History of Museums

Museum is a place and an institution that collects, takes care and interprets objects, artifacts, and other material evidence of human history, as well as of nature, and makes them available for viewing by the general public. The word “museum” comes from the Ancient Greek “mouseion,” which meant “seat of Muses,” and it was used as a philosophical institution or a place for contemplation. In Rome, the Latin word “museum” was used for places for philosophical discussions. The first time the word “museum” was used to describe something similar to a modern museum was in the 15th century for the collection of Lorenzo de Medici in Florence. Until the 17th century, it was a name for curiosities such as Ole Worm's collection in Copenhagen and John Tradescant's collection in Lambeth. When John Tradescant's collection became the property of Elias Ashmole in 1677, it was moved to the University of Oxford to a building specially built for it. The building was opened to the public in 1683 and was named the Ashmolean Museum and is considered the first museum open to the public that held the name “museum”. That marks the moment when “museum” started being an institution and not just a collection of items, and it remained like that during the 19th and 20th centuries.

In time some other forms of museums began to appear as they began to accommodate different types of artifacts. There are now open-air museums that have preserved buildings as objects, ecomuseums, and even virtual museums that exist only in electronic form on the Internet. There are also archeology museums that hold archaeological artifacts; art museums (or art galleries) that display different forms of art; encyclopedic museums that give much different information about local and global history; history museums; maritime, military, and war museums; pop-up museums that are temporary and many more.

The earliest museums were private collections that were not open and were only accessible to a narrow circle of people. They displayed rare and curious natural objects and artifacts. Some worked as “wonder rooms” or “cabinets of curiosities.” The oldest known museum was Ennigaldi-Nanna's museum, collected by Princess Ennigaldi and dated from 530 BC. It was located in the state of Ur, and it held Mesopotamian antiquities. It was visited enough to have clay labels in three languages. Museums opened to the public in the Renaissance, but many important museums started opening in the 18th century.

The oldest public collection of art is Capitoline Museum, and it started in 1471 with a donation of sculptures by Pope Sixtus IV to the people of Rome. The oldest museum in the United Kingdom, opened in 1660, is the Royal Armories in the Tower of London. The City of Basel bought a private collection of Amerbach Cabinet in 1661 and opened it to the public in 1671. From it developed Kunstmuseum Basel. St. Petersburg’s first museum was opened in 1717 and named Kunstkamera. The private collection of Sir Hans Sloane was a basis for British Museum in London, founded in 1753 and opened to the public in 1759. Catherine the Great founded Hermitage Museum in 1764 and opened for public viewing in 1852.

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