What Is A Museum? The Evolution and Purpose of Museums: Past, Present, and Future

In this episode of "Why They Put That in a Museum," Beth Bacon, an author and avid museum goer, joins Sarah Lees, a museum curator and researcher, to explore the origins, history, and purposes of museums. They discuss ancient Greek philosophical institutions, the Renaissance patronage of Lorenzo de Medici, and the concept of cabinets of curiosities in the 1600s. They talk about the founding of significant museums like the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford and the British Museum in London. The discussion transitions into the history of American museums, highlighting the Charleston Museum and the Peabody Essex Museum. They speculate about the future of museums with evolving roles and missions. They discuss Beth’s volunteer work at the Missouri History Museum and its exhibits that engage diverse audiences and promote shared community experiences.

00:00 Introduction to the Hosts and Podcast

01:19 Today's Topic: The Concept of Museums

02:35 Historical Origins of Museums

08:23 Early Museums in the United States

11:19 Modern Museums and Their Evolving Roles

17:28 Conclusion and Podcast Wrap-Up

Some museums mentioned:
Smart History Website: https://smarthistory.org/a-brief-history-of-the-art-museum/

Ashmolean Museum at Oxford: https://www.ashmolean.org/

British Museum in London: https://www.britishmuseum.org/

Charleston Museum: https://www.charlestonmuseum.org/

Peabody Essex Museum: https://www.pem.org/

Missouri History Museum: https://mohistory.org/museum

If you'd like to contact the hosts, visit: https://whydtheyputthatinamuseum.com/

© 2025 Why'd They Put That In A Museum podcast hosts Beth Bacon and Sarah Lees.

Transcript

What Is A Museum? The Evolution and Purpose of Museums: Past, Present, and Future

Beth Bacon: Hello. I am Beth Bacon. 

Sarah Lees: And I'm Sarah Lees, and this is “Why They Put That in a Museum?”, the podcast where we explore objects found in museums. 

Beth Bacon: And just to introduce ourselves, I am an avid museum goer and an author of books for young readers.

Sarah Lees: And I'm a museum curator and researcher.  What we're here to do is talk about art and objects and museums and what happens when you put them together and invite people in to look. 

Beth Bacon: You know, sometimes I walk through a gallery and I wonder, “Why is this object here?” So in this podcast, we're diving deep into the stories behind some of the artifacts that we find kind of interesting.

Sarah Lees: Right, so for each episode, we'll start with one thing in one specific place, and then sort of wander off from there, exploring the thing and its history and the cultural ideas that surround it to see where they take us. And eventually, usually coming back to the original thing and then seeing if it looks or feels different as a result of what we have discovered.

Beth Bacon: Sarah, what are we going to talk about today? 

Sarah Lees: Yes. Well, today the topic was kind of sparked by something that came up in our earlier conversations, um, because this time we're not actually talking about a specific piece of art. But instead we're going to talk about museums. What are they, how did they come about?  What their purpose is.

Beth Bacon: Last week, we kind of went into what is a museum and what is not a museum. And we talked about Napoleon going into other countries and taking art, and then putting it in a French museum.

Sarah Lees: Yeah, it is all true. 

Beth Bacon: So, you were saying that that wasn't the first museum? 

Sarah Lees: Correct. 

Beth Bacon: Or that wasn't the first sort of way of looting stuff to fill a museum? 

Sarah Lees: I suspect that other leaders and conquerors took stuff from the people that they conquered before Napoleon did. It wasn't his original idea. And I just wanted to make a correction and an acknowledgement, because my background is so heavily focused on French culture that I have a distinct bias, a Francophile bias. So I wanted to acknowledge that and say that the idea of a museum came up well before Napoleon, certainly. For those of us who study classical languages, the word museum comes from the Greek and means the seat of the muses. 

Beth Bacon: Ah, so museum comes from the muse and the muse are like spirits that inspire artists. Is that what muses are?

Sarah Lees: Exactly. And so the idea is a place where you get inspired. 

Beth Bacon: Okay. Well, I'm feeling inspired and let's start talking about museums. 

Sarah Lees: All right.  But so the idea of a museum, I mean, first of all, the word itself comes from a Greek origin, right? So ancient Greek. But it designated something more like a philosophical institution, more like an academy that we think of. And it was in like the 1400s in Italy, when you get a ruler like Lorenzo de Medici. Lorenzo de Medici was a great patron of artists, architects, writers, thinkers, including like Michelangelo. And so he had a collection of his own things that would not have been public at all, although he also commissioned things that were in public buildings like churches. So again…

Beth Bacon: de Medici was just somebody who made a lot of money in the Renaissance.

Sarah Lees: Correct. 

Beth Bacon: And some of the extra wealth he had, he used. sponsoring artists and collecting art is that what you're saying? 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, that's essentially right but again, that's not quite the concept of a museum, you know as a singular building that you can go into and contemplate and learn about objects from other cultures, say, or from your own culture. So that's the 1400s. IIn the 1600s, you get the concept of the cabinet of curiosities  that is a collection generally gathered by a single person. There was a well known Danish collector, apparently, who had a cabinet of curiosities. But what it contained could have been like bones,  animal specimens, rocks, shells, that kind of thing.  So again, not really art and also tended to be only for that collector's appreciation or maybe his small circle of friends. So finally,

Beth Bacon: Was it actually a cabinet or was it like a building?

