended to serve the general public.

There are many types of museums, including art museums, natural history museums, science museums, local history museums, and children’s museums. According to the International Council of Museums (ICOM), there are more than 55,000 museums in 202 countries.^[3]

Etymology[edit]

The English «museum» comes from the Latin word, and is pluralized as «museums» (or rarely, «musea»). It is originally from the Ancient Greek Μουσεῖον (Mouseion), which denotes a place or temple dedicated to the muses (the patron divinities in Greek mythology of the arts), and hence was a building set apart for study and the arts,^[4] especially the Musaeum (institute) for philosophy and research at Alexandria, built under Ptolemy I Soter about 280 BC.^[5]

Purpose[edit]

The purpose of modern museums is to collect, preserve, interpret, and display objects of artistic, cultural, or scientific significance for the study and education of the public. From a visitor or community perspective, this purpose can also depend on one’s point of view. A trip to a local history museum or large city art museum can be an entertaining and enlightening way to spend the day. To city leaders, an active museum community can be seen as a gauge of the cultural or economic health of a city, and a way to increase the sophistication of its inhabitants. To a museum professional, a museum might be seen as a way to educate the public about the museum’s mission, such as civil rights or environmentalism. Museums are, above all, storehouses of knowledge.^{[citation needed]} In 1829, James Smithson’s bequest, that would fund the Smithsonian Institution, stated he wanted to establish an institution «for the increase and diffusion of knowledge».^[6]

Museums of natural history in the late 19th century exemplified the scientific desire for classification and for interpretations of the world. Gathering all examples for each field of knowledge for research and display was the purpose. As American colleges grew in the 19th century, they developed their own natural history collections for the use of their students. By the last quarter of the 19th century, scientific research in universities was shifting toward biological research on a cellular level, and cutting-edge research moved from museums to university laboratories.^[7] While many large museums, such as the Smithsonian Institution, are still respected as research centers, research is no longer a main purpose of most museums. While there is an ongoing debate about the purposes of interpretation of a museum’s collection, there has been a consistent mission to protect and preserve cultural artifacts for future generations. Much care, expertise, and expense is invested in preservation efforts to retard decomposition in aging documents, artifacts, artworks, and buildings. All museums display objects that are important to a culture. As historian Steven Conn writes, «To see the thing itself, with one’s own eyes and in a public place, surrounded by other people having some version of the same experience, can be enchanting.»^[8]

Museum purposes vary from institution to institution. Some favor education over conservation, or vice versa. For example, in the 1970s, the Canada Science and Technology Museum favored education over preservation of their objects. They displayed objects as well as their functions. One exhibit featured a historical printing press that a staff member used for visitors to create museum memorabilia.^[9] Some museums seek to reach a wide audience, such as a national or state museum, while others have specific audiences, like the LDS Church History Museum or local history organizations. Generally speaking, museums collect objects of significance that comply with their mission statement for conservation and display. Apart from questions of provenance and conservation, museums take into consideration the former use and status of an object. Religious or holy objects, for instance, are handled according to cultural rules. Jewish objects that contain the name of God may not be discarded, but need to be buried.^[10]

Although most museums do not allow physical contact with the associated artifacts, there are some that are interactive and encourage a more hands-on approach. In 2009, Hampton Court Palace, a palace of Henry VIII, in England opened the council room to the general public to create an interactive environment for visitors. Rather than allowing visitors to handle 500-year-old objects, however, the museum created replicas, as well as replica costumes. The daily activities, historic clothing, and even temperature changes immerse the visitor in an impression of what Tudor life may have been.^[11]

Definitions[edit]

Major museum professional organizations from around the world offer some definitions as to what a museum is and their purpose. Common themes in all the definitions are public good and care, preservation, and interpretation of collections.

The International Council of Museums’ current definition of a museum (adopted in 2022): «A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing.»^[12]

The Canadian Museums Association’s definition: «A museum is a non-profit, permanent establishment, that does not exist primarily for the purpose of conducting temporary exhibitions and that is open to the public during regular hours and administered in the public interest for the purpose of conserving, preserving, studying, interpreting, assembling and exhibiting to the public for the instruction and enjoyment of the public, objects and specimens or educational and cultural value including artistic, scientific, historical and technological material.»^[13]

The United Kingdom’s Museums Association’s definition: «Museums enable people to explore collections for inspiration, learning and enjoyment. They are institutions that collect, safeguard and make accessible artifacts and specimens, which they hold in trust for society.»

While the American Alliance of Museums does not have a definition their list of accreditation criteria to participate in their Accreditation Program states a museum must: «Be a legally organized nonprofit institution or part of a nonprofit organization or government entity; Be essentially educational in nature; Have a formally stated and approved mission; Use and interpret objects or a site for the public presentation of regularly scheduled programs and exhibits; Have a formal and appropriate program of documentation, care, and use of collections or objects; Carry out the above functions primarily at a physical facility or site; Have been open to the public for at least two years; Be open to the public at least 1,000 hours a year; Have accessioned 80 percent of its permanent collection; Have at least one paid professional staff with museum knowledge and experience; Have a full-time director to whom authority is delegated for day-to-day operations; Have the financial resources sufficient to operate effectively; Demonstrate that it meets the Core Standards for Museums; Successfully complete the Core Documents Verification Program» ^[14]

Additionally a there is a legal definition of museum in United States legislation in the authorizing the establishment of the Institute of Museum and Library Services: «Museum means a public, tribal, or private nonprofit institution which is organized on a permanent basis for essentially educational, cultural heritage, or aesthetic purposes and which, using a professional staff: Owns or uses tangible objects, either animate or inanimate; Cares for these objects; and Exhibits them to the general public on a regular basis.» (Museum Services Act 1976) ^[15]

History[edit]

Ancient[edit]

One of the oldest museums known is Ennigaldi-Nanna’s museum, built by Princess Ennigaldi in modern Iraq at the end of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The site dates from c. 530 BC, and contained artifacts from earlier Mesopotamian civilizations. Notably, a clay drum label—written in three languages—was found at the site, referencing the history and discovery of a museum item.^[16][17]

Ancient Greeks and Romans collected and displayed art and objects but perceived museums differently from modern day views. In the classical period the museums were the temples and their precincts which housed collections of votive offerings. Paintings and sculptures were displayed in gardens, forums, theaters, and bathhouses.^[18] In the ancient past there was little differentiation between libraries and museums with both occupying the building and were frequently connected to a temple or royal palace. The Museum of Alexandria is believed to be one of the earliest museums in the world. While it connected to the Library of Alexandria it is not clear if the museum was in a different building from the library or was part of the library complex. While little was known about the museum it was an inspiration for museums during the early Renaissance period.^[19] The royal palaces also functioned as a kind of museum outfitted with art and objects from conquered territories and gifts from ambassadors from other kingdoms allowing the ruler to display the amassed collections to guests and to visiting dignitaries.^[20]

Also in Alexandria from the time of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (r. 285-246 BCE), was the first zoological park. At first used by Philadelphus in an attempt to domesticate African elephants for use in war, the elephants were also used for show along with a menagerie of other animals specimens including hartebeests, ostriches, zebras, leopards, giraffes, rhinoceros, and pythons.^[19][21]

Early[edit]

Early museums began as the private collections of wealthy individuals, families or institutions of art and rare or curious natural objects and artifacts. These were often displayed in so-called «wonder rooms» or cabinets of curiosities. These contemporary museums first emerged in western Europe, then spread into other parts of the world.^[22]

Public access to these museums was often possible for the «respectable», especially to private art collections, but at the whim of the owner and his staff. One way that elite men during this time period gained a higher social status in the world of elites was by becoming a collector of these curious objects and displaying them. Many of the items in these collections were new discoveries and these collectors or naturalists, since many of these people held interest in natural sciences, were eager to obtain them. By putting their collections in a museum and on display, they not only got to show their fantastic finds but also used the museum as a way to sort and «manage the empirical explosion of materials that wider dissemination of ancient texts, increased travel, voyages of discovery, and more systematic forms of communication and exchange had produced».^[23]

One of these naturalists and collectors was Ulisse Aldrovandi, whose collection policy of gathering as many objects and facts about them was «encyclopedic» in nature, reminiscent of that of Pliny, the Roman philosopher and naturalist.^[24] The idea was to consume and collect as much knowledge as possible, to put everything they collected and everything they knew in these displays. In time, however, museum philosophy would change and the encyclopedic nature of information that was so enjoyed by Aldrovandi and his cohorts would be dismissed as well as «the museums that contained this knowledge». The 18th-century scholars of the Age of Enlightenment saw their ideas of the museum as superior and based their natural history museums on «organization and taxonomy» rather than displaying everything in any order after the style of Aldrovandi.^[25]

The first «public» museums were often accessible only by the middle and upper classes. It could be difficult to gain entrance. When the British Museum opened to the public in 1759, it was a concern that large crowds could damage the artifacts. Prospective visitors to the British Museum had to apply in writing for admission, and small groups were allowed into the galleries each day.^[26] The British Museum became increasingly popular during the 19th century, amongst all age groups and social classes who visited the British Museum, especially on public holidays.^[27]

The Ashmolean Museum, however, founded in 1677 from the personal collection of Elias Ashmole, was set up in the University of Oxford to be open to the public and is considered by some to be the first modern public museum.^[28] The collection included that of Elias Ashmole which he had collected himself, including objects he had acquired from the gardeners, travellers and collectors John Tradescant the elder and his son of the same name. The collection included antique coins, books, engravings, geological specimens, and zoological specimens—one of which was the stuffed body of the last dodo ever seen in Europe; but by 1755 the stuffed dodo was so moth-eaten that it was destroyed, except for its head and one claw. The museum opened on 24 May 1683, with naturalist Robert Plot as the first keeper. The first building, which became known as the Old Ashmolean, is sometimes attributed to Sir Christopher Wren or Thomas Wood.^[29]

In France, the first public museum was the Louvre Museum in Paris,^[30] opened in 1793 during the French Revolution, which enabled for the first time free access to the former French royal collections for people of all stations and status. The fabulous art treasures collected by the French monarchy over centuries were accessible to the public three days each «décade» (the 10-day unit which had replaced the week in the French Republican Calendar). The Conservatoire du muséum national des Arts (National Museum of Arts’s Conservatory) was charged with organizing the Louvre as a national public museum and the centerpiece of a planned national museum system. As Napoléon I conquered the great cities of Europe, confiscating art objects as he went, the collections grew and the organizational task became more and more complicated. After Napoleon was defeated in 1815, many of the treasures he had amassed were gradually returned to their owners (and many were not). His plan was never fully realized, but his concept of a museum as an agent of nationalistic fervor had a profound influence throughout Europe.

