Collective Wisdom: Collecting in the Early Modern Academy

Lead Research Organisation: University of Lincoln
Department Name: School of History and Heritage

Abstract

The purpose of this grant is for an international network of scholars to explore how and why members of the Royal Society (RS), the Society of Antiquaries of London (SAL) and the Leopoldina (German Academy of Science, Halle) collected specimens of the natural world, art, and archaeology in the 17th and 18th centuries. These scholarly societies, founded before knowledge became subspecialised, had many common members. They explored natural philosophy (what we call science), antiquarianism (archaeology), and medicine in an interdisciplinary manner. In fact, the Leopoldina was begun not by scientists, but by doctors in 1652. Several of the fellows of the RS (founded 1660) and SAL (founded 1717), were also physicians and apothecaries. The overall shift from curiosity cabinets with objects playfully crossing the domains of art and nature, to their well-ordered Enlightenment museums is well known. What has to be explored fully is the process through which this transformation occurred, and the role of members of these academies in developing new techniques of classifying and organising objects to create the modern museum. How did academy fellows relate collections of art and nature in new ways, categorising knowledge and shaping global scientific enterprise? How was collection of ethnographic objects related to empire?

Results from three of the network's workshops held from 2018-2019 will be used to develop a digital application of these academies' private and public collections that is integrated and pan-European. The workshops will be attended by a network of early-career and established scholars from the academic and heritage sectors who will draw in the histories of science, art, antiquarianism and material culture, and engage closely with a range of key public collections at the respective organisations.

Workshop 1:Early modern collecting networks and practice: medicine and natural philosophy (At Leopoldina). As the RS, SAL and the Leopoldina consisted of a large number of doctors, we will analyse these early modern physicians and their approaches to collecting. Participants will also engage with the Leopoldina archives and the early museum housed in the August Francke Orphanage in Halle. In the 17th c., Francke created a global art and science museum as an experiential teaching tool for the children in his care; his learning-by-doing approach included teaching the children music that they publicly performed. The Francke Orphanage was a model for Coram's Foundling Hospital founded in 18th-century London, which via public concerts of music of Handel (who was from Halle) also raised money for the orphans. The network will consider the wider utility of collecting, antiquarianism and society, taking as its lead the involvement of medical and antiquarian collectors and their museums in early modern charity. To engage the public with our work, we will sponsor benefit music concerts in Halle and London for the Coram and Francke Museum and Foundation.

Workshop 2:Antiquarian Science in the Scholarly Society (At SAL). Beyond the disciplines of medicine and natural history, physical scientists like mathematician and astronomer Martin Folkes (1690-1754) also were connoisseurs and antiquarians. Folkes was Sir Isaac Newton's protege, President of both the RS and SAL, and he tried to unite the two societies as they had many common members and interests. We will discuss the interplay and disciplinary boundaries between antiquarianism and natural philosophy and engage with the early modern museum collection at the SAL. This workshop would be a joint event with SAL as one of its Research Seminars.

Workshop 3:Digital scientific collections: future afterlives (At RS). To plan our digital application, we will analyse current and developing digital approaches in surveying collections over time with the assistance of the RS-Google initiative, including integration of extant databases, data-mining and digital modelling of museum objects

Planned Impact

The research of the network will benefit academics, the third sector (charities), the public sector (archives), local communities in London & Halle, & the wider public.

1. Accompanying the Royal Society (RS) workshop will be a free public exhibit concerning Georgian Science, Collecting & Antiquarianism featuring Emanuel Mendes da Costa, 18th-c. Sephardi naturalist & collector. Da Costa was a leading collector & antiquary in the crux of a transition in natural history, moving from cabinets of curiosities to the Enlightenment passion for order & taxonomy that flowered in the work of Linnaeus. As a fellow of the RS, the SAL, & the Leopoldina, Da Costa gathered & exchanged natural history specimens for the RS's repository museum, using his father's networks as a coral merchant & his uncle's contacts as President of the East India Company. Just as mobility & global collaboration are part of modern science & a key strategic aim of the RS, so the public will learn this was also the case in the 18th c. The exhibit will show how Sephardi in Georgian England like Da Costa were prominent scientists & will highlight materials lent from the Jewish Museum of London, which just had its own exhibit Sephardi Voices highlighting previously unexamined relationships & identities that transcend borders & cultures. The Exhibit will show the only known portrait of Da Costa, rediscovered in the London Metropolitan Archives, funds in this bid used to restore it to preserve international scientific heritage. The portrait & exhibit materials will be repurposed for a permanent exhibit in the Science in London 1500-1800 Gallery in the Science Museum, which in 2016 had 3.4 million visitors. The curating of both displays is part of the collaborative doctoral award training of Aron Sterk, Roos's PhD student, benefiting his professional development. Roos & Sterk will offer a public lecture to contextualise the exhibit at the RS.

