Creating a New Museum

The world’s oldest museum was built by a Babylonian princess 2,500 years ago.

Early museums began as private collections of wealthy individuals, families or institutions of art and rare or curious natural objects and artefacts. These were often displayed in so-called wonder rooms or cabinets of curiosities.The oldest such museum in evidence was Ennigaldi-Nanna’s museum, dating from c. 530 BC and devoted to Mesopotamian antiquities. In 1925, archaeologist Leonard Woolley discovered a curious collection of artefacts while excavating a Babylonian palace. They were from many different times and places, and yet they were neatly organized and even labelled. Woolley had discovered the world’s first museum.
By the 17th century, museums were being used in Europe to describe collections of curiosities. 

The first half of the 20th century saw the profound social consequences of the two World Wars, the Russian Revolution of 2and periods of recession. For museums in Europe this was a period of major reassessment. Governments, professional associations, and other organizations reviewed the role of museums in a changing society and made a number of suggestions to improve their service to the public. In some countries new approaches were developed, in others museums continued to reflect their diverse ancestry, and some decades were to pass before resources generally became available for the implementation of major changes. 

Such change was most notably radical in Russia, where collections and museums were brought under state control following the Russian Revolution of 1917. Vladimir Lenin’s belief that culture was for the people and his efforts to preserve the country’s cultural heritage led to a trebling of the number of museums in 20 years. Not only was much of the country’s artistic, historic, and scientific heritage brought together in museums, but other types of museums emerged as well. Particular attention was given to amassing material related to Russia’s three revolutions.

The years immediately following World War II were a period of remarkable achievement for museums. This was reflected both in international and national policy and in the individual museums as they responded to a rapidly changing, better-educated society. 

Museums became an educational facility, a source of leisure activity, and a medium of communication. Their strength lay in the fact that they were repositories of the “real thing,” which—unlike the surrounding world of plastics, reproduced images, and a deteriorating natural and human environment—could inspire and invoke a sense of wonder, reality, stability, and even nostalgia.