ART POLICY & MUSEUM STUDIES | 2022-2023
What does ‘studying the museum’ mean?
Museum Studies deals with the origin and development of the museum as an institute. The main
objective of this course is to provide tools that will help you critically analyse the societal, cultural,
and economic history of art institutions, as well as their relevance, positioning, and embedding
within our contemporary society. Guest speakers from the arts, dance, theatre, and music will speak
about substantive developments in their fields and changes in society, politics, and policy.
→ The history of museums is the history of how humans organize and classify the world as they
navigate through life using objects.
Questions we need to ask ourselves whilst researching museum visits
- When was the museum founded?
- What is the history of its collection?
- What is the history of the building?
- Are objects central or peripheral to the function of the museum?
- Are displays object oriented or concept oriented?
- In the absence of objects, what do you see?
- Text: how much text is the right amount of text?
- Is the museum architecture, scenography, room layout, or curation making it easier or
harder to see the work?
- In what ways can we see the “museum effect” at work?
- Object makers/exhibitors/viewers – in what ways are each of them playing a different game
in the field?
- Labels – what do they say? What do they not say? How do they mediate our understanding
of the object/maker/exhibitor?
1
, ART POLICY & MUSEUM STUDIES | 2022-2023
History of the “public” museum
The beginnings of the public museum are commonly traced to either the founding of the Ashmolean
Museum in 1683 or the opening of the Louvre Palace’s Grand Gallery in 1793. The Ashmolean is
singled out for being the earliest museum whose creation stipulated accessibility for public viewing.
The Louvre is noted because its opening to public access, achieved during the French revolution,
symbolized the French people’s claims to political sovereignty and the national patrimony.
Early example of the ‘publicness’ of museums: the Mouseion of Alexandria (c.1700)
Original use of the word museum, derived from the Greek mouseion, was to describe a temple of
the muses that existed in the 3rd c. BCE in Ancient Alexandria. However, collections have a much
longer history than do museums, beginning long before the Alexandrian Temple of the Muses was
founded.
The Mouseion of Alexandria is one of the most
renowned institutions of classical antiquity and the
one whose accomplishments resonated most strongly
with scholars of subsequent eras. Yet cultural memory
of the Mouseion tends to conflate two distinct aspects:
a community of resident scholars and the cult-centre
where their activities were housed (the Mouseion); and
a collection of texts, the acquisition, editing,
cataloguing and – in some instances – translation into
Greek of which formed a share of the scholars’ work
(the Library).
Other early collections
Another example of early collectors is no other than pharaoh Tutankhamen.
He collected a great many deal of daily objects (walking sticks, fine ceramics, a
Hebrew bible, etc) as well as rarities and riches. His extensive collection which
some historians consider a forerunner of the cabinet of curiosities. This
allowed archaeology some tantalizing glimpses into the reasons ancient
collections were made and evidence of a growing complexity in the processes
and rationales for the musealization of objects by collectors.
2
, ART POLICY & MUSEUM STUDIES | 2022-2023
The origin of the modern museum
Most accounts of museum history begin with either the etymological origins of “museum” in the
ancient Greek word for cult sites devoted to the muses (mouseion) or the legendary Museum of
Alexandria’s founding c.280 bce. However, the association of “museum” with the systematic
collection and study of evidence began somewhere in between – probably with Aristotle’s travels to
the island of Lesbos in the mid-340s bce. It was there that Aristotle, in the company of his student
Theophrastus, began collecting, studying, and classifying botanical specimens; and in so doing
formulated an empirical methodology requiring social and physical structures to bring into
contiguity learned inquiry and the evidence necessary to pursue it.
Early collections are mostly found in graves and burial sites where wealthy people were buried. The
precious stones, materials, objects, etc are mostly well kept within the tombs because of the
constant humidity and temperature control in the underground space(s). There is also no light of any
kind, and most importantly no human interference during the entire duration of the burial period.
The ways in which these burial sites were found is entirely depending on the customs of the culture.
For example, Egyptian burial sites are not fully kept ‘underground’, but rather in an enclosed space
with no possible way out. Sumerian, Celtic and Norwegian cultures however used burial hills to keep
their treasures well beneath the early surface, by which is was covered by multiple layers of dirt and
segmentation. The earliest evidence of symbolic expression comes from objects that were buried in
Neanderthal graves. Although we can only speculate as to why particular objects were placed in
ancient burials sites, their inclusion as grave goods is also evidence of their musealization.
!!! Graves ≠ treasuries !!!
One of the eldest examples of this “public” display is the
Propylaea on the Acropolis in Greece (now a ruin)
Treasuries were/are ‘graves for the public’. In other words,
they are meant to be visited. Some treasuries were
elaborate, others were simple. The idea behind this is that
the riches of the deceased are there to be enjoyed by both
the living and the dead.
BUT: how public were they really? → Treasuries varied in
size, and often had multiple levels of display. The visibility of
these different areas varied between different groups, of
both social standing and family ties. For example: the
outside and sometimes a central hall could be viewed by any
public, but the rooms that lay beyond (mostly where the
rare (and transportable) riches were kept) were only
available to family and/or clergy, as to not defile the resting
place of the deceased.
In ancient Greece public treasuries were supported by the
donation of private citizens. It was a place for celebration
and for civic pride, by the display of spoils of war, sculpture,
painting, objects made from precious metals, antique
weapons, votive offerings,... A first major shift in collecting
practice occurred when the Greek began to donate more to
3
, ART POLICY & MUSEUM STUDIES | 2022-2023
the treasuries, they put less in the graves. Temple donations prefigured the way that relics came to
fill the churches and monasteries across Europe during the Middle Ages and early Renaissance.
The oldest reference to the organization of objects in a pinakothekai (a temple picture gallery) is a
description of the propylaea, or gateway to the Athenian Acropolis, built in the fifth century BCE
(Bazin 1967). In many Greek temples of the classical era, paintings were grouped by schools in the
pinakothekai. Other objects in the treasuries were also arranged for public viewing and were
regularly inventoried by the temple guardians (the hieropoei ), who were tasked with the care of the
treasures and offerings.
Temple of the Muses
The modern concept of the museum as a place where learning and objects are associated is based
on an institution in ancient Alexandria called the Temple of the Muses. The Temple of the Muses
looked nothing like the modern museum, but the use of objects as sources of knowledge formed the
conceptual basis of museum development beginning in the Renaissance, when the name museum
first began to be applied to collections. This was no ordinary museum: there were no items on
‘display’. It was rather a library where scholars lived and worked at the temple. When Ptolemy II
(Philadelphus) took charge of the Musaeum around 283 BCE, he encouraged the formation of a
community of about thirty to fifty scholars (called a synodos ) who lived at the museum, were paid a
regular salary, were provided room and board, and were exempted from taxes in return for their
services. They studies ancient paper archives, translated old text,... Education came together with
the objects and knowledge acquired by studying and surrounding themselves with these artefacts.
The building was loosely based on similar institutions in Greece. The site is best described as a
combination of as school of scholars, a research institute, and a library. Historians have determined
that the institution likely included a shrine to the Muses (the actual mouseion) with statues of the
goddesses, a bust of Aristotle in a small cloister (or stodion), small cells in which the scholars lived,
an observatory, a zoo, and a botanical and meditation garden. The library itself was comprised of
several wings and porticos, with the books stored on shelves (theke) along covered walkways. The
library staff included both librarians and translators.
Unfortunately the building was burned down and left without a trace. The exact date of the
destruction of the Musaeum remains controversial, but it is thought that by the time Julius Caesar
captured Alexandria in 47 BCE, the complex was already in ruins.
4
