The Emergence of the Modern Museum An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century Sources

The Emergence of the Modern Museum, a unique compendium of original sources, presents a detailed and dynamic account of the development of the museum and its practices in Britain during a crucial period of formation. From poignant recollections of visits to stately homes to charged debates about the acquisition of the Elgin Marbles or the establishment of an Indian Museum; from early catalogue entries describing the curiosities discovered by Captain Cook to later ones organizing human skulls according to Darwinian principles-this volume offers a representative sample of the diverse, contentious, and often moving ideas that have shaped the modern institution. With original selections, thematic organization, and insightful critical apparatus, this collection makes newly available a wide range of material, including proposals for reform laid out in parliamentary papers, essays by influential theorists and curators, and firsthand accounts of museum-going in the popular press.

1. - Private Collections
2. - Towards a Public Art Collection
3. - . The Public in the Museum
4. - Art and the National Gallery
5. - . Natural History and the British Museum
6. - Pedagogy: South Kensington and the Provinces
7. - Reform and Psychology of Museum Attendance
8. - From Wonders to Signs: Anthropology and Archeology
9. - Exhibiting India

Jonah Siegel Siegel is Professor of English at Rutgers University and President of the Northeast Victorian Studies Association. He is the author of Haunted Museum: Longing, Travel, and the Art-Romance Tradition and Desire & Excess: The Nineteenth-Century Culture of Art.