Sarah Lees:  Cabinet meaning like a room?  I think you could fill a room with shelves and boxes of these kinds of objects.

Beth Bacon: And we have museums like that. Natural History Museums. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, absolutely. And science oriented museums. Yeah, so that is one origin of that kind of museum and collection. That was pretty widespread across Europe. Denmark, Germany, Austria, England,  France, Spain, Italy. I think all these places had this concept of the collector. And of course, some of this is coming out of the enlightenment, right, which encouraged sort of the study of the natural world. Another enlightenment  idea also gave rise to collections that focus more on what we would think of as art, and that might include archaeological, finds,  and that type of museum in the 1600s, probably the earliest one still remains as the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. And in 1753, so another 50, 75 years later, you get the British Museum in London. 

Beth Bacon: So the museum in Oxford really was for academic learning? They were collecting things, in order to have an academic research, sort of study. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, for that, I mean, so a slightly larger community, of scholars and academics, presumably the public could have been invited in given that the meshing between Oxford as an academic community and as a town. Presumably there was some mixing, town and gown, I would imagine. And then the British Museum  that I think was more intended to have a public interface.

Beth Bacon: And when was it, when was the British Museum founded? 

Sarah Lees: 1753, I believe. 

Beth Bacon: 1753, so that's before the American Revolution. 

Sarah Lees: Correct.

Beth Bacon: Yeah, interesting. 

Sarah Lees: The collection there was not focused on paintings, it was more objects, there, I think, may have been some paintings, but really the collection was I think the idea of like a collection of paintings I mostly work with paintings and drawings and print, you're absolutely right that, natural history museums are another form of museum, science museums are absolutely sprung from this kind of enlightenment idea of studying the natural world, picture galleries  that is a separate development, again, more out of, the Medici model of commissioning artists to make things for you. Which might include sculptures of yourself, portraits of yourself, or other powerful people. And then you would keep it in your own gallery cabinet of paintings and sculptures. And then gradually that as another form of museum, one among many, that sort of evolved into a place like the Louvre, so now we do get to France and Paris. And that was founded in 1793. Which is a significant year, because that is, After the outbreak of the French Revolution right in 1789, 1793 is before Napoleon, but it's when the Republic begins to form. 1793 is also the year of the Terror. still. Tons of political strife and conflict. But a building that was initially built, as we did talk about earlier before, for kings became a place that was meant to house art. Probably not open to general hoi polloi, but a broader concept of the public than just kings and royalty and nobility. Because nobility in 1793, of course, was on the run and starting to go into into exile out of France. Okay, that's probably enough of a start. 

Beth Bacon: Yeah, so I think that's super interesting. Do you happen to know about what the first museums in the United States were? 

Sarah Lees: Ooh, that is a good question. 

Beth Bacon: Yeah, I wonder if it's like from academic places.

Sarah Lees: Okay. So I did have to look this up and It turns out that the oldest museum in the U S is the Charleston museum in Charleston, South Carolina. It was founded in 1773. So again, before the American Revolution. And it was partly inspired by the British museum. Which again, I think was founded 20 years earlier. And it holds mostly natural history items. So biological and archeological artifacts like fossils. Plant and animal specimens and also decorative arts, like the family heirloom porcelain. Or not so decorative things like metal farm implements. 

Next up founded in 1799 we get the Peabody Essex museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Massachusetts. So this was initially focused on also natural history, objects and items collected by the founding organization. The East Indian Marine society. Based in Salem. Which was made up of 22 ship, captains and traders who traveled around the world, collecting things along the way. Although now the museum has expanded its mission much more widely. 

And I should add a footnote here. This idea of picking up things along the way, primarily in non-European cultures is of course an aspect of imperialism and colonialism. This idea of discovering objects and buying or trading for, or maybe just taking them and then shipping them back to put in the museum that was created for the purpose of displaying them as artifacts or curiosities—That's just part of the DNA of the museum as a concept and it's a practice, obviously that'd been going on for a hundred years up to this point. 

So back to the timeline. Next you get the New York historical society museum founded in 1802. And again, primarily focused on historical things. And then in 1805 we do get to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Which bills itself as America's first fine art museum and school. So it seems like museums to house history and natural history and cultural objects tend to come before fine art museums in most cases. 

Beth Bacon: It's just very interesting to think about what is a museum at all. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah. 

Beth Bacon: When you're asking the question, why did they put it in a museum? What is the purpose of a museum? And, that I think informs their decision about what they choose to collect inside of them. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, totally. And I will say one useful source when I was trying to gather some of this information that I found online, is from smart history. They have a lot of pages that answer questions like, you know, what is the history of the museum and then more contemporary debates about what museums are for if you're interested in digging more into that.

