except for 144 drawers filled with pétrifications, while in the new building there are 180
drawers, filled with objects for which there was no place in the glass cases and cupboards.”87
At the same time, because of the move, more items than ever before from the art collection
and even the Foundation’s numismatic collection could be put on display. More specifically,
the two rooms in which the geological collections had previously been stored had now
become available.
The smaller of these two rooms was reserved for a display of the Foundation’s coins and
medals, which, incidentally, had only recently started to receive some serious attention. After
A.J. Enschede had been elected a member of Teylers Second Society he had not only donated
his own collection of Roman coins to the Foundation, but renewed the trustees’ interest in the
coins and medals housed at the museum.88 Pieter Teyler’s stipulation that the numismatic
collection should only ever be consulted in the presence of at least two trustees was evidently
no longer taken too seriously and the collection therefore became accessible to the general
public as from 1888, when the smaller of the former fossil rooms had been furbished with
specially built showcases. Two years earlier, the trustees had even taken on an extra curator to
look after their coins and medals, Th. M. Roest. Roest stayed on until 1898, cooperating
closely with Enschedé in compiling a catalogue of the entire collection.89
Even more importantly, the larger of the two rooms - the room under the library that had been
built as part of the first extension to the museum in 1824 and which had originally served to
display the Foundation’s first paintings - was now designated an exhibition area for prints and
drawings from the art collection. Although this was not revolutionary or unheard of, it was a
remarkable decision: the first exhibition devoted solely to prints and drawings I i.e. not to
paintings - in the Netherlands had only been held in 1860, at the gallery of Arti et Amicitiae.90
So the idea of creating a permanent or even temporary display of this type of art was
comparatively new.
Starting in early 1886, i.e. immediately after Winkler had removed the last items from it, the
room underneath the library underwent a costly renovation and refurbishment.91 The
casement windows were replaced by sliding ones, the floor was redone and a heating system
installed, the cupboards that were already present were repainted, a fancy, Louis XVI-style
table was set up at which prints and drawings could be studied, the ceiling was elaborately
painted, 52 frames made from oak wood were ordered and an exquisite rotational display
stand was set up to show prints or drawings in the middle of the room. A photograph made in
the early 1890s and Scholten’s own notes suggest that older works of art were placed in the
display stand, whereas newer prints and drawings were framed and hung on the walls.92 Some
7 “de uitkomst heeft geleerd dat er in het nieuwe museum minder ruimte is om fossielen ten toon te stellen dan
er in het oude museum was. Immers in het laatstgenoemde waren alle voorwerpen zichtbaar in de kasten en
vitrines, behalven 144 laden die met versteeningen waren gevuld, terwijl er in het nieuwe gebouw 180 laden zijn,
gevuld met voorwerpen die geen plaats konden vinden in de vitrines en kasten.” Ibid.
8 H. Enno van Gelder, “Het Penningkabinet,” in “Teyler" 1778-1978 (Haarlem; Antwerpen: Schuyt, 1978), 24.
89 Ibid.
90 Renske E. Jellema, “De inrichting van de aquarellenzaal in 1886,” Teylers Magazijn 29 (1990): 7.
91 On this see: Jellema, “De inrichting van de aquarellenzaal in 1886.”
92 Ibid., 8-10.
of these were apparently exchanged regularly. The grand total of this refurbishment came to
more than f3000,-. For comparison: this was the same as van der Ven’s annual salary. The
trustees must have been very satisfied with the end result, too, as Scholten received an extra
payment of flOOO,- in addition to his regular salary in April 1886.
So Scholten and the trustees had gone to great lengths to ensure visitors could study works of
art from the Foundation’s collection in aesthetically pleasing surroundings. But Winkler, too,
was clearly very conscious of the overall visual impact the display of the geological
collections would have on visitors. In his reports on the transferral, he spoke of “showpieces”
(prachtstukken), and had special glass cases made for some of the largest and most
spectacular minerals.93
This in itself already suggests that, when arranging the objects in the museum, Winkler saw
himself as not just catering to fellow specialists, but also to the general public. Which, it must
be emphasised, is not to say Winkler in any way neglected his fellow experts in palaeontology
and mineralogy - on the contrary, it was they who formed his primary “target audience”,
because, despite his talk of “showpieces” and construction of special cases and even
mountings for fossils, Winkler was not trying to create some sort of purely aesthetic
arrangement, or an educational illustration of geological theories of some sort aimed at
laypeople. Winkler obviously wanted to create a display that was also pleasing to the eye, but
first and foremost, there were two main criteria which determined where he placed an object
in the new museum. Firstly, an object’s size: large items were framed and hung on the wall or
placed in the larger display cabinets, whereas smaller items were stored in drawers. Secondly,
an object’s geological properties: specimens that had been unearthed in the same geographical
area were grouped together and within these groups all specimens of a particular type were
assembled side by side.
But at the same time Winkler cared deeply about the accessibility of the collections, in the
sense that he wanted them to be understandable to a lay audience. This became crystal clear in
1888, when he started to realise that the lay audience visiting the museum was bewildered by
- or rather was not even consulting - the copy of the comprehensive, scientific catalogue of
the entire collection which Winkler had compiled and put out on one of the showcases. As
Winkler himself recalled in his recollections at the end of the 1890s:
“After the complete catalogue had been available to visitors of the museum for a considerable
time, lying on the glass case in the first room, it became increasingly apparent that only the
educated took a look at it, whilst the general public did not pay the least bit of attention to it.
It was clear that, if the collections were to be appreciated by the uneducated as well, it was
necessary to provide them with a popular guidebook.” 4
93 “Jaarverslag 1884/1885”, 08.04.1885, Haarlem, ATS, vol. 210, fol. 2.
“Nadat de volledige catalogus reeds een geruimen tijd ter beschikking van de bezoekers van het museum, op
de vitrine in de voorzaal had gelegen, bleek het hoe langer hoe meer, dat slechts geleerden er een blik in wierpen,
maar dat het groote publiek er geen de minste aandacht aan schonk. Het was duidelijk dat, als de collecties ook
door niet geleerden zou worden gewaardeerd, het noodig was hen daartoe een populairen wegwijzer te
verschaffen.” T.C.Winkler: “Geschiedenis van de palaeontologische collective, 1858 tot 189 , door den
conservator”, c. 1896, Haarlem, ATS, vol. 211, fol. 20.