2. Our project considers the wider utility of collecting, antiquarianism & society, as the network has uncovered the involvement of medical & antiquarian collectors & their museums in early modern charity. Musical concerts & museum collections were integral to the Halle Orphanage founded in 1698 by university teacher & collector A.H. Francke. Francke created a natural history museum & used musical performance as teaching tools & fundraisers for the orphans, his ideas influencing Thomas Coram, founder of the London Foundling Hospital. Handel was a native of Halle, had Francke as his university teacher, & was familiar with Francke using musical performance to fundraise. Handel's Messiah was subsequently performed in a benefit concert for Coram's Hospital. Martin Folkes, antiquarian collector & President of the RS & SAL, worked with Coram as governor & fundraiser. To celebrate these links of 'collecting for charity', there will be two free period music concerts at the RS & Leopoldina in Halle accompanying our workshops to raise public awareness of how music influenced & continue to influence Francke & Coram's work. The concerts will feature optional donation to Coram's Creative Therapies Programme & Francke's Krokoseum Creativity Centre.

3. In workshop 3, the network will discuss with the Google Cultural Institute the parameters of an Internet platform featuring early modern collections of RS, SAL, & Leopoldina fellows, this grant a springboard to a larger bid. Using letterform & textual data mining & other techniques, we intend to create an online platform where endusers can track an object or its description across the entire archive, showing its provenance & use in early scientific research. There is significant potential impact of this resource for the scholarly community in history of science, art history, & cultural historians, both in terms of how data is stored & accessed across different pan-European collections & in opening up this knowledge in natural philosophy, medicine & antiquarianism to the wider public.
 
Title Google Arts and Culture Slideshow: Emanuel Mendes da Costa, with The Royal Society. 
Description https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/emanuel-mendes-da-costa-1717-1791/gAKCb0daZKtiIA Emanuel Mendes da Costa was a naturalist, collector and the first Jewish clerk of The Royal Society, elected in 1763. This exhibition, in partnership with the Jewish Museum London and the London Metropolitan Archives, celebrates the recent rediscovery and restoration of his portrait in the London Metropolitan Archives. 
Type Of Art Artistic/Creative Exhibition 
Year Produced 2019 
Impact Was part of my AHRC CDA PhD student's Aron Sterk's research portfolio. Disseminated worldwide 
URL https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/emanuel-mendes-da-costa-1717-1791/gAKCb0daZKtiIA
 
Description Key Findings Workshop One, Leopoldina German Academy of Sciences, 8-9 June 2018

We had a great first workshop in Halle, with two keynotes, a slate of wonderful papers, an energetic final roundtable, behind-the-scenes curator's tours of the Frankesche Stiftungen's Kunstkammer and the archive of the Leopoldina, a historic concert within the Hall Orphanage, and many opportunities for socializing and brainstorming.

We discussed several different elements of the cultures of collection in scholarly societies in Workshop I of "Collective Wisdom" with an overall focus upon the interrelationships between medicine, natural philosophy and collecting practice. From a discussion of the interplay between intellectual networks, urban and country house spaces in creating collections of naturalia, to comparison of physical catalogues and analysis of scientific journals to ascertain the nature and purpose of objects collected, to the role of curiosity and play, we have analysed several influences in the development of collective wisdom in the academy. These are some of the insights and connections between papers we discussed in our concluding roundtable.

One theme that arose was the role of realia and artificialia in medical education, and the use or misuse of objects in collections for pedagogic purposes. Anna Maerker's paper showed to what extent wax anatomical and obstetric models produced between 1784 and 1788 became a flashpoint in professional rivalries between physicians and surgeons in the Josephinum. The debates were bound up with gender norms, Enlightenment sensibility and the notion of character development, as well as utility to the state. To what extent were anatomical models of real use or detraction from medicinal arts, mere spectacles or useful tools?

So too, Kelly Whitmer's paper, particularly in its analysis of Comenius, shows the fuzzy boundaries between play, utility, and objects of godly and human creation in educational reform. We find the emphasis on play in many of the papers particularly illuminating, since one might have assumed that playfulness was sacrificed in the passage from purposefully disordered Kunstkammer to organized Museum. To the contrary, we discussed how playfulness and pleasure remained central but were retooled and reframed.

Pleasure arose out of the things themselves, but it was a pleasure that had to be grounded in practical realities, enjoyment from application. In a particularly striking example, children's dramatic performances taught classification of plants and materia medica. Recreational mathematics required collection of instruments. Pedagogical realism engaged with collections of realia.

Play also extended to the very naming of objects.

Vera Keller's analysis of hyphenated titles in the museology of Johann Daniel Major shows how collections could playfully cross boundaries, particularly for those in-between natural history specimens, such as coral-"stone plants."

