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Cultures of Collecting

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Title: Cultures of Collecting


1
Cultures of Collecting
2
Enlightenment values
  • Desire to re-examine and question accepted ideas
    and values
  • Empirical
  • Light of reason
  • exploration
  • Liberation from ignorance, superstition and
    progress towards the good life, knowledge,
    freedom, and improvement
  • Encyclopedia of knowledge
  • 1761 guide to the BM Learning was for many Ages
    in a manner buried in Oblivion a dark Ignorance
    spread itself over the face of the whole Earth
    Indeed numberless were the obstacles to the
    Resurrection of Learning a dark Ignorance, a
    blind Infatuation, an obstinate Prejudice yet so
    hard a matter is it to fetter the human Mind,
    that it rose superior to all Difficulties.
    Literature is once more recovered from its long
    swoon and now shines in its pristine Lustre nay,
    there are in these happy times many things
    generally known of which the ancients had not the
    least notion and many others by them only
    guessed at, or known in Theory, which we have
    reduced to a mathematical certainty. Nothing can
    conduce more to preserve the Learning which the
    latter age abounds in, than having Repositories
    in every nation to contain its Antiquities, such
    as is the Museum of Britain.

3
Early Museums
  • Cabinets of curiosities
  • Ashmolean museum Oxford, 1683, founded by Elias
    Ashmole building on collections of John
    Tradescant. One German visitor in 1710 expressed
    his displeasure at the presence of 'ordinary
    folk' in the Museum and surprise that the
    collection survived their attentions, '... since
    the people impetuously handle everything in the
    usual English fashion and ... even the women are
    allowed up here for sixpence they run here and
    there, grabbing at everything and taking no
    rebuff from the sub-custos'.
  • Robert Hookes collection for the Royal Society

4
Sir Hans Sloane
  • Physician Fellow and President of Royal Society
    knew Locke and Newton, and John Ray (naturalist)
    and Linnaeus
  • Travelled to Jamaica 1688 and in 1707 and 1725
    published a Natural History of the island
  • His own collection incorporated that of William
    Courten (museum in the Middle Temple) his own
    collection from Jamaica, West Indies and
    thousands of gifts from travellers. 200,000 items
  • Experimented with cocoa used by natives of
    Jamaica added milk, enjoyed as a drink that he
    thought aided digestion the recipe eventually
    passed to Cadburys.

5
Sloanes will 1749/51
  • Whereas from my youth I have been a great
    observer and admirer of the wonderful power,
    wisdom and contrivance of the Almighty God,
    appearing in the works of his creation, and have
    gathered together many things in my own travels
    or voyages, or had them from others, especially
    my ever honoured late friend William Courten Esq
    who spent the greatest part of his life and
    estate in collecting such things, in and from
    most parts of the earth, which he left me at his
    death And whereas I have made great additions
    of late years as well to my books, both printed
    as manuscript, and to my collections of natural
    and artificial curiosities, precious stones,
    books of dryed samples of plants, miniatures,
    drawings, prints, medals, and the like, with some
    paintings concerning them .. now desiring very
    much that these things tending many ways to the
    manifestation of the glory of God, the
    confutation of atheism and its consequences, the
    use and improvement of physic, and other arts and
    sciences, and benefit mankind, may remain
    together and not be separated where they may by
    the greatest confluence of people be of most use
    And I do hereby declare that it is my desire
    and intention, that my said museum or collection
    be preserved and kept and that the same may be
    from time to time, visited and seen by all
    persons desirous of seeing and viewing the same,
    as well towards satisfying the desire of the
    curious, as for the improvement, knowledge and
    information of all persons.

6
The Founding of the Museum
  • 1753 Act of Parliament
  • 1759 open. First national public museum.
  • Additional collections including that of the
    Duchess of Portland, Sir Joseph Banks, Charles
    Townley, George III.

7
Sir Joseph Banks
  • President of the Royal Society
  • Naturalist aboard the Cook expedition to the
    South Seas, on board the Endeavour. Amassed huge
    collection.
  • I may flatter myself that being the first man of
    scientific education who undertook a voyage of
    discovery and that voyage of discovery being the
    first which turned out satisfactorily in this
    enlightened age, I was in some measure the first
    who gave that turn to such voyages.
  • Banks and Cook saw potential of bread fruit on
    Tahiti HMS Bounty sent out to transport it to
    Caribbean as food for slaves
  • Promoted introduction of tea from China to India
    and merino sheep to Australia

8
What did it contain ?
  • No distinction between arts and sciences
    library, natural specimens, artefacts. Natural
    History Museum and British Library were from the
    original collection.
  • Library of George III and the Enlightenment
    Gallery is in the Kings Library, designed in
    1830s
  • Sculpture display of classical statuary insert
    Sir Rowland Winn in the Library, Nostell Priory
    impact of the grand tour. 1816 Elgin Marbles.

