ICOM International Council of Museums - International Institute for ...

ForewordMuseology and History – a Field of Knowledge is an extended scientific field. This maintopic of both the 29 th Meeting of ICOFOM and the 15 th Meeting of ICOFOM LAM (LatinAmerica) 2006 demands thoughts and ideas not only concerning the history but alsothe future of Museums. More than ever knowledge is considered in an interdisciplinaryand intercultural context.Already the places of the Meeting 2006 – Córdoba and Alta Gracia/Argentina –areparticularly suitable for these themes because this “province” is of specific importancein relation to historical events, archaeological and other historical sites – there isparticularly to focus on the Missiones Jesuiticas - as well as peoples of various ethnics.Peoples and the environment were, are and will be of great influence to the social andcultural development of Argentina and other Latin American countries.Combined with the idea and an overview about the History of Museums on aninternational level ways should be shown how museums became institutions as thosethey are well known nowadays. These facts also take influence to the museologicalproceedings. Saying this, I will particularly focus on the European and RussianCountries and the both of the Americas.Not only the Mouseion and the treasure houses in the ancient Greece but also theChambers for Relics in the Medieval Age may be considered as the first seriousapproaches to the Museum. Rather the Chambers of Art and Rarities/Curiosities in theAge of the Late Renaissance which were hosted at the Residences of the Dynastieswere a real basis for the further development of museums and their typology.Museology and History belong necessarily together. One cannot consider onMuseology without thinking about History. That refers to almost all fields of theMuseum: to Museum development in a similar way as to the various typologies ofmuseums, to Museology in the context of the achievements of personalities andpioneers who drafted, explained and carried out their ideas, and further more to worksof art and cultural objects of any kind which cannot be considered without the contextto history.If we refer to the Chambers of Arts and Rarities in the Epoch of the Late Renaissancewe are not only thinking about the prince-bishops who owned Chambers of Relics andto worldly Rulers in many European principalities as Ambras/Austria, Munich/Germany,Praha/Czech Republic, St. Petersburg/Russia etc. Rather we have also to consider onthe categorization of the different objects in the Age of Discoveries which werecollected in the Chambers of Art and Rarities/Curiosities.There were at that time according to the criteria four different categories of objects:- Naturalia. Preparations of animals of various kind, corals, monsters of seas,mineralia, stones and gems etc.- Artificialia. Those were the actually objects of the Chambers of Art. On the one handthey were produced as high skilled objects on behalf of worldly rulers, on the otherhand they were works of goldsmiths who grasped natural products and in this wayincreased the value.- Scientifica. They include on the one hand globes and many instruments which wereable to discover the earth and the sky (stars), on the other hand they were objects ofhuman curiosity as they encompass trumpets, games, make-up-cases and a kind ofgoogleboxes.- Exotica. Those exotic and strange objects came also into question. There weredifferent kinds of plants and animals which arrived to Europe due to the voyages ofdiscovery, as well as a kind of funny objects from foreign countries. Business houseswith branches in foreign countries took also Exotica to the Chambers of Art.The different contemporary publications give us an impression about these Chambersof Art and Rarities/Curiosities, as e.g. the “Museum Wormianum”9