New experimental approaches and new objects did not fit into extant categories, and baroque titles reflected these novel attempts at classification. As Ruhland's paper shows, early adaptation of Linnaean taxonomy in the Francke Foundation's Kunstkammer analyses to what extent these new classificatory schemes come to fruition. Svensson's paper also demonstrates the role of taxonomy and competing schemes in ordering the physic garden in an early modern English context.

Not only intellectual categorisation was important, but the very organising of objects in physical space, whether in the museum or in a larger venue like the city.

Julia Schmidt-Funke's paper in its analysis of the intellectual geographies also firmly related the creation of natural history collections with urban spaces as centres of trade, as destinations for immigrant merchants and apothecaries, as part of the day-to-day commercial activity of the city.

Roos' paper analysing the travel diary of seventeenth-century English naturalist and apothecary James Petiver delineated the scientific peregrination from country house to urban gardens, not only as places of collecting field specimens and materia medica, but as places of observation, and intellectual discourse. The confabulatory life of the natural philosopher cum physician and concomitant creation of natural history collections were firmly bounded to space and place, whether physical locality or the Republic of Letters. We also see a glimpse of this confabulatory life in Maria Avxentevskaya'swork about the album amicorum, Stammbücher, or friendship albums, constructed by early modern Dutch and German-speaking students. They collected knowledge and contacts on their academia peregrinatio, self-fashioning as cosmopolitan and well-educated men with international contacts and wide-ranging natural philosophical knowledge.

Analysis of printed works is also important to understand the rationale of collections and collecting, as Kraemer's analysis of the Miscellanea Curiosa, the journal of the Academia Naturae Curiosorum well demonstrated.Much like a contemporary cabinet of curiosities, albeit on the two-dimensional space of the printed page, the journal juxtaposed a potentially open-ended number of strange things that were deemed of particular value for the study of nature.


Jo Hedesan's paper compared the chemical specimens and materia medica in the Tradescant and Ole Worm collection catalogues and tracked them through time as they were collected or created with an eye to understanding their role not only as objects of observation, but in Worm's case, their use in the chymical laboratory appended to his museum.

Dominik Hünniger's paper, which analysed entomological articles by doctors and natural philosophers in the Philosophical Transactionsand the Acta of the Leopoldina would also allow us to track particular specimens chronologically, in this case accounts of insects in published journals, to understand how and why they may have appeared in museum collections. Analysis such as this allows scholars to comprehend the rationale behind their changing taxonomic classification based upon observations made about their appearance and behaviour.

The event was rounded off by a public benefit concert performed by young students at the Halle Conservatory in the Francke Orphanage to recreate the experience of hausmusik or house music performed in the early modern period; In our first workshop, we examined the Wunderkammer or Natural History Museum in the Historic Orphanage of the Francke Foundation in Halle, Germany. In 1698, Francke created this global cabinet of curiosities as a teaching tool for the children in his care. His 'learning-by-doing' approach included teaching the children to sing for public performance. These ideas greatly influenced Thomas Coram's vision for his Foundling Hospital.

Handel was a native of Halle, had Francke as his teacher, and was familiar with Francke's use of musical performance to fundraise. Handel's Messiah was performed in a benefit concert for Coram's Hospital. We recreated this experience for our audience using baroque instruments and music, raising over 250 euros for the Francke Foundation for Children.

As we approach workshop II at the Society of Antiquaries on 1-2 April 2019 to explore the connections between natural philosophy and antiquarianism, we will see if any other themes about the cultures of collecting link the two events.

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Workshop II, 1-2 April 2019, The Society of Antiquaries of London
Outcomes of this session were summarised by early career researcher and conference attendee, Jana Schuster (University of Cambridge)

The Collective Wisdom conference series - of which this has been my first to attend - is by the nature of the questions it tries to answer one which brings together people from a wide range of professional expertise and disciplines. The aim of this Collective Wisdom conferences was to gain a better understanding of how the modern museum and science collections came together through the Cabinet of Curiosities, and through learned societies like the Royal Academy, the Society of Antiquarians, the Egyptian Society and the Spalding Gentlemen's Society. In the true definition of 'interdisciplinary' research - currently the favorite word of universities, funding bodies and academics alike - for this workshop, experts in the history of, science, archaeology, art, architecture, collecting, printing and philosophy, to name but a few, came together, both from universities and the museum sector.

An opportunity such as this led to delightful references being made between the history of the Society of Antiquaries, and the building and organisation as it survives today. So, for example, Prof Stephanie Moser (University of Southampton) in the opening remarks of her stimulating Plenary lecture amused the audience by showing a caricature of members of the Society of Antiquaries by William Cruikshank (1872), studying, drawing and debating historic artefacts, presided over by their president who sits on a distinctly-shaped red chair. Prof Moser, to the audience's great delight, drew our attention to that same chair, still surviving in the very same room we were sitting in, and which still used by the current president of the society.

