In 2020, researchers in Jerusalem discovered a cache of shark teeth at an archaeological dig
that had been dated to about 2,800 years ago. At first it was thought that these teeth had
been cast aside at a market, but isotope analysis determined that the teeth were millions of years
older than that. The likely explanation is that the teeth have been brought to Jerusalem from the
Negev desert where such teeth are found, and had been sold either as valuable items, or as part of
a collection. Indeed, fossils have been found in a variety of prehistoric sites, including a necklace
with a 400 million year old trilobite fossil found at a paleolithic site in France. And while these
collections are by no stretch of the imagination museums, they do suggest as archaeologist Dr Peter
Leming says, “That discovery and collection, is as old as us.” And our hominid relations
and how this interest in the unique evolved into our modern system of museums, and enormous
historical natural and other collections, is history that deserves to be remembered.
The Paleontological Research Institution located in Ithaca, New York is home to one of the largest
fossil collections in North America, as well as the publisher of the Bulletins of American
Paleontology, the oldest paleontological journal in the western hemisphere. Founded in 1932, the
museum is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year, and inspired us to look at an interesting
forgotten history, that of the preservation of history itself. It's clear from archaeological
evidence that humans, and even our near ancestors have always collected fossils, and other natural
phenomena. Even if they had no idea what they were. The Hopewell culture in North America turned
fossilized shark teeth into jewelry, and an early human grave in England had hundreds of fossilized
urchins around them. Humans have also been interested in other kinds of artifacts as well.
One of the earliest known public museums was opened around 530 BC by a princess of
the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Her museum exhibited artifacts of earlier Mesopotamian civilizations.
For most of human history collections of natural phenomena, and cultural artifacts was generally
a private enterprise. The word museum is a Latin derivation of the Greek Mouseion,
which means “seat of the Muses.” And rather than denoting a place where artifacts, or specimens
were preserved, studied, and interpreted, and referred more to a philosophical institution.
Ptolemy formed a Great Museum at Alexandria which included the Great Library, but it was
solely a place of intellectual study and there were no exhibited collections. Collections before
the modern era were largely in the hands of the wealthy, and there was no standardization in how
to interpret or catalog the items. While some would make discoveries, and inferences based on
what they had collected, none of their collections was publicly available or widely accessible.
The term museum came back into use during the renaissance,
first to describe the large collection of art and other artifacts held by Lorenzo
de Medici and his descendants, although it's not collected in a single building.
Personal collections of curiosities including archaeological finds, fossils, paintings,
plant specimens and more became a symbol of wealth and power, and among the wealthy the
collections bloomed. They began to be gathered in a particular room called a “cabinet”, not a piece
of furniture but a private space usually for a man that served as a retreat, often for reading. This
led to the creation of Cabinets of Curiosities, also called “wunderkammer” or “wonder rooms.”
These rooms of course were meant to showcase the wealth and the status of the owner.
Historian R.J.W Evans explains that there were two main types of cabinets, the princely
cabinet serving a largely representational function, and the more modest collection
of the humanist scholar or virtuoso. It would serve more practical and scientific purposes.
They also served as entertainment for visitors. While they often contained brief descriptions,
their purpose was not generally to educate, they were only open to the wealthy and the
whims of the owner. Early meetings of the Royal Society were meetings more for entertainment
than enlightenment, and were open to Fellows to display their findings based on these collections.
Cabinets of curiosities date at least to 1335 when one is mentioned in Treviso Italy. The
earliest example we have of such a room comes from a 1599 engraving in a book by Ferrante Imperato
who illustrated the book with images of his huge collection displayed at a palace in Naples.
Imperato was among the first to correctly identify processes which formed fossils,
illustrating the connection between these early collections and scientific discovery. These rooms
were often filled to the brim with all manner of curiosities like fossils, interesting minerals,
taxidermied animals, interesting artifacts, books, including press specimens of plants,
paintings and more. In 1587, a collector claimed that there were three types of things
necessary to make a good cabinet: sculptures, curious items from home or abroad, and antlers,
horns, claws, feathers and other things belonging to strange or curious animals.
The collection of Danish physician Ole Worm was even referred to as a museum.
These collections were not necessarily scientific, and often included technological
wonders like clockworks, and entirely fictional things like taxidermy chimera, and cockatrices.
Worm’s collection included a Scythian lamb, a mythical plant thought to grow sheep like
fruit. Narwhal tusks displayed as unicorn horns were a common display. These collections were
especially valuable if they collected oddities and rarities like taxidermic calves, or strange gems.
By the 18th century these collections began to wane in popularity among the wealthiest as science
came to understand nature better. The importance of the cabinets however extended beyond that,
these collections became the basis of numerous museums such as the Amberbach cabinet, originally
the collection of two law professors in Basel Switzerland which opened to the public in 1671.
The Ashmolean museum, Britain's first public museum, opened in 1683.
The Ashmolean museum was based on the cabinet of curiosities donated to the University of Oxford by
Elias Ashmore. Many other museums were established with these collections, like the British Museum
founded in 1753, the Taylor's museum founded in 1778 in the Netherlands, and Kunstkamera,
the first museum established in Russia in 1714. Early museums also included the Capitoline Museum,
the oldest collection of art in the world that began in 1471 when Pope
Sixtus IV donated numerous ancient sculptures to the people of Rome.
The shift from private collections to largely public institutions holding these kinds of
artifacts and specimens was dramatic and to a large extent took place in the 19th century.