Chinese and Japanese visitors to Europe were fascinated by the museums they saw there, but had cultural difficulties in grasping their purpose and finding an equivalent Chinese or Japanese term for them. Chinese visitors in the early 19th century named these museums based on what they contained, so defined them as «bone amassing buildings» or «courtyards of treasures» or «painting pavilions» or «curio stores» or «halls of military feats» or «gardens of everything». Japan first encountered Western museum institutions when it participated in Europe’s World’s Fairs in the 1860s. The British Museum was described by one of their delegates as a ‘hakubutsukan’, a ‘house of extensive things’ – this would eventually become accepted as the equivalent word for ‘museum’ in Japan and China.^[31]

Modern[edit]

American museums eventually joined European museums as the world’s leading centers for the production of new knowledge in their fields of interest. A period of intense museum building, in both an intellectual and physical sense was realized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (this is often called «The Museum Period» or «The Museum Age»). While many American museums, both natural history museums and art museums alike, were founded with the intention of focusing on the scientific discoveries and artistic developments in North America, many moved to emulate their European counterparts in certain ways (including the development of Classical collections from ancient Egypt, Greece, Mesopotamia, and Rome). Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of liberal government, Tony Bennett has suggested the development of more modern 19th-century museums was part of new strategies by Western governments to produce a citizenry that, rather than be directed by coercive or external forces, monitored and regulated its own conduct. To incorporate the masses in this strategy, the private space of museums that previously had been restricted and socially exclusive were made public. As such, objects and artifacts, particularly those related to high culture, became instruments for these «new tasks of social management».^[32] Universities became the primary centers for innovative research in the United States well before the start of World War II. Nevertheless, museums to this day contribute new knowledge to their fields and continue to build collections that are useful for both research and display.^[33]

The late twentieth century witnessed intense debate concerning the repatriation of religious, ethnic, and cultural artifacts housed in museum collections. In the United States, several Native American tribes and advocacy groups have lobbied extensively for the repatriation of sacred objects and the reburial of human remains.^[34] In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which required federal agencies and federally funded institutions to repatriate Native American «cultural items» to culturally affiliate tribes and groups.^[35] Similarly, many European museum collections often contain objects and cultural artifacts acquired through imperialism and colonization. Some historians and scholars have criticized the British Museum for its possession of rare antiquities from Egypt, Greece, and the Middle East.^[36]

Management[edit]

The roles associated with the management of a museum largely depend on the size of the institution.^[37] Together, the Board and the Director establish a system of governance that is guided by policies that set standards for the institution. Documents that set these standards include an institutional or strategic plan, institutional code of ethics, bylaws, and collections policy. The American Alliance of Museums (AAM) has also formulated a series of standards and best practices that help guide the management of museums.

• Board of Trustees or Board of directors – The board governs the museum and is responsible for ensuring the museum is financially and ethically sound. They set standards and policies for the museum. Board members are often involved in fundraising aspects of the museum and represent the institution.^[38] Some museum use the terms «directors» and «trustees» interchangeably but both are different legal instruments. A board of directors governs a nonprofit corporation, a board of trustees is responsible for governing a charitable trust, foundation, or endowment.^[39] In the case of small museums and all volunteer museums, a board may be more hands-on in the day-to-day operations of the museum.^[40]
• Director- The director is the face of the museum to the professional and public community. They communicate closely with the board to guide and govern the museum. They work with the staff to ensure the museum runs smoothly. According to museum professionals Hugh H. Genoways and Lynne M. Ireland, «Administration of the organization requires skill in conflict management, interpersonal relations, budget management and monitoring, and staff supervision and evaluation. Managers must also set legal and ethical standards and maintain involvement in the museum profession.»^[38]

Various positions within the museum carry out the policies established by the Board and the Director. All museum employees should work together toward the museum’s institutional goal. Here is a list of positions commonly found at museums:

• Curator – Curators are the intellectual drivers behind exhibits. They research the museum’s collection and topic of focus, develop exhibition themes, and publish their research aimed at either a public or academic audience. Larger museums have curators in a variety of areas. For example, The Henry Ford has a Curator of Transportation, a Curator of Public Life, a Curator of Decorative Arts, etc. Many art museums have curators dedicated to specific historic periods and geographic regions, such as American art and modern or contemporary art.^{[citation needed]}
• Collections Management – Collections managers are primarily responsible for the hands-on care, movement, and storage of objects. They are responsible for the accessibility of collections and collections policy.
• Registrar – Registrars are the primary record keepers of the collection. They insure that objects are properly accessioned, documented, insured, and, when appropriate, loaned. Ethical and legal issues related to the collection are dealt with by registrars. Along with collections managers, they uphold the museum’s collections policy.^{[citation needed]}
• Educator – Museum educators are responsible for educating museum audiences. Their duties can include designing tours and public programs for children and adults, teacher training, developing classroom and continuing education resources, community outreach, and volunteer management.^[41] Educators not only work with the public, but also collaborate with other museum staff on exhibition and program development to ensure that exhibits are audience-friendly.
• Exhibit Designer – Exhibit designers are in charge of the layout and physical installation of exhibits. They create a conceptual design and then bring it to fruition in the physical space.^{[citation needed]}
• Conservator – Conservators focus on object restoration. More than preserving the object in its present state, they seek to stabilize and repair artifacts to the condition of an earlier era.^[42]

Other positions commonly found at museums include: building operator, public programming staff, photographer, librarian, archivist, groundskeeper, volunteer coordinator, preparator, security staff, development officer, membership officer, business officer, gift shop manager, public relations staff, and graphic designer.

At smaller museums, staff members often fulfill multiple roles. Some of these positions are excluded entirely or may be carried out by a contractor when necessary.

Protection[edit]

The cultural property stored in museums is threatened in many countries by natural disaster, war, terrorist attacks or other emergencies. To this end, an internationally important aspect is a strong bundling of existing resources and the networking of existing specialist competencies in order to prevent any loss or damage to cultural property or to keep damage as low as possible. International partner for museums is UNESCO and Blue Shield International in accordance with the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property from 1954 and its 2nd Protocol from 1999. For legal reasons, there are many international collaborations between museums, and the local Blue Shield organizations.^[43][44]

Blue Shield has conducted extensive missions to protect museums and cultural assets in armed conflict, such as 2011 in Egypt and Libya, 2013 in Syria and 2014 in Mali and Iraq. During these operations, the looting of the collection is to be prevented in particular.^[45]

Planning[edit]

The design of museums has evolved throughout history. However, museum planning involves planning the actual mission of the museum along with planning the space that the collection of the museum will be housed in. Intentional museum planning has its beginnings with the museum founder and librarian John Cotton Dana. Dana detailed the process of founding the Newark Museum in a series of books in the early 20th century so that other museum founders could plan their museums. Dana suggested that potential founders of museums should form a committee first, and reach out to the community for input as to what the museum should supply or do for the community.^[46] According to Dana, museums should be planned according to community’s needs:

«The new museum … does not build on an educational superstition. It examines its community’s life first, and then straightway bends its energies to supplying some the material which that community needs, and to making that material’s presence widely known, and to presenting it in such a way as to secure it for the maximum of use and the maximum efficiency of that use.»^[47]

The way that museums are planned and designed vary according to what collections they house, but overall, they adhere to planning a space that is easily accessed by the public and easily displays the chosen artifacts. These elements of planning have their roots with John Cotton Dana, who was perturbed at the historical placement of museums outside of cities, and in areas that were not easily accessed by the public, in gloomy European style buildings.^[48]

Questions of accessibility continue to the present day. Many museums strive to make their buildings, programming, ideas, and collections more publicly accessible than in the past. Not every museum is participating in this trend, but that seems to be the trajectory of museums in the twenty-first century with its emphasis on inclusiveness. One pioneering way museums are attempting to make their collections more accessible is with open storage. Most of a museum’s collection is typically locked away in a secure location to be preserved, but the result is most people never get to see the vast majority of collections. The Brooklyn Museum’s Luce Center for American Art practices this open storage where the public can view items not on display, albeit with minimal interpretation. The practice of open storage is all part of an ongoing debate in the museum field of the role objects play and how accessible they should be.^[49]

In terms of modern museums, interpretive museums, as opposed to art museums, have missions reflecting curatorial guidance through the subject matter which now include content in the form of images, audio and visual effects, and interactive exhibits. Museum creation begins with a museum plan, created through a museum planning process. The process involves identifying the museum’s vision and the resources, organization and experiences needed to realize this vision. A feasibility study, analysis of comparable facilities, and an interpretive plan are all developed as part of the museum planning process.

Some museum experiences have very few or no artifacts and do not necessarily call themselves museums, and their mission reflects this; the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles and the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, being notable examples where there are few artifacts, but strong, memorable stories are told or information is interpreted. In contrast, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. uses many artifacts in their memorable exhibitions.

