The Birth of the Museum in Latin America. Getty Research Institute Symposium, Getty Center, Los Ángeles, 11 de mayo, 2017
In this talk we will explore how nineteenth-century Mexicans envisioned, planned and assembled th... more In this talk we will explore how nineteenth-century Mexicans envisioned, planned and assembled the content of their first museums. At the heart of these efforts was a select group of affluent collectors and amateur scientists who used their remarkable cabinets to establish museums at a national and regional level, relying heavily on the French model. Their story is part of a larger human narrative to extend and accommodate systems of knowledge and classification to the material of past lives, an uneven process of discovery and interpretation that has been largely overlooked in Mexican historiography. The creation of these “useful establishments,” as museums and cabinets were sometimes called, helped consolidate a young nation by cementing the idea of a common heritage among a disparate and politically divided populous. But not everyone shared the view from Chapultepec, and separatist forces in Yucatan were involved in their own nation and museum building. Not only were museums conceived of as tools to create citizens but they were also extolled as shining beacons of modernity, and this promise of civilization was thought to be the solution to poverty and ignorance. Finally, I will illustrate that while ideas about what is “modern” have changed over time, the core concept continues to be part of contemporary Mexican discourse relative to this institution.
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Papers by Adam T Sellen
such an approach it is possible to recover stories, memories and social issues that have been materialized in ancient objects and thus contribute to an understanding
and interpretation of the past.
This paper analyzes an anonymous, unpublished manuscript that sheds light on a relatively unknown chapter in the history of 19 th-century medicine: Mexican scientists' search for a cheaper and more effective native substitute for imported cantharides, species of insects that have medicinal properties. This scientific enterprise is situated in its historical context, where local knowledge, contemporary medicine and imperial politics converged to fuel an international competition to procure American species for the pharmaceutical industry. Finally, the study reveals the identity of the author of that anonymous study, a humble country doctor whose writings inspired this research.
such an approach it is possible to recover stories, memories and social issues that have been materialized in ancient objects and thus contribute to an understanding
and interpretation of the past.
This paper analyzes an anonymous, unpublished manuscript that sheds light on a relatively unknown chapter in the history of 19 th-century medicine: Mexican scientists' search for a cheaper and more effective native substitute for imported cantharides, species of insects that have medicinal properties. This scientific enterprise is situated in its historical context, where local knowledge, contemporary medicine and imperial politics converged to fuel an international competition to procure American species for the pharmaceutical industry. Finally, the study reveals the identity of the author of that anonymous study, a humble country doctor whose writings inspired this research.
Drawing upon archival resources and international museum collections, the contributors analyze the ways shifting patterns of collecting and taste—including how pre-Hispanic objects changed from being viewed as anthropological and scientific curiosities to collectible artworks—have shaped modern academic disciplines as well as public, private, institutional, and nationalistic attitudes toward Mesoamerican art. As many nations across the world demand the return of their cultural patrimony and ancestral heritage, it is essential to examine the historical processes, events, and actors that initially removed so many objects from their countries of origin.