Collecting the World

I have visited two Museums this week whose existance is owed to quintessential Enlightenment collectors. Sir Hans Sloane was a physician, naturalist and collector, who bequeathed some 71000 objects to the nation upon his death in 1753. Just five years later, and enshrined in an Act of Parliament, this collection was opened as the British Museum, the worlds first free public museum. Five thousand people visited the Museum during its first year. It has operated continuously since it first opened in 1759, and now receives close to seven million visitors a year. (A fair few of them were there the day I visited.)

The monolithic exterior symbolises everything traditionally entailled in the idea of a museum - temple, palace,  ownership, power, authority, place of learning.

In the late 1990s, construction commenced on the the Great Court of the British Museum. A competition was held for the design of the space, the brief being 'revealing hidden spaces, revising old spaces, creating new spaces.' This extraordinary covered courtyard encapsulates the space previously occupied by the now-relocated British library. It encapsulates the extraordinary challenge of positioning and defending a Museum founded in the 18th century, in today's world. 

It is some thirty years since I last visited the British Museum- (did I just say that aloud?) 

On my first 21st century visit, many displays and descriptive texts appear to be entirely unchanged since my last visit. Words such as 'found' and 'discovered' are used to describe  the artifacts  and treasures  of a myriad of nations with uncomplicated and  seemingly unreconstructed freedom. The Museum positions itself as a free resource for the world to share, allowing an uparallelled opportunity for comparative research and education. The extraordinarily  complex questions of power, ownership and permission that are at the core of any contemporary museum are not applied retrospectively. This would indeed threaten the majority of the collection.These are the questions that any museum founded in another era wrestles with. I found the experience of visiting to be intense. The sheer scale of the place, and the weight of the histories held within. The beauty, and wonder of the objects the Museum contains are undeniable. Their place there, incredibly complex. Once more, drawing proved a tool to stop and look, and contemplate (or perhaps further complicate?)  some of the layers of history. 

 Cath Barcan, ipad drawing of Anahitha in a Museum case, 2018

Head from a bronze cult statue of Anahitha, a local goddess shown here  as Aphrodite 200100 BC Found at Satala in NE  Asia Minor  (Armenia Minor)- text label accompanying the work.

Within walking distance from my digs, I will be a regular visitor to this Museum. 

Room 2A in the British Museum is famously called " Collecting the World". A future post will relate my experience of the Sir John Soane Museum, and a little of its eponymous founder.