Museums are laid out in a specific way for a specific reason and each person who enters the doors of a museum will see its collection completely differently to the person behind them- this is what makes museums fascinating because they are represented differently to each individual.^{[50]: 9–10}

Financial uses[edit]

In recent years, some cities have turned to museums as an avenue for economic development or rejuvenation. This is particularly true in the case of postindustrial cities.^[51] Examples of museums fulfilling these economic roles exist around the world. For example, the spectacular Guggenheim Bilbao was built in Bilbao, Spain in a move by the Basque regional government to revitalize the dilapidated old port area of that city. The Basque government agreed to pay $100 million for the construction of the museum, a price tag that caused many Bilbaoans to protest against the project.^[52] Nonetheless, the gamble has appeared to pay off financially for the city, with over 1.1 million people visiting the museum in 2015. Key to this is the large demographic of foreign visitors to the museum, with 63% of the visitors residing outside of Spain and thus feeding foreign investment straight into Bilbao.^[53] A similar project to that undertaken in Bilbao was also built on the disused shipyards of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Titanic Belfast was built for the same price as the Guggenheim Bilbao (and which was incidentally built by the same architect, Frank Gehry) in time for the 100th anniversary of the Belfast-built ship’s maiden voyage in 2012. Initially expecting modest visitor numbers of 425,000 annually, first year visitor numbers reached over 800,000, with almost 60% coming from outside Northern Ireland.^[54] In the United States, similar projects include the 81, 000 square foot Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Virginia and The Broad Museum in Los Angeles.

Museums being used as a cultural economic driver by city and local governments has proven to be controversial among museum activists and local populations alike. Public protests have occurred in numerous cities which have tried to employ museums in this way. While most subside if a museum is successful, as happened in Bilbao, others continue especially if a museum struggles to attract visitors. The Taubman Museum of Art is an example of a museum which cost a lot (eventually $66 million) but attained little success, and continues to have a low endowment for its size.^[55] Some museum activists also see this method of museum use as a deeply flawed model for such institutions. Steven Conn, one such museum proponent, believes that «to ask museums to solve our political and economic problems is to set them up for inevitable failure and to set us (the visitor) up for inevitable disappointment.»^[51]

Funding[edit]

Museums are facing funding shortages. Funding for museums comes from four major categories, and as of 2009 the breakdown for the United States is as follows: Government support (at all levels) 24.4%, private (charitable) giving 36.5%, earned income 27.6%, and investment income 11.5%.^[57] Government funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the largest museum funder in the United States, decreased by 19.586 million between 2011 and 2015, adjusted for inflation.^[58][59] The average spent per visitor in an art museum in 2016 was $8 between admissions, store and restaurant, where the average expense per visitor was $55.^[60] Corporations, which fall into the private giving category, can be a good source of funding to make up the funding gap. The amount corporations currently give to museums accounts for just 5% of total funding.^[61] Corporate giving to the arts, however, was set to increase by 3.3% in 2017.^[62]

Exhibition design[edit]

Most mid-size and large museums employ exhibit design staff for graphic and environmental design projects, including exhibitions. In addition to traditional 2-D and 3-D designers^[63] and architects, these staff departments may include audio-visual specialists, software designers, audience research, evaluation specialists, writers, editors, and preparators or art handlers. These staff specialists may also be charged with supervising contract design or production services. The exhibit design process builds on the interpretive plan for an exhibit, determining the most effective, engaging and appropriate methods of communicating a message or telling a story. The process will often mirror the architectural process or schedule, moving from conceptual plan, through schematic design, design development, contract document, fabrication, and installation. Museums of all sizes may also contract the outside services of exhibit fabrication businesses.^[64]

Some museum scholars have even begun to question whether museums truly need artifacts at all. Historian Steven Conn provocatively asks this question, suggesting that there are fewer objects in all museums now, as they have been progressively replaced by interactive technology.^[65] As educational programming has grown in museums, mass collections of objects have receded in importance. This is not necessarily a negative development. Dorothy Canfield Fisher observed that the reduction in objects has pushed museums to grow from institutions that artlessly showcased their many artifacts (in the style of early cabinets of curiosity) to instead «thinning out» the objects presented «for a general view of any given subject or period, and to put the rest away in archive-storage-rooms, where they could be consulted by students, the only people who really needed to see them».^[66] This phenomenon of disappearing objects is especially present in science museums like the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, which have a high visitorship of school-aged children who may benefit more from hands-on interactive technology than reading a label beside an artifact.^[67]

Types[edit]

There is no definitive standard as to the set types of museums. Additionally, the museum landscape has become so varied, that it may not be sufficient to use traditional categories to comprehend fully the vast variety existing throughout the world. However, it may be useful to categorize museums in different ways under multiple perspectives. Museums can vary based on size, from large institutions, to very small institutions focusing on specific subjects, such as a specific location, a notable person, or a given period of time. Museums also can be based on the main source of funding: central or federal government, provinces, regions, universities; towns and communities; other subsidised; nonsubsidised and private.^[68]

It may sometimes be useful to distinguish between diachronic museums — those that interpret the way in which its subject matter has developed and evolved through time (examples: Lower East Side Tenement Museum and Diachronic Museum of Larissa), and synchronic museums — those that interpret the way in which its subject matter exists at one point in time (examples: The Anne Frank House and Colonial Williamsburg). According to University of Florida’s Professor Eric Kilgerman, «While a museum in which a particular narrative unfolds within its halls is diachronic, those museums that limit their space to a single experience are called synchronic.»^[69]

In her book Civilizing the Museum, author Elaine Heumann Gurian proposes that there are five categories of museums based on intention not content: object centered, narrative, client centered, community centered, and national.^[70]

Museums can also be categorized into major groups by the type of collections they display, to include: fine arts, applied arts, craft, archaeology, anthropology and ethnology, biography, history, cultural history, science, technology, children’s museums, natural history, botanical and zoological gardens. Within these categories, many museums specialize further, e.g. museums of modern art, folk art, local history, military history, aviation history, philately, agriculture, or geology. The size of a museum’s collection typically determines the museum’s size, whereas its collection reflects the type of museum it is. Many museums normally display a «permanent collection» of important selected objects in its area of specialization, and may periodically display «special collections» on a temporary basis.^{[citation needed]}

Major types[edit]

The following is a list to give an idea of the major museum types. While comprehensive it is not a definitive list.

Legal framework[edit]

Public vs. private[edit]

Private museums are organized by individuals and managed by a board and museum officers, but public museums are created and managed by federal, state, or local governments. A government can charter a museum through legislative action but the museum can still be private as it is not part of the government. The distinction regulates the ownership and legal accountability for the care of the collections.^[39][71]

Non-profit vs. for-profit[edit]

Nonprofit means that an organization is classified as a charitable corporation and is exempt from paying most taxes and the money the organization earns is invested in the organization itself. Money made by a private, for-profit museum is paid to the museum’s owners or shareholders.

The nonprofit museum has a fiduciary responsibility in regards to the public, in essence the museum holds its collections and administers it for the benefit of the public. Collections of for-profit museums are legally corporate assets the museum administers for the benefit of the owners or shareholders.^[39][71]

Run by trusts vs. corporations[edit]

A trust is a legal instrument where trustees manage the trust’s assets for the benefit of the museum following the specific wishes of the donor. This provides tax benefits for the donor, and also allows the donor to have control over how assets are distributed.

Corporations are legal entities and may acquire property in a way similar to how an individual can own property. Museums under incorporation are usually organized by a community or group of individuals. While a board of director’s loyalty is to the corporation, a board of trustee’s loyalty has to be loyal to the intention of the trust. The ramification is that a trust is far less flexible than a corporation.^[72][73]

Current challenges[edit]

Decolonization[edit]

During the beginning of the 21st century, a growing global movement for the decolonization of museums has arisen.^[74] Proponents of this movement argue that ‘museums are a box of things’ and do not represent complete stories; instead they show biased narratives based on ideologies, in which certain stories are intentionally disregarded.^{[50]: 9–18} Through this, people are encouraging others to consider this missing perspective, when looking at museum collections, as every object viewed in such environments was placed by an individual to represent a certain viewpoint, be it historical or cultural.^{[50]: 9–18}

The 2018 report on the restitution of African cultural heritage^[75] is a prominent example regarding the decolonization of museums and other collections in France and the claims of African countries to regain artifacts illegally taken from their original cultural settings.

