ABSTRACT
Collecting is a form of conquest and collected artifacts are material signs of victory over their former owners and places of origin. What the modern museum particularly developed, in conjunction with the paradigm of conquest, was a model of colonization, of foreign dominion. There is an interesting parallel that is drawn between the sketchbook and the museum, both of which are understood explicitly as activities, as practices of collecting. John Elsner, in his contribution to the edited collection The Cultures of Collecting explicitly explores the example of Sir John Soane's museum in the essay 'A Collector's Model of Desire: The House and Museum of Sir John Soane'. Elsner attempts to describe the process by which museums actually happen or come in to being. Critical theorist Jean Baudrillard's essay 'The System of Collecting' illuminates many aspects of the studio of Francis Bacon's transformation into a museum piece.
