Section outline


  • Meeting Point:

    Morning Session 10AM: Grad Centre 103

    Afternoon Session 1PM: Outside entrance to the Treasures Gallery, Natural History Museum (closest Tube: South Kensington). The Treasures display (Cadogan Gallery) is at the top of the main staircase in the entrance hall. Go up the lefthand staircase to find one of two entrances to Treasures. We'll meet by benches at that entrance, next to the skeleton of a giant moa bird.

    Download the museum floor plan here (Treasures is in the Green Zone, designated by a dodo skeleton): 

    https://www.nhm.ac.uk/content/dam/nhmwww/visit/map/Museum-map.pdf

    • Essential Reading (ALL ATTACHED BELOW): 

      1. Sharon Macdonald, ‘Collecting Practices’, A Companion to Museum Studies (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006).
        • DEFINE: Curiosity cabinet (aka cabinet of curiosities)
        • DEFINE: Taxonomy
      2. Susan Pearce, ‘The Urge to Collect’, Interpreting Objects and Collections (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 157–9.
        • QUESTION: Pearce explores definitions of collecting. List three of those definitions.
      3. Jean Baudrillard, ‘The System of Collecting’, The Cultures of Collecting (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994).
        • DEFINE: the "anal stage" according to Sigmund Freud. How does Baudrillard apply Freud's idea to collecting?
        • QUESTION: What does Baudrillard mean when he says 'it is invariably oneself that one collects'?


      Further Reading: 

      • James Morgan, ‘Museum “Cocoon” Prepares to Open’, BBC News, 2 September 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7594295.stm#:~:text=The%20spectacular%20new%20wing%20of,encased%20within%20a%20glass%20atrium.
      • Pierre Cabanne, The Great Collectors (London and New York: Cassell, 1963). 
      • E. H. Gurian, ‘What is the Object of This Exercise? A Meandering Exploration of the Many Meanings of Objects in Museums’ in Reinventing the Museum, Gail Anderson (ed.) (Oxford: AltaMira, 2004), pp.269–283.
      • J. Owen, ‘Collecting Artifacts, Acquiring Empire; Exploring the relationship between Enlightenment and Darwinist Collecting and Late- Nineteenth-Century British Imperialism’, Journal of the History of Collections 18, no. 1 (2006): 9-25.
      • Susan Pearce, On Collecting: An Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition (London and New York: Routledge, 1995).
      • S. Weil, ‘Collecting Then, Collecting Today; What’s the Difference?’, in Making Museums Matter (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 2002), pp.141-150.


    • Macdonald - Collecting Practices File
      573.0 KB
    • Pearce - Urge to Collect File
      1.4 MB
    • Baudrillard - System of Collecting File
      1.9 MB