Since 1868, several monolithic human figures known as Moai have been removed from Easter Island and put in display in major Western museums such as the National Museum of Natural History, the British Museum, the Louvre and the Royal Museums of Art and History. Several demands have been made by Easter Island residents for the return of the Moai.^[76] The figures are seen as ancestors and family or the soul by the Rapa Nui and hold deep cultural value to their people.^[77] Other examples include the Gweagal Shield, thought to be a very significant shield taken from Botany Bay in April 1770^[78] or the Parthenon marble sculptures, which were taken from Greece by Lord Elgin in 1805.^[79] Successive Greek governments have unsuccessfully petitioned for the return of the Parthenon marbles.^[79] Another example among many others is the so-called Montezuma’s headdress in the Museum of Ethnology, Vienna, which is a source of dispute between Austria and Mexico.^[80]

Laura Van Broekhoven, director of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, United Kingdom, stated in 2020 that «ethnographic museums should redress their coloniality. They should be a pluriverse that shows the rich diversity of ways of being and knowing, not centering whiteness as the only way of being. Museums ought to allow for everyone to understand each other better.»^[81]

Labor issues and unionization[edit]

Background

The past few years has seen a unionizing movement. US museums workers have initiated dialogs about labor and collective organizing in the cultural sector. In 2019 the workers in multiple museums voted to form unions with more protesting to press for a fair contract and against unfair labor practices.^[82] During that year over 3,000 cultural workers anonymously started to share their salaries online through a pay transparency spreadsheet.^[83]

The Marciano Art Foundation, a museum established by co-founders of Guess clothing, Maurice Marciano and Paul Marciano closed indefinitely in November 2019 after workers attempted to unionize.^[84][85] The Marciano Foundation released a statement a month later that the closure was permanent.^[86]

In the country of Georgia 40 employees were fired May 2022 as part of a restructuring. The newly formed union, the Georgian Trade Union of Science, Education, and Culture Workers said in a statement they said the employees were fired illegally and the reorganization was «carried out by the employer in an untransparent and maladministered manner» and that the organization will «definitely fight to the end to protect the rights of employees.» Fired senior curator Maia Pataridze said the new management mentioned her social media posts criticizing the government.^[87][88] Among those fired was union chair, Nikoloz Tsikaridze, a senior researcher and archaeologist who associated the discharging of himself and other museum staff was for forming a union, and said that Thea Tsulukiani, the Georgia Minister of Culture had ‘punished’ them.^[89][90]

History

In the United States, labor unrest within the arts and cultural sector go back at least nearly a century to 1933 when a New York based collective of artists eventually known as the Artist’s Union used collective bargaining for state relief for unemployed artists.^[91]

In 1971 administrative staff at New York’s Museum of Modern Art formed the organization «Professional and Staff Association of the Museum of Modern Art» (PASTA), the first union of professional employees, as opposed to maintenance and service people, at a privately‐financed museum. The contract negotiated would provide a wage increase, protection against termination without cause, and direct access to trustees and policy-making processes at the museum. While there was some interest from workers at other museums at the time, for the next fifty years there was little change in museums adding union representation of their professional employees.^[83][92]

Sustainability and climate change[edit]

Increasingly museums have been responded to the ongoing climate crisis through enacting sustainable museum practices, and exhibitions highlighting the issues surrounding climate change and the Anthropocene.

See also[edit]

•  Museums portal

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• Aronsson, Peter., and Gabriella Elgenius. National Museums and Nation-Building in Europe 1750-2010 : Mobilization and Legitimacy, Continuity and Change. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015.
• Bennett, Tony (1995). The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-05387-7. OCLC 30624669.
• Conn, Steven (1998). Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876–1926. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-11493-7.
• Cuno, James (2013). Museums Matter: In Praise of the Encyclopedic Museum. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-10091-3.
• Findlen, Paula (1996). Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-20508-1.
• Marotta, Antonello (2010). Contemporary Milan. ISBN 978-88-572-0258-7.
• Murtagh, William J. (2005). Keeping Time: The History and Theory of Preservation in America. New York: Sterling Publishing Company. ISBN 0-471-47377-4.
• Rentzhog, Sten (2007). Open air museums: The history and future of a visionary idea. Stockholm and Östersund: Carlssons Förlag / Jamtli. ISBN 978-91-7948-208-4
• Simon, Nina K. (2010). The Participatory Museum. Santa Cruz: Museums 2.0
• van Uffelen, Chris (2010). Museumsarchitektur (in German). Potsdam: Ullmann. ISBN 978-3-8331-6033-2. – also available in English: Contemporary Museums – Architecture History Collections. Braun Publishing. 2010. ISBN 978-3-03768-067-4.
• Yerkovich, Sally (2016). A Practical Guide to Museum Ethics. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4422-3164-1.
• «The Museum and Museum Specialists: Problems of Professional Education, Proceedings of the International Conference, 14–15 November 2014» (PDF). St. Petersburg: The State Hermitage Publishers. 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 May 2017. Retrieved 6 December 2016.

External links[edit]

• Media related to Museums at Wikimedia Commons
• International Council of Museums
• Museums of the World
• VLmp directory of museums
• Museums at Curlie

museum, institution dedicated to preserving and interpreting the primary tangible evidence of humankind and the environment. In its preserving of this primary evidence, the museum differs markedly from the library, with which it has often been compared, for the items housed in a museum are mainly unique and constitute the raw material of study and research. In many cases they are removed in time, place, and circumstance from their original context, and they communicate directly to the viewer in a way not possible through other media. Museums have been founded for a variety of purposes: to serve as recreational facilities, scholarly venues, or educational resources; to contribute to the quality of life of the areas where they are situated; to attract tourism to a region; to promote civic pride or nationalistic endeavour; or even to transmit overtly ideological concepts. Given such a variety of purposes, museums reveal remarkable diversity in form, content, and even function. Yet, despite such diversity, they are bound by a common goal: the preservation and interpretation of some material aspect of society’s cultural consciousness.

History

As institutions that preserve and interpret the material evidence of humankind, human activity, and the natural world, museums have a long and varied history, springing from what may be an innate human desire to collect and interpret and having discernible origins in large collections built up by individuals and groups before the modern era.

Etymology

From mouseion to museum

The word museum has classical origins. In its Greek form, mouseion, it meant “seat of the Muses” and designated a philosophical institution or a place of contemplation. Use of the Latin derivation, museum, appears to have been restricted in Roman times mainly to places of philosophical discussion. Thus, the great Museum at Alexandria, founded by Ptolemy I Soter early in the 3rd century bce, with its college of scholars and its famous library, was more a prototype university than an institution to preserve and interpret material aspects of one’s heritage. The word museum was revived in 15th-century Europe to describe the collection of Lorenzo de’ Medici in Florence, but the term conveyed the concept of comprehensiveness rather than denoting a building. By the 17th century, museum was being used in Europe to describe collections of curiosities. Ole Worm’s collection in Copenhagen was so called, and in England visitors to John Tradescant’s collection in Lambeth (now a London borough) called the array there a museum; the catalog of this collection, published in 1656, was titled Musaeum Tradescantianum. In 1675 the collection, having become the property of Elias Ashmole, was transferred to the University of Oxford. A building was constructed to receive it, and this, soon after being opened to the public in 1683, became known as the Ashmolean Museum. Although there is some ambivalence in the use of museum in the legislation, drafted in 1753, founding the British Museum, nevertheless the idea of an institution called a museum and established to preserve and display a collection to the public was well established in the 18th century. Indeed, Denis Diderot outlined a detailed scheme for a national museum for France in the ninth volume of his Encyclopédie, published in 1765.

Use of the word museum during the 19th and most of the 20th century denoted a building housing cultural material to which the public had access. Later, as museums continued to respond to the societies that created them, the emphasis on the building itself became less dominant. Open-air museums, comprising a series of buildings preserved as objects, and ecomuseums, involving the interpretation of all aspects of an outdoor environment, provide examples of this. In addition, so-called virtual museums exist in electronic form on the Internet. Although virtual museums provide interesting opportunities for and bring certain benefits to existing museums, they remain dependent upon the collection, preservation, and interpretation of material things by the real museum.

Britannica Quiz

Museums of the Western World

Museology and museography

Along with the identification of a clear role for museums in society, there gradually developed a body of theory the study of which is known as museology. For many reasons, the development of this theory was not rapid. Museum personnel were nearly always experienced and trained in a discipline related to a particular collection, and therefore they had little understanding of the museum as a whole, its operation, and its role in society. As a result, the practical aspects of museum work—for example, conservation and display—were achieved through borrowing from other disciplines and other techniques, whether or not they particularly met the requirements of the museum and its public.

Thus, not only was the development of theory slow, but the theory’s practical applications—known as museography—fell far short of expectations. Museums suffered from a conflict of purpose, with a resulting lack of clear identity. Further, the apprenticeship method of training for museum work gave little opportunity for the introduction of new ideas. This situation prevailed until other organizations began to coordinate, develop, and promote museums. In some cases, museums came to be organized partly or totally as a government service; in others, professional associations were formed, while an added impetus arose where universities and colleges took on responsibilities for museum training and research.

Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.
Subscribe Now

The words derived from museum have a respectable, if confused, history. Emanuel Mendes da Costa, in his Elements of Conchology, published in 1776, referred to “museographists,” and a Zeitschrift für Museologie und Antiquitätenkunde (“Journal of Museology and Antique Studies”) appeared in Dresden in 1881. But the terms museology and museography have been used indiscriminately in the literature, and there is a tendency, particularly in English-speaking countries, to use museology or museum studies to embrace both the theory and practice of museums.

Introduction

      history of the institutions that preserve and interpret the material evidence of the human race, human activity, and the natural world. As such, museums have a long history, springing from what may be an innate human desire to collect and interpret and having discernible origins in large collections built up by individuals and groups before the modern era. This article traces the history of museums, first by noting the etymology of the word museum and its derivatives, next by describing the private collecting conducted in ancient and medieval times, and finally by reviewing the development of modern public museums from the Renaissance to the present day.

Etymology

From mouseion to museum

      The word museum has classical origins. In its Greek form, mouseion, it meant “seat of the Muses” and designated a philosophical institution or a place of contemplation. Use of the Latin derivation, museum (Alexandrian Museum), appears to have been restricted in Roman times mainly to places of philosophical discussion. Thus the great Museum at Alexandria, founded by Ptolemy I Soter early in the 3rd century BC, with its college of scholars and its library, was more a prototype university than an institution to preserve and interpret material aspects of the heritage. The word museum was revived in 15th-century Europe to describe the collection of Lorenzo de’ Medici in Florence, but the term conveyed the concept of comprehensiveness rather than denoting a building. By the 17th century museum was being used in Europe to describe collections of curiosities. Ole Worm’s collection in Copenhagen (see ) was so called, and in England visitors to John Tradescant’s (Tradescant, John) collection in Lambeth (now a London borough) called the array there a museum; the catalog of this collection, published in 1656, was titled Musaeum Tradescantianum. In 1675 the collection, having become the property of Elias Ashmole, was transferred to the University of Oxford. A building was constructed to receive it, and this, soon after being opened to the public in 1683, became known as the Ashmolean Museum (Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology). Although there is some ambivalence in the use of museum in the legislation, drafted in 1753, founding the British Museum, nevertheless the idea of an institution called a museum and established to preserve and display a collection to the public was well established in the 18th century. Indeed, Denis Diderot (Diderot, Denis) outlined a detailed scheme for a national museum for France in the ninth volume of his Encyclopédie, published in 1765.

