ABSTRACT
Collecting is a very basic activity, in that food-gathering is a characteristic of all animals, but, setting aside the activities of certain species of birds, the systematic collecting of objects which fulfil a cerebral, as against bodily, function is confined to a limited number of cultures and societies of man. In the evolution of this phenomenon certain, but not all, societies in Western Europe, together with those springing from them, have played a crucial role. However, the identifying characteristics of museum collections – objects assembled and maintained within a specific intellectual environment – separate them from accumulations of household objects, no matter how princely, originally brought together under different criteria, or collections of votive objects given in response to favours sought or received from a deity, church or temple treasuries etc., though by means of a subsequent conscious decision, such accumulations may be converted into museum collections. Art collections existed as such in sixth century B.C. Greece, and Pausanias has provided us with descriptions of the collections in Athens in the second century A.D., but according to Pliny the Roman emperors did not wish Rome to be seen to dominate the world through military force alone and they were thus determined to make Rome the metropolis of world civilization as well as its political capital. Subsequent rulers patronized the arts in order to provide a visible expression of their spiritual power, as against their temporal authority, but loot (including artistic) has always been a visible symbol of superiority, and, for example, the entry of the captured works of art into Paris for the Musée Napoleon was modelled on a Roman triumph. The intellectual environment which has provided the essential framework for the assembly of museum collections is Renaissance Humanism and although the first organized collections were formed in the Greek and Roman world, the fundamental Humanist concept that Man could be understood through his creations and Nature through the systematic study of Her manifestations, positively demanded, for the first time, the formation of collections for study purposes.
