What is a Museum?

Tuolumne City Memorial Museum

By Joseph Celentano, Historical Research Committee

 

 

     Museums are repositories for the collection and preservation of valuable objects.  They are very old cultural institutions, which can trace their history to our ancient past.  Museums always contain collections and collecting in its broadest sense seems to be a passion shared by all people throughout history.  The treasure houses of King Priam of Troy, the Museum of Alexandria, the botanical gardens and zoos of the Mayan king Montezuma and the ancient Chinese and Egyptian collections of religious objects are all examples of famous collections from the ancient world.

 

     The Medieval period saw the rise of small portable collections that were called curiosity cabinets.  They often contained rare and sometimes mythical items of natural history such as unicorn horns, or religious relics such as bones or teeth of martyred saints, and many had slivers of the "True Cross."  The nobility owned curiosity cabinets and scholars could petition to see the collections.

 

     The British Museum, established in 1683, was the world's first public museum.  However, it wasn't until the French Revolution that museums on the Continent were touched by a new democratic spirit and finally opened their doors to the public.

 

     From the beginning, America created public museums.  Some of the earliest were built during the 18th Century in Charleston, Philadelphia and Boston.  But the 19th Century was the golden era for American Museums.  In that century, some of America's most beloved museums were established including the Metropolitan and the Smithsonian Institution. 

 

 

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