      Use of the word museum during the 19th and most of the 20th century denoted a building housing cultural material to which the public had access. Later, as museums continued to respond to the societies that created them, the emphasis on the building itself became less dominant. Open-air museums, comprising a series of buildings preserved as objects, and ecomuseums, involving the interpretation of all aspects of an outdoor environment, provide examples of this. In addition, so-called virtual museums (virtual museum) exist in electronic form on the Internet. Although virtual museums provide interesting opportunities for and bring certain benefits to existing museums, they remain dependent upon the collection, preservation, and interpretation of material things by the real museum.

Museology and museography

      Along with the identification of a clear role for museums in society, there gradually developed a body of theory the study of which is known as museology. For many reasons, the development of this theory was not rapid. Museum personnel were nearly always experienced and trained in a discipline related to a particular collection, and therefore they had little understanding of the museum as a whole, its operation, and its role in society. As a result, the practical aspects of museum work—for example, conservation and display—were achieved through borrowing from other disciplines and other techniques, whether or not they particularly met the requirements of the museum and its public.

      Thus not only was the development of theory slow, but the theory’s practical applications—known as museography—fell far short of expectations. Museums suffered from a conflict of purpose, with a resulting lack of clear identity. Further, the apprenticeship method of training for museum work gave little opportunity for the introduction of new ideas. This situation prevailed until other organizations began to coordinate, develop, and promote museums. In some cases museums came to be organized partly or totally as a government service; in others, professional associations were formed, while an added impetus arose where universities and colleges took on responsibilities for museum training and research.

      The words derived from museum have a respectable, if confused, history. Emanuel Mendes da Costa, in his Elements of Conchology, published in 1776, referred to “museographists,” and a Zeitschrift für Museologie und Antiquitätenkunde appeared in Dresden in 1881. But the terms museology and museography have been used indiscriminately in the literature, and there is a tendency, particularly in English-speaking countries, to use museology or museum studies to embrace both the theory and practice of museums.

The precursors of museums

Evidence from antiquity

      The origins of the twin concepts of preservation and interpretation, which form the basis of the museum, lie in the human propensity to acquire and inquire. Collections (art collection) of objects have been found in Paleolithic burials, while evidence of inquiry into the environment, and communication of the findings, can be seen in the cave and mobiliary art of the same period. A development toward the idea of the museum certainly occurred early in the 2nd millennium BC at Larsa, in Mesopotamia, where copies of old inscriptions were made for use in the schools. But the idea also involves the interpretation of original material—criteria that seem to have been met by objects discovered by Sir Leonard Woolley (Woolley, Sir Leonard) in the 6th-century-BC levels of the Babylonian city of Ur. Woolley’s findings indicated that the Babylonian kings Nebuchadrezzar and Nabonidus certainly collected antiquities in their day. In addition, in a room next to the unearthed temple school there was found not only a collection of antiquities but also a tablet describing 21st-century-BC inscriptions. Woolley interpreted the tablet as a museum label. This discovery seems to suggest that Ennigaldi-Nanna, Nabonidus’ daughter and a priestess who ran the school, had a small educational museum there.

Classical collecting

      The archaeological and historical records do not provide evidence that the museum as it is known today developed in such early times; nor does the word museum support this, despite its classical origin. Nevertheless, the collection of things that might have religious, magical, economic, aesthetic, or historical value or that simply might be curiosities was undertaken worldwide by groups as well as by individuals. In the Greek and Roman empires the votive offerings housed in temples, sometimes in specially built treasuries, are but one example: they included works of art and natural curiosities, as well as exotic items brought from far-flung parts of the empires, and they were normally open to the public, often upon payment of a small fee. Closer to the concept of a museum was the Greek pinakotheke (pinacotheca), such as that established in the 5th century BC on the Acropolis at Athens, which housed paintings honouring the gods. Nor was there a lack of public interest in art at Rome (ancient Rome). Indeed, art abounded in the public places of Rome, but there was no museum. The inaccessibility of the collection of more than one Roman emperor was the subject of public comment, and Agrippa, a deputy of Augustus, commented in the 1st century BC to the effect that paintings and statues should be available to the people.

Asia and Africa

      In Asia veneration of the past and of its personalities also led to the collection of objects. Collecting commenced at least as early as the Shang dynasty, which ruled China from approximately the mid-16th to the mid-11th century BC, and it was well developed by the Ch’in dynasty (Qin dynasty) (3rd century BC)—as attested by the tomb of the Ch’in emperor Shih huang-ti, near Sian (Xian), which was guarded by an army of terra-cotta warriors and horses. Together with other grave goods, these objects are preserved on-site in the Museum of Ch’in Figures. The palace of Shih huang-ti is recorded as having many rare and valuable objects.

      Successive Chinese emperors continued to promote the arts, manifest in fine works of painting, calligraphy, metalwork, jade, glass, and pottery. For example, the Han emperor Wu-ti (Wudi) (reigned 141/140–87/86 BC) established an academy that contained paintings and calligraphies from each of the Chinese provinces, and the last Han emperor, Hsien-ti (abdicated AD 220), established a gallery containing portraits of his ministers.

      In Japan the Tōdai Temple, housing a colossal seated bronze statue of the Great Buddha (Daibutsu), was built in the 8th century at Nara. The temple’s treasures still can be seen in the Shōsō-in repository there.

      At about the same time, Islāmic (Islamic arts) communities were making collections of relics at the tombs of early Muslim martyrs. The idea of waqf, formalized by Muḥammad himself, whereby property was given for the public good and for religious purposes, also resulted in the formation of collections. In tropical Africa the collection of objects also has a long history, as instanced in wayside shrines and certain religious ceremonies. Similar collections were made in many other parts of the world.

Medieval Europe

      In medieval (Middle Ages) Europe collections were mainly the prerogative of princely houses and the church. Indeed, there was often a close link between the two, as in the case of the fine treasures of the emperor Charlemagne, which were divided among a number of religious houses early in the 9th century. Such treasures had economic importance and were used to finance wars and other state expenses. Other collections took the form of alleged relics of Christendom, in which there was a considerable trade. At this time Europe’s maritime links with the rest of the world were largely through the northern Mediterranean ports of Lombardy and Tuscany, which, together with the ecclesiastical significance of Rome, brought considerable contact between the Italian peninsula and the Continent. There is evidence of the movement of antiquities, and of a developing trade in them, from the 12th century. Henry Of Blois, bishop of Winchester, is reported to have bought ancient statues during a visit to Rome in 1151 and to have dispatched them to England, a journey of about one month’s duration.

      The movement of antiquities was not confined to those of Italy. Exotic material from other areas entering Italian ports soon found its way into royal collections, while the Venetian involvement in the Fourth Crusade early in the 13th century resulted in the transfer of the famous bronze horses from Constantinople to the San Marco Basilica in Venice.

Renaissance Italy

      The influences that led to the European Renaissance were already at work in Italy, and as a result the first great collections began to form. A reawakening of interest in Italy’s classical heritage and the rise of new merchant and banking families at this northern Mediterranean gateway to the Continent produced impressive collections of antiquities, as well as considerable patronage of the arts. Outstanding among the collections was that formed by Cosimo de’ Medici (Medici, Cosimo de’) in Florence in the 15th century. The collection was developed by his descendants until it was bequeathed to the state in 1743, to be accessible “to the people of Tuscany and to all nations.” In order to display some of the Medici paintings, the upper floor of the Uffizi (Uffizi Gallery) Palace (designed to hold offices, or uffizi) was converted and opened to the public in 1582. Indeed, many of the palaces holding such collections were open to visitors and were listed in the tourist guides of the period.

Royal collections

      Elsewhere in Europe, royal collections were developed. King Matthias I of Hungary maintained his paintings at Buda and kept Roman antiquities at Szombathely Castle during the 15th century. Maximilian I of Austria acquired a collection for his castle in Vienna. Samples of both scientific material and art were featured in the “green vaults” of the Dresden palace of Augustus of Saxony, while the archduke Ferdinand (Ferdinand I) of Tirol housed a varied collection that included Benin ivories and Chinese paintings at Ambras Castle near Innsbruck. Other notable central European collections included those of the Holy Roman emperor Rudolf II at Prague and of Albert V, duke of Bavaria, who from 1563 to 1571 had buildings designed and erected to house his collections in Munich. The collection of the Polish king Sigismund II Augustus was housed at Wawel Castle, Kraków.

      Royal patronage was crucial to the encouragement of the arts at this time. Rudolf II sponsored astrologers and alchemists as well as artists. Francis I of France invited famed French and Italian craftsmen and artists to rebuild and embellish his château at Fontainebleau, and there he kept his outstanding collection of art. In England Henry VIII gave his attention to music and thus did not form a collection of significance. He was responsible, however, for the appointment in 1533 of a King’s Antiquary, whose task was to list and describe the antiquities of the country. (Similar appointments were made subsequently by the Habsburg monarchs and by King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden.) It was not until the 17th century that the first important royal collection was formed in England by Charles I, only to be much dispersed after his execution in 1649. Following the Restoration, Charles II also maintained a collection, but this was lost in a fire at Whitehall Palace in 1698. Early in the reign of Charles II, displays of arms and armour were being prepared at the Tower of London; clearly intended for the public benefit, these displays marked an important step in the development of a museum of the Royal Armouries.

