The Birth of the Museum in the Nordic Countries. Kunstkammer, Museology and Museography

Abstract

The article positions early modern collecting in relation to wider cultures of knowledge production by using perspectives from the history of knowledge, memory studies, and recent studies of Kunstkammern. Some twenty-five years after the reawakened interest in early modern collections the author revisits the question if the museum in the Nordic countries was born in the mid-seventeenth century and asks if collections became museums and a museum culture was established with the appearance of, one, museography, theories and methods of classification and display, two, museology, a science or profession of museum organisation and management, and, three, designated, purpose-built architecture and furniture. The first part brings into play exemplary scholarly and monarchical collectors that contributed to the development of museography and museology. The second part addresses seventeenth-century museography by introducing two acts of knowledge production and retention in the Kunstkammern – asking questions and selecting and ordering. Finally, the author discusses the findings in relation to arguments for placing the museum’s birth in the decades around 1800.