From Private to Public: Natural Collections and Museums

Beretta, Marco, ed., 2005. 272pp., illus., clothbound and jacketed “ . . . focuses on one of the signal developments in natural history: the growth and transformation of collecting practices and museums from antiquity through the nineteenth century. The twelve essays in this volume offer a rich and diverse spectrum of examples culled from virtually every region in Europe. The result is a very useful snapshot of the role of collecting in natural history and allied fields such as anatomy and chemistry, not to mention emerging specialties such as geology.” —Early Science and Medicine “ . . . a particularly interesting volume in that it bridges a number of different approaches to the study of the history of natural history . . . raises many important issues pertaining to ownership, the use of collections (beyond the purposes of classification or social standing), the definition of 'collection,' and the private/public continuum of collections . . . the volume shows how much more we can exp