Beth Bacon: And so before we close this little sort of meta analysis of museums, um, what do you think the future of a museum is?

Sarah Lees: How do you, as someone who works in the world of museums, how are they changing? That is also an excellent question, and they definitely are. I think in the past,  it's hard to even put a time frame on it. Maybe ten years,  to a certain extent. There's been a lot of reflection within museums about precisely this, what their purpose is, what their mission is what kind of publics they should try to address and, uh, attract, um, and certainly, even maybe more intensely, since 2020 and everything that has happened since then, right?

I think the questions have only gotten more acute and significant. I think museums should be open to different definitions, frankly, and different purposes and can be changing. I mean, I think one of the things that has been newly open to question is this idea that an institution like a museum is just one single thing. Museum professionals have realized it needs to serve different purposes and different audiences, and that the most sustainable model can be flexible with regard to who a museum’s audiences are and how they want to engage them in different ways.

Beth Bacon: I think that that is really interesting and it trickles down to what they choose to collect and what they choose to display because if they are going for a different audience than usually what they see they're going to need to display different things. One of the things that I do here in St. Louis is I'm a volunteer at the Missouri History Museum. 

Sarah Lees: Right. 

Beth Bacon: And they just opened an exhibit called Gateway to Pride. St. Louis is the gateway city because of the Arch. 

Sarah Lees: Yep.  

Beth Bacon: It's a whole exhibit about the history about LGBTQ plus communities.

Sarah Lees: That's great. 

Beth Bacon: From the beginnings of European settlement, and actually maybe even before, even before, like back to, some of the native tribes that were here, um, what this part of our community is, and it's super, super fascinating exhibit. I find it really interesting because so much of the stuff is really modern, like from the 70s on. And I have been alive during those times. And it's so cool to see artifacts that are things that are in our day to day life or have been in mine over the decades. Just to sort of educate the audience, but also to attract that active and large group that may or may not think about going to a museum.  I was in there and there was a woman and she's like, “Oh, my family came to visit down from Chicago and we took them here because my grandson is trans and my granddaughter is a lesbian. And so she was like, the first thing we're going to do is come here. And it's like our family event.”  And it was just like, would they have run down to the museum if there was an exhibit about, you know, log cabins in the 1700s in Missouri? Probably not, you know.

Sarah Lees: Exactly, exactly. I do think about that. 

Beth Bacon: Yeah, and then there's a woman I know, I know her from my neighborhood and she's like, yeah, my diary  from the 70s when I was at Wash U, that's on display there.

Sarah Lees: Wow.

Beth Bacon:  She was like an activist. And yeah. And she doodled in her, her diary and made all these really cool drawings, but she was also going to protest and stuff. And so in that exhibit, you can see my neighbor's diary from the 70s as an artifact, so it's really cool to see things that are like, like why'd they put that in the museum? My neighbor's diary. First of all, it's really cool because the way she drew it and it was an actual  representation of like day to day stuff that was really happening when she was involved in protests and stuff. 

Sarah Lees: Yeah, no, it's actually not just to reframe things that you wouldn't necessarily have noticed at the time if you weren't involved, say, in protest, but also to revalue them as you say,  put it in a museum. This has a story to tell us. That is worthy of being highlighted  and talked about and engaged with.  

Beth Bacon: Yeah. And just this sort of assumption that like things that go in a history museum are, of importance that are like, would even make the newspaper or even more important.Those are important things to go in a history museum. Whereas they're just taking artifacts from regular citizens and saying here's an example of what happened. That's history too, you know? 

Sarah Lees: Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, we kind of make history every day, really. 

Beth Bacon: Yeah, yeah. 

Sarah Lees: If you think about it that way. Absolutely. 

Beth Bacon: Yeah, and starting to value regular people and their experiences. Why not talk about those and highlight those and present those so we can all share them? It doesn't just have to be like the important people, or whoever culture deems important. 

Sarah Lees: I know, exactly. Yeah. 

Beth Bacon: So it is interesting how museums are, really part of a community talking about itself. I think might be a role or  bringing people together from different parts of the community?  I can definitely see that as a role that a museum might want to work on, on promoting. And then saying like, okay, what kind of exhibits should we have in order to achieve that? Achieve that community discussion about itself. 

Sarah Lees: Mm hmm. And I think that  self reflection is incredibly valuable and is an ongoing, process at a lot of places. 

Beth Bacon: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, thanks for clearing up. the history of museums, the past, present, and future. 

Sarah Lees: A little sliver of it, yeah.

Beth Bacon: Yeah. 

Sarah Lees: Yep, thanks for joining us on this episode of Why'd They Put That in a Museum. If you enjoyed it, please don't forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a review.

Beth Bacon: Tell your friends about this podcast, Why'd They Put That in a Museum? We love getting feedback and you might inspire us to feature your question in a future episode. 

Sarah Lees: Yep, and if you ever find yourself in a gallery or museum and start If you're wondering about some of these questions, just send us a message. We might feature that very object. 

Beth Bacon: Thanks for being here and please join us for our next episode of why do they put that in a museum See you next time. 

Sarah Lees: See you then.