IV. Changing Defintion of Museums
1. From Scholarly Musaeum to Educational Museum
Having now illustrated how the sciences were becoming ever more specialised and how
Teylers Museum was increasingly being perceived as a public art museum and purveyor of
social status, attention needs to be drawn to another area that was changing fundamentally and
which is important to keep in mind when trying to understand the overall development of
Teylers Museum and the status of its scientific instrument collection around the time of van
der Willigen’s curatorship in particular: the connotations the term “museum” carried were
changing profoundly - throughout the Western hemisphere, and in all languages.
This is obviously a generalisation, and some caution is of course called for; to what extent this
word’s connotations changed where g|and when - was of course largely dependent on local
circumstance. A comprehensive analysis of the word’s etymological development across all
Western countries around the middle of the 19th century would perhaps shed some light on the
complexity and the idiosyncrasies of these developments, but such a survey obviously lies far
beyond the scope of this study of Teylers Museum’s history.
Crucially however, despite the immense complexity of these developments, there is no
denying the fact that a fundamental shift was taking place during this period - by the 1860s
the associations any usage of the term “museum” evoked would have been very different from
those just a few decades earlier or during, say, van Marum’s lifetime. Put differently, the
expectations that visitors would have had of any institution sporting the label “museum” were
changing. It is of pivotal importance to be aware of this when coming to terms with any
aspect of the history of Teylers Museum.
More specifically, the general consensus as to what role “museums” were to play within
society was increasingly divorced from the late Renaissance notion of a “musaeum”: rather
than being seen as centres of scholarly study, museums were increasingly equated with the
public display of the collections they housed.
What’s more - and perhaps even most importantly - the whole point of their displays began
to be an educational one: visitors to any museum were supposed to “take home” a certain
lesson or message. In the case of arts and crafts museums for instance, visitors were supposed
to be inspired by, take as an example and subsequently emulate what was deemed to be the
beautiful design - undertaken according to aesthetic principles - of the objects and tools on
display. Increasingly, the aim of a museum was therefore also to attract as many visitors as
possible.
All of the changes just described are most clearly discernible in Victorian Great Britain. This
may seem far-removed from events in Haarlem, but what was happening across the channel is
more relevant than one might expect and certainly provided the relief against which
developments at museums across the rest of the world need to be seen.
2. The Great Exhibition, “Albertopolis” and the South Kensington Museum
In fact many of the changes just summarised are not only discernible in Great Britain, but
their origins are to be found there too g more precisely in the flurry of activity unleashed by
Prince Albert. He successfully tried to use his position as Consort to the Queen (although he
was only officially granted that title long after Victoria acceded to the throne) to ensure that
British culture and technology not only remained competitive, but should also be seen to be in
the vanguard of progress.103 Interestingly, Albert had clear ideas as to how this was to come
about, many of which echo the cultural ideals with which he would have been infused during
the formative years of his youth and his studies at university in Germany.1 4 His serious
commitment therefore brought about a confluence of German and British traditions and
approaches to cultural matters. But it was the sheer scope of Albert’s efforts as Prince and the
scale of their success that ensured the effects were felt way beyond the borders of the British
Isles — i.e. in places like Haarlem, too.
Albert’s pièce de résistance was the “Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All
Nations”, held in London in 1851.105 The name essentially said it all: it was basically a huge
international industrial trade fair. But its impact can hardly be overestimated. It was held for
several months in the spectacular glass and iron building nicknamed the “Crystal Palace” in
Hyde Park and not only was it unprecedented in its scale, but it also attracted an unexpectedly
huge amount of visitors from all over the world. So many, in fact, that the Exhibition turned a
profit. Within no time the Exhibition had become an iconic symbol of modernity and
progress, an image which was only enhanced by the fact that this spectacular showcasing of
mankind’s most recent groundbreaking achievements provided a stark contrast with the
bloody revolts that had gripped Europe just a few years earlier, during the democratic
uprisings of 1848 with their nationalist undercurrent. The Exhibition soon eclipsed all
previous fairs of a similar nature, such as the national expositions in Paris.106
The Great Exhibition, as it was referred to, inevitably had a huge impact on the way
exhibitions were held and displays were designed throughout Europe and North America.
Three ways in which its impact manifested itself are particularly relevant.
Firstly, over the course of the following decades a myriad of exhibitions emulating the one in
London was held throughout the world. Many more World’s Fairs were held in different
countries over the course of the next decades — such as, for instance, the Exposition
universelle in Paris in 1867, the Weltausstellung in Vienna in 1873 or the Centennial in
103 See for instance: Julius Bryant, “‘Albertopolis’: The German Sources o f the Victoria and Albert Museum,” in
Art and Design fo r All: The Victoria and Albert Museum, ed. Julius Bryant (London: V&A Publishing, 2011),
26.
104 Ibid., 27-29.
105 On this see for instance: Jeffrey A. Auerbach, The Great Exhibition o f 1851: a Nation on Display (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).
106 For a very brief summary o f these fairs see: Bruno Giberti, Designing the Centennial: a History o f the 1876
International Exhibition in Philadelphia (Lexington: University Press o f Kentucky, 2002), 3.