One of the things which made it particularly special was the opportunity to see some of the original drawings, manuscripts, field notes and diaries that formed the subject of the papers given. The society had prepared a display in its beautiful library, which at the end of the lecture sessions could be studied and discussed by ECRs, speakers and advanced scholars.

It is never a given that lectures can come together with displays of the sources they discuss, and I feel that perhaps the most befitting example of this perfect alignment of circumstances was in an oil lamp. Not just any oil lamp, but a fourteenth-century bronze oil lamp which was found in 1717 at St Leonard's Hill, Windsor, presented to the Society of Antiquaries by Hans Sloane in 1736, and which since 1770 has been the symbol of the Society: shining the eternal light of knowledge where there was once darkness (or something like that). Dr Kim Sloan (British Museum) traced the story of this little oil lamp in a very dynamic second Plenary lecture. The lamp of course isn't able to actually burn eternally eternal (apparently it can burn for about one month), but it does survive, and the society displayed it in the library, together with William Stukeley's 1718 drawing of the lamp in the society's illustrated Minute Book)

Conferences are always a curious experience for which I find that the best strategy is to not have any expectations, but only a hope to be delighted and to meet interesting people who have been doing great research. I am currently working on my PhD in architectural history at the University of Cambridge, which normally sees me running round the departments of art history and architecture, paying occasional visits to the history faculty. My thesis looks at the life and architectural works of the second Duke of Montagu (1690-1749), whose name is generally not widely known in these circles (something I am hoping to rectify). Knowing of the quality of speakers who would give papers, I knew that Collective Wisdom had the potential to be a very special and particularly good conference. And I hoped that perhaps some of the people there might be familiar with the second Duke of Montagu, who was a member of most learned societies in London. But it still came as a delightful surprise when many of the papers ended up mentioning Montagu, a key character on the periphery of people such as Martin Folkes, William Stukeley and Henry Baker - scientists, antiquarians and scholars who were much discussed at the conference.

I was therefore utterly delighted to find myself at a conference, listening to people's fascinating research, and being able to share some of the things I have been discovering about Montagu's role in antiquarian and scientific endeavours. Not only that, the conference left me with pages of notes about books, archives, sources and contacts to follow up on which I believe will become quite significant for my thesis. To finish a conference somewhat exhausted from its intensity is quite normal, but to finish it elated about the potential discovery of major new primary sources and a potential new angles for one's work is a different matter altogether.
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Workshop III outcomes are described by William Burgess and Alice Wickenden. Will Burgess is a PhD candidate at Queen Mary University of London, working towards a thesis on legacy and the eighteenth-century public museum

Alice Wickenden is doing a collaborative PhD between Queen Mary University of London and the British Library, working on Hans Sloane's library and its material connections.

The workshop was held at the Royal Society on 14 and 15 November 2019.

The third and final workshop for the AHRC-funded project 'Collective Wisdom: collecting in the early modern academy' promised to explore the 'afterlives, use and reconstruction' of early modern collections through digital approaches. There couldn't have been a more fitting location than the Royal Society; as Louisiane Ferlier's paper on 'The Royal Society digital collections' showed, the Society's ongoing digitisation of manuscripts is one that combines a sincere reflection on its own institutional history with an embrace of new technologies. In fact, Louisiane's presentation coincided with the online launch of Nehemiah Grew's 1681 catalogue of the early Royal Society's collections, which is well worth checking out: a beautiful example of how early manuscripts are being made accessible in ways they have never been before.

This focus on digitisation, whether through scanning manuscripts and printed books or photographing artworks and museum objects, was one of the most prevalent kinds of 'digital lives' at the conference. Often, of course, this work is combined with the creation of metadata and wider records: as the amazing expansion of the Early Modern Letters Online (EMLO) project showed (in a paper given by the project's Miranda Lewis), an initial focus on a single material archive can balloon into huge amounts of unseen data. The workshop attendees (who must spend thousands of collective hours working with both sides of digital catalogue interfaces) heard papers that ranged back and forth across the threshold between user experience and the creation of digital catalogues and repositories. Over the two days, a picture emerged of 'digital lives' as a juggling act involving user and creator, balancing complex source material with accessibility, age-old questions with new fields of interpretation.