The end of the 18th century saw the growth of a middle class allowing a larger public to both
obtain education, and seek out the curious and scientific. Early museums, still often limited
visitors, were still considered either private collections or the collections of societies. Most
of these museums still had a vision of serving the experts rather than educating a lay public.
Even when the British museum opened to the public, visitors were required to apply in writing for
admission, and only small groups were allowed inside for fear the crowds would damage the
artifacts. In 1793, the Louvre was officially opened during the French Revolution, made up
largely of pieces from the royal collection. While the idea was to make the collection available to
the public, it too was limited. Under the 10-day weeks instituted during the revolution the public
only had access three days per decade, while six were for foreigners and artists.
Napoleon grew the collection through looting and conquest, but most important was the
concept that the Louvre was a symbol of national prestige, and a sign of popular sovereignty.
In 1846, the US would open their own national museum, the Smithsonian,
originally organized as the United States National Museum. By the middle 19th century
museums were often open to the public though they were not always especially scientific.
The Panopticon, Great Globe, the Coliseum and Royal Polytechnic Institution were all scientific
or art exhibitions in London but all were considered entertainment on par with a theater.
This also explains P.T. Barnum's Grand Scientific and Musical Theater as well as his
American Museum, neither of which were scientific institutions but largely entertainment ones, and
ones that encouraged viewers to speculate on the oddities. They profited off the growing interest
in legitimate science and inquiry, effectively helping to expand an audience interested in the
scientific, if not always accurately. Public interest is also exemplified in the selling of
curios on the Jurassic Coast in England where Mary Anning and others sold invertebrate fossils like
ammonite shells. Again the connection between collecting and legitimate science appears where
she contributed materially to early paleontology with fossils of ichthyosaurus and the plesiosaur.
Hadrosaurus foulkii was discovered in 1868 in New Jersey. Joseph Leidy
identified and named it, and it was mounted at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences.
Hadrosaurus was the first dinosaur ever mounted for the public and it was enormously popular. The
academy usually saw around 30,000 visitors. In the first year after it had Hadrosaurus mounted
the number more than doubled, and the year after that 100,000 people visited the academy,
eventually literally forcing the academy to build a new building.
The Age of Enlightenment also helped direct the future of museums with the 19th century
seeing the development of museums as a way to civilize the general public. The value of museums,
and exhibitions of museum material as a form of national pride were recognized as well,
which was a driving force behind World Fairs which is where Chinese, Japanese and other Eastern
nations were first introduced to the western concept of a museum. Professionalization in the
field was slow as museums were generally run by people who had expertise in particular fields such
as natural historian Louis Agassiz, who founded Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, or
English paleontologist Richard Owen. The museum's association was established in London in 1889,
and it published the Museum's Journal, the first publication that focused primarily on the
theory and organization of museums. Similar groups formed in Germany in 1905, and in America in 1919.
These associations developed ideas of how museums should be organized, what their goals should be,
and what should be displayed and why. Space for specimen collections has always been an issue,
museums quickly amassed enormous collections most of which could not possibly be displayed
simultaneously. The Huntarian Museum, a surgical museum based around surgeon anatomist John
Hunter's collection of medical material, hardly found a home in a newly built building in 1813
before the collection swelled thanks to the Royal College of Surgeons request for more specimens.
By 1831, the articles were heaped one upon another and additions were continually built throughout
the 19th century. Systems of how to guide visitors through the collection to tell particular stories,
and theories about lighting, and just how much information displayed along with
the exhibits began to be the focus of conversations surrounding museums.
Initially large portions, if not all the collection would be on display.
In addition to the front-facing public exhibitions however, museums also serve as
vital storage facilities for scientific material. Along with education most museums today are
available to experts and researchers who want to examine specimens and artifacts for their study.
And museums represent the best way to maintain and organize such material and conserve it for
the future. Until the 19th century much of the material in museums was privately owned,
and accessible only via connections to the owners, but public and national museums could serve as
institutions dedicated to national research. Workrooms for the safe examination of parts of
the collection developed alongside the development of modern exhibit curation. All of this developed
while managing the enormous collections, and continue to display parts of the collection for
the public. The late 19th century has been called the Museum Age, thanks to the rapid building and
development of museums as centers of research and the public's relationship with the scientific.
Even while much research is still done at universities in the United States,
access to collections of museums is vital. Collections are able to maintain information about
individual specimens which can then be studied across time as new methods are developed, and
more information can be found from specimens that have been studied for the last century or more.
Further issues and concepts have continued to alter how museums display and talk about their
collections, with recent changes at many museums focusing on unearthing forgotten narratives,
and the voices of minorities in history that have been traditionally overlooked.
Technology has also changed exhibits, and in many museums fewer objects are actually displayed.
In 2010, historian Stephen Khan argued that museums don't even need
physical objects anymore. That isn't to say that museums are becoming less
important, but that how they talk about and disseminate information continues to change.
Technology has also allowed people to virtually visit museums from their own homes.
What is clear is that museums remain a vital pillar of education, both for science
and for history, and for the preservation and continued study of artifacts,
and specimens that will continue to inform,
and drive our understanding of the past. Preserving history that deserves to be remembered.
The Paleontological Research Museum in Ithaca New York was established in 1932
by geology professor Gilbert Harris. Today it houses over seven million fossil specimens,
and has a number of facilities including the Museum of the Earth in the Cayuga
Nature Center which aims to educate visitors about the Earth and its history
while also providing a state-of-the-art center for ongoing research and collections.
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