Journal of the History of Collections - Advance Access

Flora: The Erbario Miniato and Other Drawings

Egmond, F. — 2008-06-27

Portraits of Men and Ideas. Images of Science in Italy from the Renaissance to the Nineteenth Century

Mason, P. — 2008-06-23

Grollier de Serviere, the brothers Monconys: Curiosity and collecting in seventeenth-century Lyon

Turner, A. — 2008-04-29

Of collections in seventeenth-century Lyon, we can know most about the collection of machine models created by Grollier de Servière, and the general collection amassed by the traveller Balthazar de Monconys and his brother Gaspard. Comparison of the eighteenth-century published catalogue of Grollier's collection with accounts given of it by contemporary visitors reveals changes in the perception and presentation of the collection between 1650 and 1710, while comparison of the two collections reveals differences in the nature of ‘curiosity’ even within the seventeenth century.

The fate of a nineteenth-century ischiopagus from Denmark

Meyer, I., Richter, J. — 2008-04-23

A taxidermic preparation of newborn Danish conjoined twins from 1848 is analyzed to clarify how the preparation originally was made and the causes of its present state of preservation. The analyses include macroscopic documentation, X-ray analysis, scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectrometer, gas chromatography–mass spectrometry, identification of fibres and shrinkage temperature. The object is unique and has great presentation value: the context in which it might be exhibited is also discussed. It forms part of the collection begun by Professor Mathias Saxtorph (1740–1800), extended by his son, Professor Johan Saxtorph (1772–1840) and administered since that time by the Royal Maternity Hospital, Copenhagen.

De geschiedenis van een begrip

Toorians, L. — 2008-03-07

Collecting Asian art, defining gender roles: World War II, women curators and the politics of Asian art collections in the United States

Schlievert, C., Steuber, J. — 2008-03-03

This paper explores collecting and collections of Asian art during World War II to illustrate how women temporarily assumed leadership roles in American museums. It details abrupt changes experienced by museums following the departure of men in these traditionally male-dominated professions. For example, understood to be the ‘right man at the right place’ at the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Ruth Lindsay Hughes was appointed Acting Curator of the Oriental collection in 1942 after Curator Laurence Sickman was called to active service. The chronicled museum activities, showing how Hughes fashioned the Asian art and acquisitions combined with how she utilized the collection in the home front's wartime efforts, illustrate changes in the ways collections were curated and interpreted. Within this framework, the lens of gender brings into focus the wider context of how American collections of Asian art were incorporated into the complicated international war effort involving politics, dealers and museums.

Wonders of America: The curiosity cabinet as a site of representation and knowledge

Yaya, I. — 2008-02-09

This essay examines the representation of the New World in cabinets of curiosities throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Despite the contrasting nature of these private collections and the varying degrees of access that European states had to such exotic objects, the characterization and assessment of the Americana displays a consistent similarity. It is argued here that the meaning of these items within the microcosm of the cabinets can be comprehended by the intellectual enterprise that sustained the gathering of curiosities and by the representation of Amerindian societies in moral history works.

Parvenu or honnete homme: The collecting practices of Germain-Louis de Chauvelin

Baxter, D. A. — 2008-02-09

The collecting practices of Germain-Louis de Chauvelin demonstrate the complex negotiations by which the self was represented in early-eighteenth-century France. An ambitious man, Chauvelin rose to the positions of Keeper of the Seals (1727) and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1733), prior to his fall from political grace and exile (1737). Chauvelin's collection allows for an examination of the ways in which the cultivation of what might be termed a modern sensibility might, in Paris in the 1720–30s, earn for its practitioners the label of either honnête homme or parvenu, or, in the case of Chauvelin's own precarious career, both.

Portrait collection and display in the English civic body, c.1540-1640

Tittler, R. — 2008-01-21

In the burgeoning scholarly literature on the history of collecting and display of art in England, very little attention has been paid to painting collections made by institutions rather than individuals. A survey of the acquisition, collection and display of paintings, especially portraits, in post-Reformation England shows that civic bodies such as towns and boroughs, livery companies, schools and university colleges also indulged in such activities. However, they did so for quite different reasons than contemporary individual collectors seeking to replicate and possess elements of neoclassical culture: men and women whom we associate with the ‘Renaissance’ and with the goal of self-fashioning.