Transparency versus utility was a recurring theme. Louisiane Ferlier pointed out that the digital interface is a 'lie' of sorts, invisibly blending several different collection management systems together for the ease of the user. This point is worth thinking about: not that institutions lie (!) but the way that the catalogue - a traditional physical tool and unique object - has become a digital metaphor for accessibility and instantaneous searchability. Tom Scott's paper 'Lessons and thoughts on (re)combining digital collections' expressed concerns that the Wellcome Collection's online interface was failing at this function, but as anyone who works with early modern catalogues will confirm, it is all part of the process. Maybe applying some pressure to that metaphor and resulting 'lie' is one way to make clearer the ways in which 'digital lives' is expanding the vocabulary of the humanities into new realms

This ethos of collaboration was palpable not just within project teams but across institutions and between workshop delegates, underlined by the generous and thoughtful Q&A sessions. One of the questions after Neil Johnston's paper was a practical, considerate query: 'as librarians, archivists, or researchers, what should we be looking for to help the project?'. That kindness and desire to collaborate (the answer, if you're similarly interested, was 'anything to do with Ireland') was reflective of the whole mood of the conference. Papers drew attention to the collaboration behind them, and gave thanks to their colleagues and students. Nobody was ignorant of the fact that, frequently, whole teams of both humanities researchers and digital experts were behind the information being presented. Although much attention was also given to the practical limitations of such work it was done in a spirit of genuine care and excitement for the work being done now, and the sort of work it could inspire in the future.

Other papers reflected on the relationship between representations of collecting and the creation of new data. Matthew Symonds's paper on the 'Archaeology of Reading' project undertaken by the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters showed just how much could be gained by seeking to reconstitute an early modern library; meanwhile Brent Nelson's 'Reconstructing the Ark' (a kind of collection of collections) explained the difficulties for databases to represent the complexities of early-modern collecting networks. These discussions took on a fractal aspect: disparate (but connected) Renaissance collections - which borrowed, lent and bought from each other - now spread across a variety of institutions, online catalogues and coding systems, are beginning to share data and cross-references in a digital ecosystem that would be impossible in physical terms. For example, Miranda Lewis suggested that EMLO might be looking at branching into a biographical database, since reconciling the often staggering array of spellings and names on offer in early modern correspondence seems to demand the existence of a master record. Almost every paper that followed from this point enthusiastically picked up on its suggestion, emphasising just how helpful it would be.

Conversation about these ecosystems of metadata were shared by papers that explored the potential to reconstruct, as well as to represent, that is latent in digital platforms. This makes sense, given that the problems (or solutions) in both cases arise from the issue of the material objects present or absent in museums and libraries. One approach looks at what's there and makes it as accessible and usable as possible, another thinks about what isn't there, and ask how digital tools might help us notice and address those silences. To this end, we were greatly struck by Julianne Nyhan's paper reflecting on the 'Enlightenment Architectures' project, which has been examining and digitising a selection of Hans Sloane's catalogues. Coming from the 'digital' side as opposed to the 'humanities' side (a distinction upheld by the workshop even as it sought to destabilise it), Julianne commented that she'd not previously thought about the innately positivist aspects of marking up a document in TEI: that is, you can only tag what is there. Sloane's catalogues are replete with the expertise of enslaved people, collectors, and amanuenses who appear only in their conspicuous absences: it was thrilling, and inspiring, to hear Julianne's reflections on how digital tools might allow us to properly think about those gaps.

But the most moving paper for us was Neil Johnston's report on 'Record Revelations: Beyond 2022 and the virtual reconstruction of the Public Record Office of Ireland'. The loss in 1922 of the Irish PRO was a tragedy, photos of the rubble conjuring feelings of hopeless paralysis - what could possibly be done to counter a disaster of such scale, even with all the tools now at our disposal? As Neil showed, a remarkable amount: the digital reconstruction of the building, meticulously following building plans and photographs, was incredibly moving and sensitively done, and the revelation that Neil's team hoped to find detailed information, facsimile copies, or other reports of up to 20% of the collection's holdings was astounding. The ability to search swathes of material in archives and libraries on both sides of the Atlantic could not be done by hand, and nor could the resulting attention to individual records - whether that be transcribing manuscript copies held elsewhere in Ireland, or linking users through to the records of relevant documents held in Philadelphia.

At the same time, we noticed many papers underline the persistence and necessity of human expertise alongside digital platforms. If digital tools can only work with the data that they're given, the grand scale of enquiry, access and reconstruction enabled by the 'digital lives' of historical material comes down to the expertise and (literal) input of the teams who conceive of and manage them. The limitations most often cited were scarcities of funding, questions of long-term solutions and website maintenance, though one of the strengths of the workshop was a host of positive and insightful suggestions towards better collaboration and focus for digital projects based on invigorating success stories.

This workshop was rounded off by another benefit concert, similar to that of Workshop I, but this time to raise money for the Coram Foundation. Ada Witcyk and Mark Walkem, 82 Degrees Performed a programme of baroque music that raised £215 for Coram. (https://royalsociety.org/science-events-and-lectures/2019/11/collecting-for-charity/)

These three workshops have greatly informed the PIs pending application to the AHRC for a digital project reconstructing the early modern collections of The Royal Society of London, some of which are lost. Medicine, antiquarianism and natural history interacted to produce taxonomic categories unique to the period that will inform our reconstruction. The continued experimental use of items in the collection and the creation of exhibits in the Royal Society Repository Museum (for instance, chemical compounds or materia medica) will also be considered in our analysis. The continual evolution of the collection from the 17th to the 18th century also reflected new interests in natural philosophy: increasing precision of instruments, metrology, and the inclusion of ethnographic objects reflecting Britain's trade and imperial networks. In turn, our reconstruction must also be decolonialised to reflect origins and significance of indigenous objects, and their relationship to slavery.