Specialized personal collections

      The developing interest in human as well as natural history in the 16th century led to the creation of specialized collections. In Italy alone more than 250 natural history collections are recorded in that century, including the fine herbarium of Luca Ghini at Padua and the more eclectic collection of Ulisse Aldrovandi at Bologna. Other notable natural history collections of the time elsewhere in Europe were those of Conrad Gesner, Félix Platter, and, a little later, the John Tradescants, father and son. Among the specialized historical collections were those of portraits of great men assembled by Paolo Giovio at Como, the archaeological collection of the Grimani family of Venice, and the fine collection of illuminated manuscripts gathered by Sir Robert Cotton (Cotton, Sir Robert Bruce, 1st Baronet) in England. A number of the latter had been acquired from monasteries closed during the Reformation. In due time these various collections found their way into museums. So did the collections of Ferrante Imperato of Naples, Bernard Paludanus (Berant ten Broecke) of Amsterdam, and Ole Worm of Copenhagen.

      A collection such as these was normally known as a cabinet in 16th-century England and France, while in German-speaking Europe the equivalents Kammer or Kabinett were used. Greater precision was sometimes applied, the terms Kunstkammer and Rüstkammer, for example, referring respectively to a collection of art and a collection of historical objects or armour. Natural specimens were to be found in a Wunderkammer or Naturalienkabinett. In England the term gallery (arts, the), borrowed from Italian galleria, referred to a place where paintings and sculpture were exhibited. One Italian collection of natural specimens was called a museo naturale.

      In 1565 Samuel van Quicheberg published a work on the nature of collections, advocating that they represent a systematic classification of all materials in the universe. His view reflects a spirit of system and rational inquiry that had begun to emerge in Europe. Collections of natural and artificial objects were to play an important part in this movement. This can be seen in antiquarian studies, in the work of Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (Peiresc, Nicolas-Claude Fabri de) at Aix-en-Provence in France early in the 17th century, for example, or in the classification of the plant and animal kingdoms by Carolus Linnaeus (Linnaeus, Carolus) a century later. For the less-specialized collector, works such as Museographia, by Casper F. Neickel (pseudonym of Kaspar Friedrich Jenequel), published at Leipzig in 1727, were generally available to aid in classification, care of a collection, and the identification of potential sources from which collections might be developed.

Collections of learned societies

      Another product of the age was the learned society, many of which were established to promote corporate discussion, experimentation, and collecting. Some commenced as early as the 16th century. Better-known societies, however, date from later years; examples are the Royal Society in London (1660) and the Academy of Sciences (Sciences, Academy of) in Paris (1666). By the turn of the century, organizations covering other subject areas were being established, among them the Society of Antiquaries of London (1707), and learned societies were also appearing in provincial towns. This was the beginning of a movement that, through the collections formed and the promotion of their subjects, contributed much to the formation of museums in the modern meaning of the term. A history of modern museums begins in the next section.

Toward the modern museum

From private collection to public exhibition

      In the previous section on The precursors of museums (museums, history of), it is explained that the modern museum can trace some of its origins to private collections maintained by prominent individuals during the Renaissance. Many of these Renaissance collections were symbols of social prestige and served as an important element in the traditions of the nobility and the ruling families, but over time a developing spirit of inquiry brought to collecting a different meaning and purpose as well as a much wider group of practitioners. These new collectors, concerned with enjoyment and study and the advancement of knowledge, while equally concerned with the continuity of their collections, had no such guarantee of succession. If this guarantee could not be found in the family unit, then the route of succession had to be found elsewhere, and the corporate unit provided greater security. Furthermore, if knowledge were to have lasting significance, it had to be transmitted in the public domain. It is the transferral of collections from the private to the public domain that is the subject of this section.

Public collections

      The earliest recorded instance of a public body receiving a private collection occurs in the 16th century with the bequests of the brothers Domenico Cardinal Grimani and Antonio Grimani to the Venetian republic in 1523, to be supplemented in 1583 with a further bequest from the family. The motivation seems to have been both to promote scholarship and to grace the seat of government. At the time of the Reformation in Switzerland, material was transferred from ecclesiastical establishments to the authorities of Zürich and other municipalities, eventually forming important components of their museums. The city of Basel, concerned that the fine cabinet of Basilius Amerbach might be exported, purchased it in 1662 and nine years later arranged for its display in the university library. In 1694 the head abbot of Saint-Vincent-de-Besançon in France bequeathed his collection of paintings and medallions to the abbey to form a public collection. To some extent the emerging learned societies also were becoming repositories for such collections, in addition to developing their own. In the case of Ole Worm’s collection, as in other cases, lack of interest among the owner’s family after his death resulted in the transfer of the collection in 1655 to the royal cabinet in Copenhagen.

The first public museums

The Ashmolean

      The first corporate body to receive a private collection, erect a building to house it, and make it publicly available was the University of Oxford (Oxford, University of). The gift was from Elias Ashmole; containing much of the Tradescant collection, it was made on the condition that a place be built to receive it. The resulting building, which eventually became known as the Ashmolean Museum (Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology), opened in 1683. (The Ashmolean later moved to another new building nearby, and its original building is now occupied by the Museum of the History of Science.)

The British Museum

      The 18th century saw the flowering of the Enlightenment and the encyclopaedic spirit, as well as a growing taste for the exotic. These influences, encouraged by increasing world exploration, by trade centred on northwestern Europe, and by developing industrialization, are evident in the opening of two of Europe’s outstanding museums, the British Museum, in London, in 1759 and the Louvre, in Paris, in 1793. The British Museum was formed as the result of the government’s acceptance of responsibility to preserve and maintain three collections “not only for the inspection and entertainment of the learned and the curious, but for the general use and benefit of the public.” These were housed at Montagu House, in Bloomsbury, specially purchased for this purpose. The collections had been made by Sir Robert Cotton, Robert Harley, 1st earl of Oxford, and Sir Hans Sloane (Sloane, Sir Hans, Baronet). The Cotton and Harley collections were composed mainly of manuscripts. The Sloane collection, however, included his specimens of natural history from Jamaica and classical, ethnographic, numismatic, and art material, as well as the cabinet of William Courten, comprising some 100,000 items in all. Although public access to the British Museum was free of charge from the outset, for many years admission was by application for one of the limited number of tickets issued daily. Despite this, François de la Rochefoucauld, visiting from France in 1784, observed with approval that the museum was expressly “for the instruction and gratification of the public.”

      It was a matter of public concern in France that the royal collections were inaccessible to the populace, and eventually a selection of paintings was exhibited at the Luxembourg Palace in 1750 by Louis XV. Continuing pressure, including Diderot’s proposal of a national museum, led to arrangements for more of the royal collection to be displayed for the public in the Grande Galerie of the Louvre palace. However, when the Grande Galerie was opened to the public in 1793, it was by decree of the Revolutionary government rather than royal mandate, and it was called the Central Museum of the Arts. There were many difficulties, and the museum was not fully accessible until 1801. The collection at the Louvre grew rapidly, not least because the National Convention instructed Napoleon (Napoleon I) to appropriate works of art during his European campaigns; as a result many royal and noble collections were transported to Paris to be shown at what became known as the Musée Napoléon. The return to its owners of this looted material was required by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Nevertheless the Napoleonic episode awakened a new interest in art and provided the impetus that made a number of collections available to the public.

Museums in Rome

      The extensive collections of the Vatican (Vatican Museums and Galleries) also saw considerable reorganization during the 18th century. The Capitoline Museum (Capitoline Museums) was opened to the public in 1734, and the Palazzo dei Conservatori was converted to a picture gallery in 1749. The Pio-Clementino Museum, now part of the museum complex in Vatican City, opened in 1772 to house an extensive collection of antiquities. The Neoclassical architecture of this building set a standard that was emulated in a number of European countries for half a century.

The spread of the European model

      Before the end of the 18th century the phenomenon of the museum had spread to other parts of the world. In 1773 in the United States the Charleston Library Society of South Carolina announced its intention of forming a museum. Its purpose was to promote the better understanding of agriculture and herbal medicine in the area. Another early institution, the Peale Museum, was opened in 1786 in Philadelphia by the painter Charles Willson Peale. The collections rapidly outgrew the space available in his home and were displayed for a time at Independence Hall. After a number of vicissitudes the collections were finally dispersed in the middle of the 19th century, but not before the fine Chinese collection had formed a major exhibition in London.

      European colonial influence was responsible for the appearance of museums elsewhere. In Jakarta, Indon., the collection of the Batavia Society of Arts and Science was begun in 1778, eventually to become the Central Museum of Indonesian Culture and finally part of the National Museum. The origins of the Indian Museum in Calcutta were similar, based on the collections of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, which commenced in 1784. In South America a number of national museums originated in the early 19th century: the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences in Buenos Aires was founded in 1812; and Brazil’s National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, which owes its origin to a selection of paintings presented by John VI, exiled king of Portugal, was opened to the public in 1818. Among others were the National Museum, Bogotá, Colom. (1824), and the national museums of natural history in Santiago, Chile (1830), and Montevideo, Uruguay (1837). In Canada the zoological collection of the Pictou Academy in Nova Scotia (founded in 1816) was probably opened to the public by 1822. In South Africa a museum based on the zoological collection of Andrew (later Sir Andrew) Smith was founded in Cape Town in 1825. It is likely that an amateur naturalist and diplomat, Alexander Macleay, was responsible for the initiatives that led to the opening in 1829 of what was to become the Australian Museum in Sydney.