9
The Classification of Knowledge
  • John Ray important in development of systematic
    classification of natural world. Collector.
    Notion of dividing plants and animals into basic
    groups and a basic unit but used strings of
    Latin words
  • Swedish Carl von Linné (Linnaeus) 1735 Systema
    Naturae set out classifications of animals and
    minerals and sexual system for plants based on
    flowers and stamens. Two-word name, the first
    describing the genus, the second the species

10
Fossils
  • Cleric Thomas Burnet at end of C17th went on
    Grand Tour and saw Alps earth had to have been
    changed by natural processes over long periods of
    time but still sought to reconcile this to the
    Biblical account. Opened debate about origin of
    earth which Bible put at 4004 BC.
  • John Woodward, Prof of Physick at Gresham
    College, London, began collecting fossils Robert
    Hooke distinguished minerals from petrifactions
    and compared ammonites to living molluscs.
    Woodwards Essay Towards a Natural History of the
    Earth (1695) suggested that fossils were once
    living creatures and could be used to investigate
    the ancient history of the earth. Noahs Flood as
    the explanation.
  • Edward Llwyds Lithiphylacii Britannici
    Ichonographia (1699) mapped and classified
    fossils, without reference to the Bible.
  • Sloane collected minerals, including those with
    pharmaceutical uses.

11
Earthquakes, Geology and Paleontology
  • Geology first used 1735
  • Sir William Hamilton arrived in Naples in 1764
    and became fascinated by Vesuvius it erupted
    1765 and sent his observations to Royal Society
    1776 published.
  • James Hutton studied medicine modernising
    farmer argued that new rocks were formed by heat
    and fision, uplifted, process of movement
    infinitely older earth. 1795 published. No need
    for miracles.
  • William Smith, son of a blacksmith, observed
    stratified rock in coal mines surveyor of
    Somerset Canal and found fossils were in certain
    order depending on layer of rock rocks elsewhere
    could be dated via the fossils they contained.
    Published The Stratigraphical System of Organised
    Fossils (1817)

12
Dinosaurs
  • Bones often found
  • 1758 Mr Wooller found what looked like a
    crocodile in cliffs near Whitby compared it with
    living crocodiles and noted differences declared
    it to be antedeluvian
  • At end of C18th remarkable finds in cliff at Lyme
    Bay, Dorset Mary Anning discovered an
    ichthyosaur, plesiosaur and pterosaur
  • Still Flood as explanation for extinction

13
Discovery of British Antiquity
  • c.1660 term archaeology used study of the
    material remains of the past.
  • End of C17th discoveries of stone tools and
    ascribed by Dugdale and Lhwyd to ancient Britons.
    Apothecary John Conyers found hand-axe in 1690s
    with remains of an elephant in Grays Inn Lane
    acquired by Sloane.
  • 1707 Society of Antiquaries 1770 published
    proceedings as Archaeologia
  • Frenchman Mahudel described sequence of stone,
    bronze, iron ages. By end of C18th acceptance of
    a pre-Roman Britain.
  • Interest in Stonehenge John Aubrey, then
    William Stukeley (vicar) who published in 1740.
    Strong interest in Druids
  • Late C18th romanticism of ancient patriot
    fighting the Romans
  • Late C18th excavations eg Rev James Douglas in
    Kent describing Anglo-Saxon finds

14
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15
Classifying the ancient and artistic world
  • Similar processes at work for antiquities though
    for a long time there was very little ordering of
    displays ordered by type
  • 1719 Jonathan Richardsons The Connnoisseur An
    essay on the whole art of Criticism to be a
    connoisseur a man must be as free from all kinds
    of prejudice as possible and a clear way of
    reasoning, with proof. He divided science of
    looking into 8 parts composition, colouring,
    handling, drawing, invention, expression, grace,
    greatness, advantage, pleasure, and sublime.
    Visual taxonomy. Art was linked to society so
    art could be used to classify civilisations
    there is a history of the arts and sciences
    wherein it would be seen to what heights some of
    the species have risen in some ages and some
    countries, while at the same time on other parts
    of the globe, men are but one degree above common
    animals. So origins of art were in Persia and
    Egypt, then perfected by the Greeks but lost
    after the Romans.
  • Johann Winckelmann applied this systematically to
    ancient art in his History of 1764.