The most valuable lesson for the PI was that a truly interdisciplinary approach could work for great benefit to museum professionals, digital humanists, historians, librarians, archaeologists, and for participants at all levels of their career, from beginning graduate student to full professor. The hands on library session in workshop II was particularly successful. Workshop III also allowed for the debut of a Google arts and Cultures Slideshow from my AHRC-PhD student Aron Sterk concerning the life and letters of Emanuel Mendes da Costa, an 18th century Jewish natural historian and collector.
https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/emanuel-mendes-da-costa-1717-1791/gAKCb0daZKtiIA

This gave food for thought for several museum professionals and librarians in the audience who considered it as a new platform for public impact.

Lastly, Vera Keller, the CO-I and I have received a contract for a conference proceedings volume with Brepols in their Techne Series for all three workshops, forthcoming in 2021.
Exploitation Route Commonalities discovered in early modern collecting, whether in classification or purpose, could be used by museums to inform exhibits, or to accomplish digital recreations of early modern science museums. (Workshop III on 14-15 November 2019 will be devoted to this digital theme). The integral nature between early modern collecting, natural philosophy, medicine, and antiquarianism will also inform work concerning the development of scientific societies and the 17th-c 'scientific revolution', as well as studies concerned with the professionalisation of medicine during this time period. Understanding of the early modern museum may also inform creative works that address this time period.
Sectors Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections
URL https://collectivewisdom.uoregon.edu/
 
Description We've mounted a Toward the national collection grant with the AHRC entitled Collective Wisdom: Rebuilding the Royal Society Repository. This grant was the result of our work in the Networking Grant for this award. Results are pending, but if awarded, there will be significant public impact. The 'lost' Repository Museum and Library in the Royal Society (RS) was founded in 1663 by the first state-supported scientific institution in the world. The Repository is also an early prototype of a national collection & the point of origin of items now dispersed in various museums across Britain. In 1781, the ca 5000 objects, 3250 books & ca. 3900 plant specimens of the Repository were partially subsumed into the newly created British Museum (BM) as well as subsequently scattered in these London Museum Quarter institutions: Science Museum (instruments such as a Newton telescope or Hooke microscope); Natural History Museum (dried plants from the early Chelsea Physic Garden); BM (ethnographic objects & illustrations); Wellcome Collection (manuscripts); Royal College of Surgeons of England (anatomies, including a mummy's foot), Worshipful Society of Apothecaries (catalogues of plants used in medicine) & the 18th-c Spalding Gentlemen's Society (SGS) Lincolnshire, the second oldest museum in England. Our project will reunify digitally the objects & records of scientific instruments, specimens & books collected at the RS by creating 'Repository Kit' cataloguing shareware. By reuniting objects digitally, not only will the Repository return to its status as an interdisciplinary 'Philosophical Storehouse' for early RS fellows such as Isaac Newton and Joseph Banks, but the shareware developed will also be scalable & become the digital model for use in UK heritage organisations with dispersed collections. As the Repository was designed by Sir Christopher Wren (his death anniversary is 2023, making this project timely), we will also digitally reconstruct the architecture of the Repository 'placing' objects in situ, which, when clicked by a member of the public, reveal the object's status & relationships in the National Collection. Although we have floorplans and know the Repository and Library's layout, & even the position of the books on the shelves, the closest extant example of a Wren- designed institutional space is the Wren Library, Lincoln Cathedral, & the SGS the closest example of an extant museum period display of coin cabinets & organisational layout. The Pepys Library at Cambridge has library cabinets similar to those used in the Repository. The Wren Library, SGS and Pepys Library will thus be utilised as architectural and interior models for the lost Repository. In return, the Cathedral, SGS & Pepys Library will be given the architectural reconstructions of their own spaces we create for their own related exhibits & public dissemination. Though our reconstruction, both catalogue and visually-based, we will analyse the very organizing principles that governed early modern collections, which, accrued over time, underpin the National Collection today. We will also partner with Bedford Creative Arts (BCA), which commissions high-quality art with communities and works with artists to explore new developments in socially engaged art practice. With them and BAME focus groups, we'll curate pioneering physical & digital exhibits about the Repository & public programmes for the RS Summer Science Exhibition, Higgins Gallery, BCA & the SGS. Working with BCA, we'll also collaborate with BAME communities to decolonise the Repository metadata records, & properly contextualise and globalise the Repository collection in terms of its provenance, considering trade, colonial and transatlantic slave networks. We'll develop a national curriculum through an Arts Award called 'Rebuilding the Repository' about the history of museums & early science, a Regulated Qualifications Framework (RQF) for young people 25 & under in association with Arts Council England. The Repository may have been described by a visitor in 1780 as a deluxe shed in the bottom of the garden, but it was one of the most important 'sheds' in the world, & we need to recreate this microcosm of science for scholarly purposes, but also to inspire public imagination.
First Year Of Impact 2020
Sector Creative Economy,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections
Impact Types Cultural,Societal
 
