ABSTRACT
Museums have existed in some form since the time of Ancient Greece, where a museon was a place dedicated to contemplation and learning (Murray 1904). By the eighteenth century a museum had come to mean, according to Dr Samuel Johnson's Dictionary (1755), 'a Repository of learned curiosities'. Prompted by the bourgeoisie's new-found wealth and their desire for social prestige, collecting was seen as one way of climbing the social ladder. The opening up of new trade routes and the fashion for archaeological excavations made objects more easily obtainable (Bazin 1967). These collections were
private, being collected for their own sake, and not for public view. This was compounded by the social stratification of this period, where class, speech, and manners marked one class off from another, and would have precluded the lower classes and uneducated from mingling in the same rooms as the middle and upper classes and the educated (Hudson 1975). This exclusivity has left a legacy of social exclusion which still exists today.
