Museums

Introduction

This chapter considers the geographies of the museum – both those in and of the museum. It argues that museums have their own spatial arrangements that are rarely accidental and which actively shape how their contents are received by visitors. The chapter also contends that museums produce geographies of the world beyond their walls. What collections are put on show and how they are arranged and explained all shape visitors’ understandings about the geographical organisation of the peoples, natures and places that are exhibited. Before developing this argument, the chapter considers just how to define a museum in the first place.

So, what is a museum? Probably the most obvious answer to that question is to say that a museum is a depository of objects, whether of scientific, historical, artistic or cultural interest, that have been deemed worth preserving and exhibiting. This definition certainly seems to characterise the institutions and buildings that spread across Europe in the early modern period (acknowledging of course the continental European (and later American) use of the term to denote a collection of art, whereas in Britain art works were held instead in galleries and museums reserved for material culture). Whilst it would be uncontroversial to state that an institution without objects could not claim to be a museum, there do remain a host of other definitional attributes that are more open to debate and contest. For instance, what should a museum contain and by extension what should it exclude? How large should it be, how should its rooms be arranged and what should its buildings look like? In turn, what should a museum represent about the world, and how? At a more general level, what is a museum's purpose and functions? And who is it for? Lastly, who should get to make the very decisions about intended users, emphases, accessions and so on? In other words, who should manage or own such an institution?

Answers to these questions are markedly different depending on the period in which we ask them. In Renaissance Europe monasteries, aristocratic residences and holy places held collections of natural and cultural objects, from crocodile skins to jewellery made from unicorn tears (López 2005). However, these objects’ presence in a collection did not invest them with a symbolism that connected ‘the world of ideas and the [Page 65]world of nature’ (ibid.: 13). Rather, they were treasures – exclusive possessions that were symbols of luxury, wealth, status and power, ‘their only meaning derived from their relationship with their owners’ (ibid.). Objects were generally included according to their exoticism and by extension their rarity and value. The collection's purpose was to impress and to entertain, while its audience was restricted to the owner and a small circle of friends or adherents.

Collections such as these were often contained in cabinets or single rooms. However, by the nineteenth century the scale of collections had changed markedly and would routinely occupy an entire building, often placed at the centre of an urban area. Museums had become collections of objects that were organised to emphasis their scientific and instructional qualities, and not the wealth and status of the objects’ donor (Bennett 1995). Wonder was a much less desirable effect than education, while access for a wide diversity of social groups was emphasised over private delectation – museums were deemed an appropriate form of ‘rational recreation’ for children, women and working men even though they continued to be run by a small, enlightened elite.

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