Cabinets of curiosities laid the foundation for modern museums
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
To the point now where I recently found a Retro computing museum to start taking some of my items for public display. This is happening in a city (Vienna, Austria) quite well known for its obscure "Wunderkammer" culture, so it wasn't really a hard sell - I just had to be sure nothing inoperational was on display, and that things worked. Easy!
45,000+ visitors later, my little obsession has turned into a profession, with business cards and everything!
So I can perfectly understand the cabinet-of-curiosities->museum process. Its real and still a thing in todays world.
We have a lot of systems - my particular contribution is the 8-bit wing. :)
"Gilles Messier is a former mechanical engineer and current scriptwriter for the YouTube channel Today I Found Out. When not writing, he produces videos on the history of technology for his own channel Our Own Devices, restores historic aircraft, and designs 1920s/1930s Art Deco posters. Calling All Stations is his first novel and the first of a planned 4-part series. Gilles lives in Winnipeg with his two cats."
I just finished the third book in the series called "The Cabinet of Curiosities", a riff on the same subject.
If you liked Chrichton thrillers and the movie Night at the Museum, you might enjoy this Pendergast series.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillermo_del_Toro%27s_Cabinet...
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/831070/The_Cabinets_of_Do...
And then of course the Enlightenment gallery at the British Museum, which is essentially a collection of collections showing how people used to display their various types of collections.
From the mid-16th century onward, collectors combined and categorized many kinds of art and natural objects in these cabinets in ways that reflected their worldviews, knowledge and wealth, prefiguring the development of modern museums.
Speaking of the Smithsonian:
The remains of a man from Western Australia's far north have been returned by a major US institution, more than a century after their theft and removal.
The repatriation is one of 14 from the Washington DC-based museum taking place in Aboriginal communities across the country, including Ngarrindjeri in South Australia and Eastern Maar in Victoria.
Around 1,700 First Nations ancestors have been returned from overseas collecting institutions and private collections since 1990, including 139 from America.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-07/first-nations-yawuru-...
TL;DR: "Stolen" isn't the right word. It's way too polite.
People today donate their bodies to science. Some people prefer for scavengers to recycle their bodies, even some westerners.
That’s to say, those were different times. People used to grind up mummies for different purposes as well. Grave robbing was a thing.
https://www.hmns.org/exhibits/morian-cabinet-of-curiosities/
Good show.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(British_TV_series...
I find it to be a huge pain.