Viewed in these terms, one begins to understand why the trustees were not able to provide van
der Ven with any detailed information of what had been going on in the “observatory”: it
would have been a lot to ask for them to understand their curator’s research; and they would
not have been welcome to pass by the observatory while van der Willigen was working there,
for fear they might upset the sensitive instruments. Bearing this in mind one realises that their
lack of comprehension should not be seen as a sign of ignorance, but rather of the immense
freedom and complete independence van der Willigen had enjoyed as an employee of the
Teyler Foundation. The trustees were obviously not interfering with, or trying to exert control
over, his work.
What s more, the growing divide between amateurs and trained specialists would in fact have
been exacerbated at Teylers, because in the Netherlands van der Willigen was one of the most
ardent proponents of the idea that precise, quantitative measurement should serve as the basis
of all physics. Precision was something of a mantra for him and he had built his formidable
reputation amongst the Dutch physics community on the discipline with which he conducted
his experimental research. Soon after the “observatory” had been built he himself
grandiloquently stated: “Physics has definitively entered a new phase, [...] the phase of
exactitude and precision.”7 This was reflected in his choice of instruments to be acquired for
Teylers Museum. As van der Ven mentioned in his report, the newest instruments in the
collection indicated that ‘recently the intention has been to collect equipment in various areas
for carrying out quantitative investigations”.8
Crucially, however, it would of course not only have been the trustees who no longer
understood what kind of research was being performed on the premises of Teylers Museum,
but the visitors to the museum as well. It is highly symbolic that under van der Willigen’s
watch parts of the museum’s scientific instrument collection were being removed from the
original museum edifice to a separate building that was apparently off limits to anyone but
van der Willigen himself. Admittedly this can be seen as the logical culmination of a gradual
dissociation of laboratory premises from the museum building that had already begun with
van Marum’s construction of a separate laboratory in a building adjacent to the museum - but
even so, the construction of the “observatory” and the fact that the trustees and van der Ven
were unable to establish its exact purpose in even the most general of terms shows just how
large the division between Teylers Museum as a publicly accessible collection on the one
hand and the cutting edge research performed by the curators associated with the museum’s
scientific collections on the other hand had actually become since the museum had originally
been conceived and van Marum had performed experiments with the electrostatic generator in
the Oval Room.
La physique est entree définitivement dans une phase nouvelle, [ ...] la phase d ’exactitude et de la
precision. Volkert Simon Maarten van der Willigen, “Mémoire sur la détermination des indices de réfraction et
sur la dispersion des mélanges d ’acide sulfurique et d’eau,” vol. 1, Archives du Musée Teyler (Harlem: Les
Héritiers Loosjes, 1868), 74.
“men vooral in den laatsten tijd op menig gebied zieh heeft willen toerusten voor het doen van kwantitatieve
onderzoekingen ; H. van der Ven: “Verslag, betreffende den toestand van en de werkzaamheden van Teylers
Physisch Kabinet, voor het jaar 1879/80”, 02.04.1880, Harlem, ATS, vol. 191.
This is all the more striking if one takes into account that at the very same time van der Ven
was writing his report to the trustees in 1880, construction had already begun on what was to
be the largest extension to Teylers Museum - crucially, this extension included a huge new
entrance to the museum, which ensured passers-by could not miss this institution, and clearly
put out a signal that visitors were welcome.9 After having entered the museum through
Teyler’s former town house for more than a hundred years, visitors were now led through a
two-storey high, neo-classical, monumental entrance, which emulated the design of other
public cultural institutions such as theatres, opera houses, or of course other museums. This
overt embrace of the public did not fail to serve its purpose: visitor numbers to the museum
increased dramatically after 1885.
These seemingly opposed developments - i.e. on the one hand the way in which the area
where experimental research was performed was cordoned off and on the other hand the
embrace of the public and conscious attempt to increase the accessibility and the number of
visitors coming to Teylers Museum - form a crucial component in any attempt to understand
the history and hybrid character of this institution. They are particularly important to keep in
mind when assessing the scientific instrument collection’s overall status within the larger
organisational structure in which it was embedded. Put differently, these divergent factors are
important in understanding what role the instrument collection played within Teylers
Museum.
What's more, these developments as they occurred on a very local level in Haarlem mirrored
more general developments that were taking place on a far larger scale. On the one hand the
relocation of the newest instruments to the observatory, away from the Oval Room, mirrors
the demise of the cabinets of physics as they had been so popular at the end of the 18
century.11 By the second half of the 19th century they had essentially become obsolete, or at
best relics of the past, as laboratories run by trained physicists increasingly became the
reserve of physical research. On the other hand the construction of the new annex to Teylers
Museum mirrors the museum boom that swept the Western hemisphere during the second half
of the 19th century. Not only were international exhibitions held on a frequent basis, but
permanent museums established in practically every town, with the express purpose of
serving and educating the population at large. Interestingly, however, these museums were
mostly art museums, museums devoted to a community’s cultural heritage, arts and crafts
museums, or natural history museums - science museums, i.e. museums devoted to physical
or chemical research and technology, were a far later phenomenon, and only really emerged at
the beginning of the 20th century.
9 On the construction o f this new annex see: T. van Gestel and A.W. Reinink, “Het ‘nieuwe museum’ van Teyler
(1877-1885),” in "Teyler" ¡778-1978 (Haarlem; Antwerpen: Schuyt, 1978), 223-322.
19 Geert-Jan Janse, “Uit nieuwsgierigheid en ter onderricht,” in Teylers Museum ¡784-2009: een reis door de
tijd, ed. Marjan Scharloo (Haarlem: Teylers Museum, 2009), 24.
11 On the popularity and subsequent demise o f 18th century cabinets o f physics see: Huib J. Zuidervaart,
“Natuurkundige instrumentenkabinetten: De opkomst en ondergang van een cultureel fenomeen, in Druk
bekeken: collecties en hun publiek in de 19e eeuw, ed. Martin Weiss and Lieske Tibbe, vol. 3, De Negentiende
Eeuw 34 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2010), 209-231.