Introduction The Teyler Museum has a long, exciting and inspiring history.
The past does not acquire significance of its own account; it must be made recognisable
and tangible. This is certainly the case at Teyler. Visitors entering the building
from the Spaarne are immediately impressed by the monumental 19th-centu-
ry architecture of the hall. Under the lofty dome and around the first floor balustrade,
a profusion of sculpture, ornament and architectural elements introduces the
visitor to the building’s function: this is a house of science and art, of study and
reflection. The entrance leads to the various rooms and galleries where the scientific
collections are displayed. The exhibition of fossils and mineral formations harks
hack to the earliest years of the Museum, when palaeontology, mineralogy and geology
were still a single branch of science; the display illustrates the evolution of
flora and fauna through the ages. The next gallery is filled with objects related to
the physical sciences: optics, mechanics, sonar research and, in the centre, the
large electrostatic generator, built especially for the Museum in 1784. From there,
the visitor reaches the heart of the Museum, its oldest space: the Oval Room. Here,
the Founder’s vision for the Museum was realized. In 1756 the Haarlem cloth and
silk merchant Pieter Teyler van der Hulst stipulated in his will that his estate be
used to promote art and science. His executors, the Directors of the Teyler
Foundation, decided in 1779 to construct a building in which scientific knowledge
could be instilled and where art collections could be displayed. Fourteen allegorical
stucco panels on the coved ceiling refer to the branches of knowledge with
which the Museum is concerned. Remarkably, this is a museum based on a principle,
not built around a pre-existing collection. Along the first floor gallery, space
was reserved for a natural science library, arranged according to encyclopedic
principles. Display cases on the ground floor held scientific instruments and astronomic
models, not just for viewing, but for demonstration in the centre of the
room. Within a few years, the Oval Room was filled. With equal energy a collection
of prints and drawings was assembled, but there was no space to exhibit these. The
first extension of the building was therefore to provide a permanent location for
the art collection. Later, to the north of the Oval Room, a gallery for contemporary
paintings was built (1839), a fossil room, later to become the Numismatic Cabinet
(1826), and an area which became known as the Watercolour Gallery, reserved for
a rotating display of items from the collection of drawings.
During the 19th century the Teyler Museum was a growing complex. Various
extensions were realized in order to house the steadily growing collections. Each
extension and the style of presentation in each additional room reflect the period
in which it was built, so that the Museum narrates its own history. Eventually, the
Museum also acquired an auditorium for lectures, demonstrations and other educational
purposes.
Developments during the first 75 years of this century were of a more modest character.
The collections grew, but no innovations in collection management occurred.
As a private museum subject to financial constraints, ‘Teyler’ was unable to keep
up with the country’s other museums, almost all of them supported by one government
body or another, be it on the local or the national level. In the 1970s the
Teyler Museum began to take a more public-oriented approach and to examine its
future possibilities. Substantial support was now provided by the government,
which recognized the Museum’s national importance and thereby as well as its own
implicit financial responsibility. Nevertheless, the Teyler Museum remained private;
in practice, in 1983 the Teyler Museum became a ‘privatized’ museum avant la
lettre. The buildings and the collections remain the property of the Teyler
Foundation, while responsibility for the day-to-day management of the Museum