New public collections in Europe

      By this time a number of new collections were available to the public in Europe. Many of these resulted from royal and noble patronage, while others were created on the initiative of public authorities. The Prado Museum in Madrid dates from 1785, when Charles III commissioned the erection of a new building to serve as a museum of natural science. Construction was interrupted by the Napoleonic Wars, and when the building opened in 1819 it instead housed an art gallery to display part of the royal collection. In Prussia Frederick William III had a picture gallery built in Berlin to house some of his collection, and the gallery was opened to the public in 1830. This was the beginning of a remarkable complex that developed over the next century to house various portions of the national collection on a single site, now known as the Museuminsel. Another development in Germany was the erection of the Alte Pinakothek (1836) at Munich to display the painting collections of the dukes of Wittelsbach. This building was designed to exacting standards by Leo von Klenze, who was also responsible for the New Hermitage, one of the five buildings of the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg, where in 1852 Nicholas I made available to the public the major collection of the Russian tsars. The Royal Museums in Brussels originated by royal warrant in 1835 in the interests of historical study and the arts. In the Netherlands a national art gallery was opened at the Huis ten Bosch in 1800; it was later moved to Amsterdam and eventually became the Rijksmuseum (State Museum). The National Gallery in London, founded on the personal collection of the merchant and philanthropist John Julius Angerstein, opened initially at Angerstein’s house in 1824. In 1838 it moved to purpose-built premises on Trafalgar Square.

The establishment of museums

      By the early 19th century the granting of public access to formerly private collections had become more common, as described in the previous section From private collection to public exhibition (museums, history of). What followed for approximately the next 100 years was the founding, by regional and national authorities throughout the world, of museums expressly intended for the public good. The establishment of these museums is the subject of this section.

Museums and national identity

Central Europe

      Contributing to the establishment of museums in the early 19th century was a developing national consciousness, particularly among the peoples of central Europe. In 1807 the National Assembly of Hungary founded a national museum at Pest from collections given to the nation five years earlier by Count Ferenc Széchenyi. In Prague the natural history collections of the counts of Sternberg and other noble families were formed into a museum and opened in 1823 with the intention of promoting national identity. The Moravian Museum in Brno opened in 1817, and others followed at Zagreb and Ljubljana in 1821. At the centre of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in Vienna, the imperial collections acted as the national museum; regional museums were formed at Graz, Innsbruck, and Salzburg during the period 1811–34. In Nürnberg the Germanic National Museum (German National Museum) was directed by a proponent of a unified Germany, Hans von Aufsess, and by mid-century most of the German states had a museum. Farther north, in Poland, a national museum, although conceived in 1775, was not established until 1862, but Princess Izabella Czartoryska maintained a museum in the castle park at Puławy, near Warsaw, for eight years at the beginning of the 19th century, and two private collections were opened to the public at about the same time in Wilanów and Warsaw.

Museums of antiquities

      Increasing interest in antiquities led to the excavation of local archaeological sites and had an impact on museum development. In the years 1806–26, in Russian lands to the north of the Black Sea, four archaeological museums were opened, at Feodosiya, Kerch, Nikolayev, and Odessa (all now located in Ukraine). The Museum of Northern Antiquities was opened in Copenhagen in 1819 (it was there that its first director, Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, developed the three-part system of classifying prehistory into the Stone, Bronze, and Iron ages). This museum was merged with three others (of ethnography, antiquities, and numismatics) in 1892 to form the National Museum of Denmark. In France the Museum of National Antiquities opened at Saint-Germain-en-Laye late in the 18th century. It still acts as a national archaeological repository, as does the State Historical Museum in Stockholm, which houses material recovered as early as the 17th century. The national archaeological museum in Greece was started at Aeginia in 1829. Certain European countries, however—the United Kingdom and Germany, for example—do not have well-developed national collections of antiquities, and as a result regional museums in those countries are the richer.

Influence of industry and science

      In Britain, social reforms to overcome problems resulting from industrialization contributed to the development of municipal museums. The support of museums by local authorities was seen as a means of providing both instruction and entertainment to the increasingly urbanized population and became the subject of special legislation in 1845. Museums were also viewed as a vehicle for promoting industrial design and scientific and technical achievement. Such promotion was the motivation behind the precursor of the Victoria and Albert Museum (for decorative arts) and the Science Museum, both in South Kensington, London; the founding collections were acquired from the Great Exhibition of 1851—the first of the world’s fairs. International exhibitions have contributed significantly to the formation of a number of museums since then, including the Technical Museum of Industry and Trade in Vienna and the Palace of Discovery in Paris.

      The Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C., came into existence through the remarkable bequest of nearly one-half million dollars from James Smithson (Smithson, James), an Englishman. He wished to see established in the United States an institution “for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” In 1846 the U.S. Congress accepted his bequest and passed legislation establishing the Smithsonian as an institution charged with representing “all objects of art and curious research . . . natural history, plants, [and] geological and mineralogical specimens” belonging to the United States. The U.S. National Museum opened in 1858 as part of the Smithsonian’s scientific program and formed the first of its many museums, most of which stand along the Mall in Washington, D.C.

      The first of the historic house museums to be developed by a local society (a type characteristic of the United States) was Hasbrouck House, at Newburgh, N.Y., which had served as the final headquarters of George Washington in the Revolutionary War. The purchase of the house by the State of New York in 1850 established another precedent, whereby public authorities provide and maintain museum buildings while a body of trustees assumes responsibility for the collections and staff. Two other well-known museums, both in New York City, provide examples of this system: the American Museum of Natural History, founded in 1869, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, opened in 1870.

Other national and regional museums

      The middle of the 19th century saw the establishment of a number of other well-known museums. In Canada the collection of the National Museum commenced in 1843 in Montreal as part of the Geological Survey, while the precursor of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the Ontario Provincial Museum, was founded in 1855. In Australia the National Museum of Victoria was established at Melbourne in 1854; it was followed by the National Gallery of Victoria in 1861 and the Science Museum of Victoria in 1870. In Cairo the Egyptian Museum was established in 1858. These all followed the European model, and even in South America art collections tended to be predominately of European origin, to the neglect of indigenous works of art.

The first museum boom

      It was during the second half of the 19th century that museums began to proliferate in Europe; civic pride and the free education movement were among the causes of this development. About 100 opened in Britain in the 15 years before 1887, while 50 museums were established in Germany in the five years from 1876 to 1880. This was also a period of innovation. The Liverpool Museums in England, for example, began circulating specimens to schools for educational purposes; panoramas and habitat groups were used to facilitate interpretation. As first gas lighting and then electric lighting became available, museums extended their hours into the evenings to provide service to those unable to visit during the day.

      The increase in the number of museums was not, however, a peculiarity of Europe or North America. In South America particularly, new museums were founded both in the capital cities and in the provinces. Some of these were provided by universities, as in the case of the Geological Museum in Lima, Peru (1891), or the Geographical and Geological Museum at São Paulo, Brazil (1895). Others were created by provincial bodies: the regional museums at Córdoba (1887) and Gualeguaychu (1898), both in Argentina, and at Ouro Prêto, Brazil (1876); the Hualpen Museum, Chile (1882); or the Municipal Museum and Library at Guayaquil, Ecuador (1862). New specialist national museums also appeared in certain countries, while at Tigre, in Argentina, a maritime museum was founded in 1892. Early in the following century, memorial museums were created, including those dedicated to Bartolomé Mitre, a former president of Argentina, in Buenos Aires (1906) and to Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venez. (1911).

      By this time the Indian Museum, in Calcutta, and the Central Museum of Indonesian Culture, Jakarta, were well-established institutions in Asia, but a number of new museums were appearing as well. In Japan a museum to encourage industry and the development of natural resources was opened in 1872; this provided the basis for the present-day Tokyo National Museum and National Science Museum. Although some learned-society museums existed in China in the late 19th century, the first museum in the strict sense of the word was the Nan-t’ung Museum in Kiangsu province, founded in 1905, to be followed within a decade by the Museum of the History of China in Peking (Beijing) and the Northern Territory Museum in Tientsin. The collections established in the Grand Palace at Bangkok in 1874 became, about 60 years later, the National Museum of Thailand. The National Museum of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) opened to the public in 1877; the Sarawak Museum (now in Malaysia) opened in 1891; and the Peshāwar Museum, in Pakistan, opened in 1906.

      In central and southern Africa, museums were founded early in the 20th century. Zimbabwe’s national museums at Bulawayo and Harare (then known as Salisbury) were founded in 1901, the Uganda Museum originated in 1908 from collections assembled by the British District Commissioners, and the National Museum of Kenya in Nairobi was commenced by the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society in 1909. Mozambique’s first museum, the Dr. Alvaro de Castro Museum in Maputo, was founded in 1913. Meanwhile in North Africa the Egyptian Museum in Cairo had been relocated to its new building in 1902, and certain of the collections had been transferred to form two new institutions: the Museum of Islāĩĭḫ Čİt (1903) and the Coptic Museum (1908). In South Africa there was steady museum development in a number of the provinces, for example in Grahamstown (1837), Port Elizabeth (1856), Bloemfontein (1877), Durban (1887), Pretoria (1893), and Pietermaritzburg (1903).

The 20th century: museums and social change

      During the 20th century a number of social forces influenced the development of museums, especially of the national and regional museums whose proliferation through the 19th century is described in the previous section on The establishment of museums (museums, history of). In the article museum, history of (museums, history of), the new functions and roles brought to museums by a century of economic and political change are reviewed.

A period of reassessment

      The first half of the 20th century saw the profound social consequences of two world wars, the Russian Revolution of 1917, and periods of economic recession. For museums in Europe this was a period of major reassessment. Governments, professional associations, and other organizations reviewed the role of museums in a changing society and made a number of suggestions to improve their service to the public. In some countries new approaches were developed; in others, museums continued to reflect their diverse ancestry, and some decades were to pass before resources generally became available for the implementation of major changes.