Description Vera Keller, Co-I- John Simon Guggenhiem Foundation
Amount $75,000 (USD)
Organisation John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation 
Sector Charity/Non Profit
Country United States
Start 01/2021 
End 12/2021
 
Description Workshop I: Early modern English and German collecting networks and practice: Medicine and natural philosophy, Leopoldina German Academy of Sciences, 8 and 9 June 2018 
Organisation Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
Country Germany 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution The shift from a purposefully and playfully disordered Kunstkammer to the well-ordered Enlightenment museum is known. What has yet to be explored fully is the process through which this transformation occurred. This two-day workshop investigated the role of learned societies in that transformation between England and German-speaking lands, focusing on the relatively understudied period from the foundation of the Leopoldina as a medical association (1652) to the start of the Royal Society Presidency of Joseph Banks (1778). It will explore why it was that physicians seemed to have such a seminal role in collecting and connoisseurship in both regions. Did medics in the Leopoldina, the Society of Antiquaries in London and the Royal Society have similar collecting practices, strategies, and underlying reasons for collecting? What were their contributions to the creation of wonder cabinets and early museums, as well as their development of norms of connoisseurship and classification of knowledge? Participants engaged with the archives of the Leopoldina and the Francke Foundation's extant Kunst- und Naturalienkammer (art and natural history cabinet) in Halle, a rare survivor from the 17th century. The workshop included a public concert of baroque chamber music.
Collaborator Contribution The Leopoldina provided the venue, the Lesesaal des Leopoldina-Studienzentrums, Emil-Abderhalden-Straße 36, 06108 Halle (Saale), prepared the registration folders, and were of great help in assisting with local logistics
Impact A conference proceedings volume is in discussion with Routledge/Taylor Francis. There are plans for future collaborations that will lead to a large AHRC bid to explore early modern collecting in a pan-European context. The PI arragned for Rainer Godel, the head of the Science studies unit at the Leopoldina to be made a member of Library Committee at the Royal Society which deals with history of science policy.
Start Year 2018
 
Description Workshop II: Antiquarian Science in the Scholarly Society, Society of Antiquaries of London 
Organisation Society of Antiquaries of London
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution What was the relationship between archaeological fieldwork or antiquarianism and learned travel or the Grand Tour? What does collecting on tour say about the manner and scale of personal and institutional contacts between London and the scientific world of the Continent? What tools of natural philosophy were utilised to understand buildings and artefacts? What were the implications of the collecting of ethnographic objects for political dominance and Empire? Speakers include Philip Beeley (Oxford), Dominik Collet (Oslo), Luke Edgington-Brown (East Anglia), Dustin Frazier Wood (Roehampton), Vera Keller (Oregon), Chantel Grell (Versailles), Clare Hornsby (British School at Rome), Stephanie Moser (Southhampton), Staffan Müller-Wille (Exeter), Cesare Pastorino (Berlin), Anna Marie Roos (Lincoln), Edwin Rose (Cambridge), Martin Rudwick (Cambridge), Kim Sloan (British Museum), Alexander Wragge-Morley (NYU), Elizabeth Yale (Iowa). A working session using sources from the Society of Antiquaries Library and Museum will also be part of the programme. The Society's library is Britain's oldest major research library for archaeology, architectural history, decorative arts (especially medieval), material culture and the historic environment. It contains books, archives, manuscripts, prints and drawings. Its Accredited museum collection - which was formed before the introduction of public museums and galleries in the mid-18th century - contains prehistoric, classical and medieval antiquities, seal matrices and impressions, and paintings.
Collaborator Contribution The Society of Antiquaries contributed room hire and publicity.
Impact workshop for academics costed in the grant. Addition to the Society of Antiquaries' research seminar series.
Start Year 2018
 
