19th-Century Museums Swapped Priceless Artifacts Like Trading Cards

Thst sounds a bit crazy, but then again those are still some of the great museums so maybe they were doing something right.

I particularly love the wording here. items Nichols defines as “a kind-of-thing” of which a museum already owned enough representative examples “to serve scientific and educational purposes.” Museums usually considered a “kind of thing” a specific item from a distinct region, species, or people—a Zuni vase for instance, or a Zande spear-head.

Oh a “Kind of Thing?” I’ll take two!