As a means of displaying art, museums have been so thoroughly ingrained into modern culture and have become so ubiquitous in European and North American cultural contexts that imagining a world without them seems nearly impossible. However, the idea of categorizing artifacts produced by humans has not been inherent to global culture, in general. Considering the evolution of how human-made objects have been categorized over centuries, particularly, between 1500-1830 will help to realize that display spaces have been changed from mostly churches to the settings where they could be stored to help them retain their form and function. Due to the introduction of museums and display spaces in the 1500s-1830s, the opportunity to apply the historical lens to historical objects has emerged, helping to discover and appreciate the information about the specifics of the bygone eras, their cultures, past lifestyles of people living on the specified time slot, and other information.
The necessity to move away from the concept of abundance can be defined as the crucial part of the transformation that museums and similar display spaces witnessed in the 1500s-1830s. As a result, the necessity to arrange the items that are representative of correspondent eras specifically emerged (). The observed change aligns with the foundations of Ockham’s theory, which reinforced the nominal value of objects’ existence (Elsner & Cardinal, 1994). As a result, the urge for collecting not merely representations of corresponding eras, but the items that were explicitly out of the ordinary emerged, marking a new stage of categorizing human-made objects. The attempt at collecting “rare, exceptional, extraordinary, exotic, and monstrous things” could be seen as the effort to encapsulate the norms of the specified time period by isolating the objects that challenged the specified norms and, therefore, were seen as curious (Elsner & Cardinal, 1994, p. 180). Thus, the focus on oddities as the main source of entertainment for museum visitors could be seen as a crucial stage of expanding the categorization of human-made objects.
In turn, Shiner (2001) emphasizes the trend of projecting the present perceptions of specific cultural signifiers onto the relics of the past. The described change in categorizing human-made objects could be observed in the current approach toward creating thematic exhibitions that may provide a sewed representation of the purpose, function, and meaning of the objects in question. Specifically, the described trend could be regarded as the transformation of the concept of an artist toward an individualist interpretation. In fact, the tendency toward embracing a wider range of items that are representative of a specific time period and, therefore, allow painting a picture of the described time period, can be found in the transformation of the Uffizi gallery observed in the early 18th century (Paul, 2012). According to Paul (2021), the changes that Uffizi witnessed marked a new era in Italian history, namely, the industrial development and the emergence of artisan art (Paul, 2012). Therefore, the focus on using specific art pieces as a means of portraying a certain era and reflecting on its historical meaning could be seen in Europe between 1500-1830.
By introducing museums and the related options for displaying artifacts that demonstrated the culture and traditions of the past, people spurred the development of the categorization approach. Specifically, the ability to arrange objects according to their age and the epoch to which they belonged allowed establishing not only the chronological order in which specific events occurred, but also the factors that encouraged the specified change. Therefore, the changes in the perception and image of display spaces in Europe in the 1500s-1830s can be deemed as a change that was paramount to the development of museums and display areas, in general.
References
Elsner, J., & Cardinal, R. (Eds.). (1994). Cultures of collecting. Reaktion Books.
Paul, C. (Ed.). (2012). The first modern museums of art: The birth of an institution in 18th-and early-19th-century Europe. Getty Publications.
Shiner, L. (2001). The invention of art: A cultural history. University of Chicago Press.