Changing views

Recently I visited the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, Netherlands. If you are not from the Netherlands, probably you have never heard of it, but in the Netherlands the museum is widely known. Founded in 1784, the Teylers Museum is the oldest museum of the Netherlands that still exists and one of the oldest museums in Europe. The museum is certainly worth to write about, but here I don’t want to write about the museum as such but about what this museum and museums in general say about us, about humans. For why do we make museums?
As said, the Teylers Museum is one of the oldest European museums that still exist. A few older ones are The British Museum in London (1753 / open to the public in 1759), the Amerbach Cabinet in Basel, Switzerland (1661/1671) and several museums in Vatican City. The Capitoline Museums there began in 1471 and it is the oldest still existing museum in the world. This doesn’t mean that there were no museums before 1471. The oldest museum known dates from c. 530 BC and was founded by the Babylonian princess Ennigaldi. It contained a collection of archaeological artefacts from different times and places, neatly organized and labelled, just as in modern museums. Some of the artefacts were already a thousand years old, when the museum was founded. Also ancient people studied history! However, apparently the idea that one could collect artefacts and objects and order them and show them to the public – and that’s what a museum does – was lost in some way, since the present museums date from the end of the 15th century.
I think that this has everything to do with our view on the world. Museums of the type as founded by princess Ennigaldi were unknown at the time of the ancient Greek and Romans. Collections existed, indeed, but they were either libraries or collections of art and objects brought together for religious reasons or for decorating houses, gardens and public buildings. Maybe one of the institutes that was most like a modern museum was the Mouseion (Μουσεῖον) in Alexandria in Egypt, which gave the modern museum its name. It was a building dedicated to the muses (the Greek divinities of art) used for the study of the arts, but it was also a centre for learning in general. Such Mouseia (Museums) could be found in many Greek cities. The Mouseion of Alexandria had a library that is still famous. However, a mouseion was not a museum in the modern sense, for the function of modern museums is much wider. To quote the Wikipedia: “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.” Just the “education of the public” is one of the most important functions of modern museums, although the other purposes certainly must not be underestimated. However, with the fall of the Roman Empire in the 4th century ancient style museums disappeared.
Also the oldest modern museum, the Capitoline Museums, was originally dedicated to the arts, like a mouseion, for it began when Pope Sixtus IV gave a group of important ancient sculptures to the people of Rome. However, two important social developments made that people (not only rich nobles like kings, dukes and counts or the church, but also wealthy citizens) began to collect all kinds of objects – curiosities – and not only pieces of art or books. These two developments were the rise of modern science since the end of the Middle Ages and the discovery of the world (“discovery” from a European perspective, but it is in Europe that the first modern museums were founded). These two developments brought people into contact with new worlds and with it with new objects; and they began to study them. So, people who could afford it began to collect “curiosities” and to present them in cabinets, and to order them and to show them to family and friends and also gradually to the public; to everybody who wanted to see their curiosities. These developments led to the rise of the modern museum. In this way The British Museum in London began with a private collection, and also the Amerbach Cabinet in Basel, and many other museums as well. Also the Teylers Museum is a case in point. Pieter Teyler van der Hulst (1702-1778), a wealthy cloth merchant and banker in Haarlem, had stipulated in his will that his collection of curiosities and part of his fortune should be used to establish a foundation for the promotion of art and science. Therefore, the executors of his will established a centre for study and education and a museum with scientific instruments, fossils, minerals, drawings and the like. The idea was revolutionary and based on the ideas of the Enlightenment. People could discover the world in the new institute without coercion by church or state. The idea was viable. For although there were already a few museums in the Netherlands, only the Teylers Museum withstood the ages. Also in other countries museums were established according to the same concept, and many still exist. This concept could only be developed, and for a part redeveloped, when and because people had got a new and broader view on the world: New worlds, new views, new institutions!