      Change was notably radical in Russia, where collections and museums were brought under state control following the Russian Revolution of 1917. Lenin’s (Lenin, Vladimir Ilich) belief that culture was for the people and his efforts to preserve the country’s cultural heritage led to a trebling of the number of museums in 20 years. Not only was much of the country’s artistic, historic, and scientific heritage brought together in museums, but other types of museums emerged as well. Particular attention was given to amassing material related to Russia’s three revolutions. The earliest museum to result from such collections opened in 1919 in the Winter Palace at Petrograd (St. Petersburg); after 1924 the Central Museum of the Revolution in Moscow became the focal point for these collections. Another type was the memorial museum housing the personal effects of well-known figures. These were often used as a means of communicating political propaganda—the Central Lenin Museum in Moscow, opened in 1936, serving this purpose.

      In Germany a large number of regional museums were established after World War I to promote the history and important figures of the homeland, and they undoubtedly encouraged the nationalistic tendencies that led to the Nazi era.

      In the main, however, museums were not well organized to meet changing social conditions. In Britain a diversity of providers—government at both national and local levels, universities, societies, companies, and individuals—did not encourage cohesive policymaking at a national level. In central Europe associations attempted to develop and run individual museums, but they were unable to provide the necessary resources. Outside Europe the influence of social change was less marked, and there was little evidence of museums being organized as a national force. In the United States museum development was influenced by a desire to establish a coherent past—a movement that was widely encouraged through private patronage.

      In the industrialized world new types of museums appeared. Some nations made conscious attempts to preserve and display structures and customs of their more recent past. Examples, following Sweden’s pioneering reerection of significant buildings, include the open-air museums at Arnhem in The Netherlands (the Open Air Museum, opened in 1912) and at Cardiff, Wales (the Welsh Folk Museum, opened in 1947). The preservation and restoration of buildings or entire settlements in situ also began; particularly well known is Colonial Williamsburg, founded in Virginia in 1926. A new type of Science Museum also emerged in which static displays of scientific instruments and equipment were replaced with demonstrations of the applications of science. London’s Science Museum, founded in 1857, eventually was moved to specially built premises in 1919. Similarly the Deutsches Museum (German Museum) in Munich was transferred to new premises in 1925. Both established worldwide reputations for excellence in interpreting science and technology for the general public.

After World War II: new developments and new roles

Museums and the public

      The years immediately following World War II were a period of remarkable achievement for museums. This was reflected both in international and national policy and in the individual museums as they responded to a rapidly changing, better-educated society. Museums became an educational facility, a source of leisure activity, and a medium of communication. Their strength lay in the fact that they were repositories of the “real thing,” which—unlike the surrounding world of plastics, reproduced images, and a deteriorating natural and human environment—could inspire and invoke a sense of wonder, reality, stability, and even nostalgia.

      In Europe particularly there was a period of postwar reconstruction. Many art treasures had been removed to places of safety during the war, and they now had to be recovered and redisplayed; buildings also had to be refurbished. In some cases museums and their collections had been destroyed; in others collections had been looted (though in some cases restitution followed). Reconstruction provided opportunities for the realization of some of the ideas that had been advanced earlier in the century. A new approach emerged in which curators in the larger museums became members of a team comprising scientists as conservators, designers to assist in exhibition work, educators to develop facilities for both students and the public, information scientists to handle the scientific data inherent in collections, and even marketing managers to promote the museum and its work. There was a perceptible shift from serving the scholar, as befits an institution holding much of the primary evidence of the material world, to providing for a lay public as well. As a result of such innovations, museums found a new popularity and attracted an increasing number of visitors. Many of the visitors were tourists, and governments, particularly in certain European countries, soon acknowledged the museums’ contribution to the economy.

      Statistics from the United States give an indication of the increase in the number of museums and in museum visiting. Of 8,200 museums reported for 1988, 75 percent had been founded since 1950 and 40 percent since 1970. In the 1970s nearly 350 million visits per year were made to American museums; in 1988 the recorded figure was 566 million. Elsewhere the Russian state museums alone were known to receive about 140 million visits annually, while some of the oldest established museums in Europe—such as the British Museum, the Louvre, and the Hermitage—each regularly attracted more than 3 million visits a year. Some science and technology museums were even more popular.

      Despite such growth, there has remained a great disparity in museum provision. More than two-thirds of the world’s museums are still located in the industrialized countries, with a ratio of one museum to fewer than 50,000 inhabitants in Europe and the United States. In India or Nigeria, on the other hand, the ratio is approximately one museum for every 1.5 million inhabitants.

      Among other factors that have contributed to the development of museums since the mid-20th century is an increased awareness of the environment and the need to preserve it. Many sites of scientific significance have been preserved and interpreted, sometimes under the aegis of a national park service, and historic sites and buildings have been restored, the latter sometimes being used as museums. This has led to the development of historic and natural landscapes as museums, such as the renovation of Mystic Seaport in Connecticut as a maritime museum, the use of Ironbridge Gorge as a museum to interpret the cradle of the Industrial Revolution in England, and the restoration of the walled medieval cities at Suzdal and Vladimir in Russia. In Australia the heyday of the gold rush has been re-created in the form of the Sovereign Hill Historical Park, at the gold-mining town of Ballarat. Gorée (Gorée Island), a small island off the Senegal coast that served as a major entrepôt for the Atlantic slave trade, has been restored as a historic site with a number of supporting museums (see ).

      A related development has been the ecomuseum, such as the Ecomuseum of the Urban Community at Le Creusot–Montceau-les-Mines in France. Here a bold experiment involves the community as a whole, rather than specialists, in interpreting the human and natural environment, thereby generating a better understanding among its inhabitants of the reasons for cultural, social, and environmental change. Some of these projects have involved the acquisition and preservation of massive artifacts, but perhaps no undertaking has been as spectacular as the recovery from the seabed of ships such as the Vasa, the Sung-dynasty ship from Ch’üan-chou, the Mary Rose, or the Hanseatic cog from Bremerhaven; all these vessels are now preserved in museums in Sweden, China, England, and Germany, respectively.

Museums and public finance

      Contemporary museum development has been much influenced by changing policies in public sector finance. In many countries the contribution of public funds to museums has remained static or has fallen, so that museums’ governing bodies and directors have had to seek funding from alternative sources. This not only has affected the way museums are organized but also has accentuated the need for marketing and fund-raising expertise. Thus, with Russian state museums having acquired greater budgetary autonomy since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg has drawn on international expertise and financing to conduct major renewal work. In the United Kingdom the National Museum of Arms and Armour raised substantial funding from the private sector to build its new Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds; in addition it established a public company to operate the museum after it opened in 1996.

      Another reflection of the changed financial situation has been the introduction of admission charges. In 1984 none of the British national museums charged an entry fee, but 10 years later almost half were doing so. The number of American museums charging fees for admission increased over a similar period from 32 percent to 55 percent.

New museums and collections

 Despite constraints in public funding, governments have not been inactive. In 1982, for instance, Australia opened its National Gallery of Art in Canberra. Also in Australia the National Gallery of Victoria has been developed as part of Melbourne’s arts complex, while Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum (1988), provides a major attraction in that city. In Paris the Pompidou Centre (1977) combines a gallery of modern art and special exhibition galleries with other cultural activities, while the “Grand Louvre (Louvre Museum)” project has included the opening of the pyramid (1989) and the renovation of the Richelieu, Denon, and Sully wings—all considerably enlarging the capacity of the Louvre. The Museum of London, amalgamating the collections of two previous museums, was opened in 1976 to tell the story of the capital and its immediate environs. In 1964 the National Museum of Anthropology, just one of a fine complex of museums in Mexico City, opened a magnificent new building to display the country’s archaeological richness (see ). Additions to the Smithsonian’s museums in Washington, D.C., have included the National Air and Space Museum (1976; see photograph—>) and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (1974). A spectacular development from an architectural point of view is the Canadian Museum of Civilization at Hull, Quebec, which opened in 1989. Other new museum buildings have included the Vasa Museum in Stockholm (1990), the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switz. (1993), and the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. (1993).

      Many buildings of historical significance have been adapted to house museums. Among these is the Orsay Museum (see ), formerly a major railroad station in Paris, which was reopened in 1986 as a national museum of the 19th century, and the Tate Gallery of the North at Liverpool (1988), an art museum housed in a warehouse in the Albert Dock, by the River Mersey.

      Nor have developments been restricted to the industrialized countries. A desire to preserve their local history has led many Caribbean islands to establish small museums. Several African states also have given high priority to the provision of museums. Museums have been established in the principal cities of Nigeria by its National Museums and Monuments Commission to assist in developing cultural identity and promoting national unity. The Jos Museum, one of the earliest of these, also administers a museum of traditional buildings, while others have developed workshops where traditional crafts can be demonstrated. Crafts are also a feature of the National Museum in Niamey, Niger, and products of these workshops are exported to Europe and North America.

Additional Reading

Until recently the information relating to museums has been much dispersed, but detailed studies are now being published in book form. The following list identifies some of the literature available.Works concerning the history of museums and collecting include Edward P. Alexander, Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums (1979), and Museum Masters: Their Museums and Their Influence (1983), tracing the origins of 12 important 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century museums; Germain Bazin, The Museum Age, trans. from French (1967); Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (1994), on natural history collecting before 1700; Kenneth Hudson, Museums of Influence (1987), reviewing worldwide museum development over the past 200 years through the histories of 37 pioneer museums; Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor (eds.), The Origins of Museums: The Cabinets of Curiosities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Europe (1985); Susan Sheets-Pyenson, Cathedrals of Science: The Development of Colonial Natural History Museums During the Late Nineteenth Century (1988); and Niels von Holst, Creators, Collectors, and Connoisseurs: The Anatomy of Artistic Taste from Antiquity to the Present Day (1967; originally published in German, 1960). Ongoing research is published in Journal of the History of Collections (semiannual).Geoffrey D. Lewis

* * *