The History of Museums - Wallow In It
- Apr 10, 2018
- 2 min read
For those of you who know me personally, you’ll know that I am a history buff. I LOVE history. What’s more, you’ll also know I love museums. In this blog post, I will be combining both my love for history and my love for museums.
Some of the earliest forms museums in Europe can be dated to the medieval era. The collections within these “museums” primarily came from ecclesiastic objects and old nobility ware. Kings and queens held large collections of historical objects (like armor, ecclesiastic objects, …) past down from generation to generation (or empire to empire).Fast forward to the Renaissance in Italy (1400s-1500s), merchants accumulated wealth, status and thus were able to collect goods from all over the world at which others would marvel. Jumping another century forward (1600s +), we can see a shift from personal collections to collections from learned societies. Scientific and literary societies accumulated antiquated specimens, etc. at which scholars and the educated could marvel and learn from… (Learn more about early beginnings of museums around the world here: https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-museums-398827 )
I could get into this deeper and deeper into this topic, and you could be reading this blog post for hours. However, for the sake of brevity, let’s cut to the United States.
One of the oldest museums in the United States is located in Charleston, South Carolina (360 Meeting Street). This museum was founded in 1773 but only open to the general public in 1824 (so, does it really count?). The collection includes objects such as furniture, silver, textiles, ceramics, Egyptian artifacts, ornithology, skeletal reconstructions, rocks and minerals, and local plant and animal species. As you can see, original museum collections were incredibly extensive, yet also incredibly disconnected. (Learn more from this very trustworthy source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_Museum).
Skipping forward once again, we enter the recent past and present day—what I like to call: The Smithsonian Era. Today, the Smithsonian Institute is recognized as one of the most spectacular, scientifically accurate, forward thinking and accessible museum institutions in the world. Started in 1846 by John Smithson, he wished to contribute 1.5 million dollars “under the name of the Smithsonian Institution…[to] increase and diffuse[e] knowledge.” Today all of the Smithsonian Museums in the United States honor this wish. The public has access to all of the collection in the museum and online through the shared database. Visitors to D.C. can visit and learn for free in the Natural History Museum, African American History and Culture, Air and Space, American History, American Art, Renwick, Hirshhorn, African Art, Postal Museum, Portrait Gallery and Freer-Sackler (International Collection) museums. (Learn more here: https://www.si.edu/about/history)
This extremely brief post on the history of museums is only the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more behind the history of museums. As a museum educator in Washington, D.C. I chose to focus on only brief glimpses of museums through history (tracing it back through Europe—a choice that my be scrutinized by some). I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek at the history of museums and are inspired to learn more through the various sources provided and those you can research on your own and by visiting a local museum near you where you can wallow in the full glory of museums.
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