(ix) The history of collecting

‘Collecting’ is a ubiquitous human activity, spanning all ages and all kinds of societies.  Studying it can reveal an extraordinary range of connections between the world of ‘things’ and the human world of ideas, values and meanings.  Historians have long had their own interest in the history of collecting, particularly in its institutions – the ‘cabinet of curiosities’ in the pre-modern period, the gallery and museum in the modern.  But we  are increasingly interested too in the psychology and anthropology of collecting, which have their own histories – why do we collect?  why do we collect what we collect?  what is revealed by the ways in which we accumulate, hoard, display and disperse our collections?  how do these things change across time and differ between cultures?   We will also consider the historical emergence of the disciplines of collecting – archaeology, anthropology, ‘natural history’, museology.  Our chronological focus will concentrate on the period between c.1650 and c.1950, with forays backwards and forwards, and on the ‘Western tradition’ in collecting, but in global perspective.

This course divides neatly into two halves.  In Lent term, four sessions will be devoted to texts and images illuminating different kinds of collecting.  In addition, students will be  invited to make presentations on representative collections under each heading.  It is intended that both general discussions and presentations will be illustrated with images of objects, collections and collectors drawn live from the Internet. In Easter term, four sessions will be devoted to the close inspection of a specimen collection in each of four different types of institution in Cambridge. Students will be able to devote their long essays to the study of particular collections (not confined to those studied in class) or to themes linking collections.