16
The East
  • 1798 Napoleon hoped to capture Egypt began
    exploration. 1799 discovery of the Rosetta Stone
    allowed deciphering of hieroglyphics (1801 handed
    over to GB but 1824 by a Frenchman Champollion).
  • 1813 published identification of Babylon by
    Claudius Rich, and East India Company official
    based at Bagdad to counter French designs on
    route to India he spoke Persian as well as many
    other languages 1811 excavations there 1821
    Ninevah
  • Stamford Raffles collector of Javanese objects
    his History of Java (1819)
  • Chinese porcelain

17
Greek art
  • Greek vases began to be collected. Sir William
    Hamilton collected 730.
  • Influence on Wedgwood who copied some of the
    designs. The collection of Etruscan vases in the
    British Museum will ever be resorted to for the
    finest models of elegant and simple forms
  • Society of Dilletante 1734 sponsored expedition
    to Greece in 1750-3 for artists to record
    monuments of Athens.

18
Scientific Instruments
  • Old instruments such as astrolabes
  • New ones such as orreries
  • 1809 the object of a medical or anatomical nature
    were hived off to the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow.
  • Public science

19
Religion
  • Increased awareness of the variety of religious
    practices
  • Idea of stages of religious worship superstition
    to rational enlightenment. Initial worship of
    fetishes or animals or the phallus Richard
    Payne Knight, 1786
  • Non-Biblical religious texts eg 1785 Sir Charles
    Wilkins published a translation of the Bhagavad
    Gita, the sanskrit text Ed Moor gave illustrated
    account of Indian deities in Hindu Pantheon
    (1810)
  • Idea of single common religious and cultural
    heritage which, through migration and separation,
    had changed.

20
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21
Ethnography
  • Exploration encouraged the study of peoples and
    their ways of life
  • Sloane collected 2000 objects
  • 1768 Cook set sail with Banks to Pacific
    encounter with Tahitians and collection of
    objects, including bark shield used by native
    Australians to defend themselves vs Cooks
    voyagers. 7 May 1774 entry re mourners dress.
  • 1778-9 expedition by Cook to Vancouver Island and
    Alaska
  • in 1780, after Capt Cooks death, BM opened a
    new South Seas room to display the collections
    the first systematic display of such objects. Sir
    Joseph Banks encouraged collecting trips to the
    Americas and funnelled the results to the BM.
  • 1818 voyage to Northwest passage recording of
    the Inuit lifestyle, including iglu.
  • Mexico after independence in 1819
  • Objects now displayed geographically

22
The Public
  • The visitor experience
  • Apply for a ticket
  • 10,000 visitors 1774 29,000 in 1810 98,000 in
    1822
  • 1784 Trustees learnt that the majority of
    visitors were mechanics and persons of the lower
    class
  • Tour lasted 2 hours
  • 1806 labelling systematically introduced
  • In 1783 it was visited by Barthelemi Faujas de
    Saint-Fond, an eminent French geologist and
    professor in the Museum of Natural History in
    Paris The British Museum contains many valuable
    collections in natural history, but nothing is in
    order, everything is out of its place and this
    assemblage appears rather as an immense magazine,
    in which things have been thrown at random,
    rather than a scientific collection, destined to
    instruct and honour a great nation.
  • The previous year the German Carl Philip Moritz
    had also visited The company who saw it when
    and as I did, was various and some of all sorts,
    and some, as I believe, of the lowest classeses
    of the people of both sexes for as it is the
    property of the Nation everyone has the same
    right to see it that another has.

23
Other contemporary sites
  • Sir Ashton Levers museum opened in 1775 to
    paying public in Leicester Square In the 1760s
    and 1770s he had acquired an enormous collection
    of birds, amongst other materials, which he
    displayed in the former royal palace, Leicester
    House, 1775. As a friend of Captain James Cook,
    Lever acquired exceptional Pacific ethnography,
    which was displayed alongside the natural history
    collections in three rooms he refused access to
    the common people
  • 1810 William Bullocks museum had 7000 natural
    and foreign curiosities
  • Royal Academy, first exhibition 1769 1780 at
    Somerset House
  • Society for the Encouragement of the Arts,
    Manufacture and Commerce, 1753
  • Royal Institution 1799, lecture room, for the
    application of Science to the common purposes of
    life
  • Covent Garden Theatre 1732 Drury Lane Theatre
    (riot in 1744 over proposed rise of ticket
    prices) Sadlers Wells 1765 Academy of Music
    1710
  • 1787 Thomas Lord created Marylebone Cricket Club
    (1814 to its present site).
  • 1750 Westminster bridge
  • Tyburn for public executions
  • Shopping at Oxford Street and Picadilly

24
Lever Museum
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