As a result, van Marum’s instrument collection played an integral part in forging the newly
established Teyler Foundation’s identity. Crucially, this meant the electrostatic generator was
never a candidate for disposal in later years, when it inevitably began to lose its value as a
research tool.
Alongside the identity-forming role of the instrument collection, its sheer value also prevented
it from being disposed of easily. One remarkable piece of information that came to light as a
result of the archival research which was undertaken as part of this study was the fact that as
early as 1804 and 1806, two previously unknown visitors to the museum - August Hermann
Niemeyer and Kaspar Heinrich Sierstorpff - had already exclaimed literally and separately
from each other that the scientific instruments on display at Teylers would someday serve
merely as testimony of past science, because they were too valuable either to be used for
research or to be disposed of.
And finally, as was already mentioned above, in the early 19th century the collection was also
able to mellow because van Marum found himself at odds with the trustees of the Teyler
Foundation and reduced his activities at Teylers Museum to a minimum for the better part of
almost four decades.
By the time van Marum’s successor van Breda started actively using the collection again, it
had become significant that Teylers Museum had been referred to as a museum from the very
beginning of its existence onward. (The very first time the new institution was referred to as a
“musaeum” in writing was on December 10th 1779, in the minutes of a meeting of Teylers
Second Society, i.e. the learned society for the arts and sciences sponsored by the Teyler
Foundation.) When museums generally started to acquire the image of public educational
institutions and began to be seen as places of “high culture”, they were at first associated
primarily with the fine arts. Gradually, however, attempts to showcase science and technology
at museums in the new sense of the word began to gather momentum. The Special Loan
Collection in South Kensington in 1876 was a milestone in this respect, and the proliferation
of museums of science and technology in the early 20th century can be seen as the culmination
of these efforts. Crucially, however, Teylers Museum not only housed a collection that was
increasingly deemed to be “museum-worthy” - as proven by the fact that items from the
instrument collection were sought after by the organisers of international fairs such as the
Special Loan Collection or the Paris Electrical Exhibition in 1881 - but this collection already
was in an institution that was referred to as a museum. More to the point, the name “Teylers
Museum” had begun to define the institution itself and particularly its public role.
This in turn had a profound impact on the way the instrument collection was perceived and
handled. As visitor numbers to Teylers Museum increased, the instruments it housed began to
be presented as cultural artefacts; their historical value began to be emphasised in an attempt
to make the collection understandable to a lay audience.
In addition to this, as the 19‘ century progressed an increasingly clear line of separation was
drawn between the publicly accessible museum premises and the adjacent laboratory - which
the instrument collection was actually maintained for and which the curators were far more
interested in. So on the one hand, the laboratory and the instrument collection housed in the
museum formed an organisational unit which was distinct from the museum’s other
collections; but on the other hand, as far as visitors were concerned, these other collections
and the scientific instrument collection would increasingly have been perceived as belonging
to one common unit which was distinct from the laboratory, namely the publicly accessible
Teylers Museum.
By the 1930s, when both science museums and museums of the history of science had
proliferated, Teylers Museum had become one museum of the history of science amongst
many. But just how unique and also inspiring its status had been just a few decades before,
transpires clearly from the fact that in 1905 it was the topic of the keynote speech at an early
and one can therefore say crucial .&# fundraising event for what was to become the prototype
modem science museum, the Deutsches Museum in Munich. The keynote speaker, the Dutch
Nobel Prize laureate Jacobus van ‘t Hoff, chose Teylers Museum as a vantage point from
which to discuss “the significance of historical collections for science and technology”.
4. Teylers Museum: Typically Dutch?
Finally, it is worth reflecting a little upon what the history of Teylers Museum reveals about
the overall history of Dutch collections and museums.
There are a number of reasons why Teylers Museum provides a particularly interesting case
study through which more can be leamt about the history of the Dutch museums in the 19th
century. Its age alone justifies including it in any account of their history. After all, the Oval
Room was the first building in the Netherlands that had been both purpose-built to house a
collection and which was referred to as a “museum” or “musaeum” from the very beginning
onwards. Furthermore it enjoyed a certain prominence until well into the 20th century,
bolstered by the Teyler Foundation’s financial muscle. The wide range of collections housed
at the Museum is noteworthy as well.
But above all, the way Teylers Museum developed over the course of the 19th century is of
particular interest because it was privately funded, i.e. maintained by the Teyler Foundation.
What’s more, as the episode surrounding the possible classification of the Foundation’s
almshouse as a “charity” in the early 1850s shows, the Foundation could be adamant that it
did not want to be associated with what would today be referred to as the “public sector”.
Before addressing the private ownership of Teylers Museum in more detail and taking a
closer look at the implications this had, it is helpful to recall two more general points that
transpired over the course of this study.
The first of these is that the concept of a museum as a purveyor of bourgeois values and
public mores as well as its potential to convey a sense of national pride did not go unnoticed
in the Netherlands, even around the middle of the 19th century. The Dutch government only