Description Workshop III: Collecting and Collections: Digital Lives and Afterlives 
Organisation Google
Country United States 
Sector Private 
PI Contribution This workshop concerning the afterlives, use and reconstruction of early modern collections is designed to benefit scholars interested in digital humanities. We will explore digital approaches to survey collections over time, assisted by the Royal Society-Google Cultural Institute partnership. How can we data-mine and use tools to integrate extant databases? How did the norms of early modern academies, of scientific journal publication, priority of discovery and 'matters of fact' shape the organisation of knowledge? How do we consider those early modern models in digital reconstructions of early collecting? There were over 50 attendees.
Collaborator Contribution The Royal Society donated room rental and AV in kind. The Google Arts and Culture Platform came to speak. The Jewish Museum and the
Impact https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/emanuel-mendes-da-costa-1717-1791/gAKCb0daZKtiIA Google Arts and Culture Slideshow between the Royal Society, Jewish Museum and London Metropolitan Archives on the Collector and first Jewish Clerk of the Royal Society, Emanuel Mendes Da Costa
Start Year 2018
 
Description Workshop III: Collecting and Collections: Digital Lives and Afterlives 
Organisation London Metropolitan Archives
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution This workshop concerning the afterlives, use and reconstruction of early modern collections is designed to benefit scholars interested in digital humanities. We will explore digital approaches to survey collections over time, assisted by the Royal Society-Google Cultural Institute partnership. How can we data-mine and use tools to integrate extant databases? How did the norms of early modern academies, of scientific journal publication, priority of discovery and 'matters of fact' shape the organisation of knowledge? How do we consider those early modern models in digital reconstructions of early collecting? There were over 50 attendees.
Collaborator Contribution The Royal Society donated room rental and AV in kind. The Google Arts and Culture Platform came to speak. The Jewish Museum and the
Impact https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/emanuel-mendes-da-costa-1717-1791/gAKCb0daZKtiIA Google Arts and Culture Slideshow between the Royal Society, Jewish Museum and London Metropolitan Archives on the Collector and first Jewish Clerk of the Royal Society, Emanuel Mendes Da Costa
Start Year 2018
 
Description Workshop III: Collecting and Collections: Digital Lives and Afterlives 
Organisation The Jewish Museum of London
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution This workshop concerning the afterlives, use and reconstruction of early modern collections is designed to benefit scholars interested in digital humanities. We will explore digital approaches to survey collections over time, assisted by the Royal Society-Google Cultural Institute partnership. How can we data-mine and use tools to integrate extant databases? How did the norms of early modern academies, of scientific journal publication, priority of discovery and 'matters of fact' shape the organisation of knowledge? How do we consider those early modern models in digital reconstructions of early collecting? There were over 50 attendees.
Collaborator Contribution The Royal Society donated room rental and AV in kind. The Google Arts and Culture Platform came to speak. The Jewish Museum and the
Impact https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/emanuel-mendes-da-costa-1717-1791/gAKCb0daZKtiIA Google Arts and Culture Slideshow between the Royal Society, Jewish Museum and London Metropolitan Archives on the Collector and first Jewish Clerk of the Royal Society, Emanuel Mendes Da Costa
Start Year 2018
 
Description Workshop III: Collecting and Collections: Digital Lives and Afterlives 
Organisation The Royal Society
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution This workshop concerning the afterlives, use and reconstruction of early modern collections is designed to benefit scholars interested in digital humanities. We will explore digital approaches to survey collections over time, assisted by the Royal Society-Google Cultural Institute partnership. How can we data-mine and use tools to integrate extant databases? How did the norms of early modern academies, of scientific journal publication, priority of discovery and 'matters of fact' shape the organisation of knowledge? How do we consider those early modern models in digital reconstructions of early collecting? There were over 50 attendees.
Collaborator Contribution The Royal Society donated room rental and AV in kind. The Google Arts and Culture Platform came to speak. The Jewish Museum and the
Impact https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/emanuel-mendes-da-costa-1717-1791/gAKCb0daZKtiIA Google Arts and Culture Slideshow between the Royal Society, Jewish Museum and London Metropolitan Archives on the Collector and first Jewish Clerk of the Royal Society, Emanuel Mendes Da Costa
Start Year 2018
 
Description Benefit Concert for the Coram Foundation, workshop III, 14 November 2019, The Royal SOciety 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact As part of our work, we examined the Wunderkammer or Natural History Museum in the Historic Orphanage of the Francke Foundation
in Halle, Germany

In 1698, Francke created this global cabinet of artefacts and natural curiosities as ateaching tool for the children in his care; his learning by doing approach included teaching the children to sing for public performance
.
Such pedagogical ideas were part of a shared vision of Protestant piety and charity and greatly influenced Thomas Coram's vision for the Foundling Hospital. Handel was a native of Halle, had Francke as his teacher, and was familiar with Francke using musical performance to fundraise. Handel's Messiah was subsequently performed in a benefit concert for Coram's Hospital.

As a tribute to the past efforts of Francke, Handel and Coram, this benefit concert of baroque music is being held to raise public awareness of the work of the Coram Foundation for Children in London. The concert performed by 82 degrees on period instruments was free to the public with optional donation to Coram's Programme of Creative Therapies for Children. We raised over £200 for Coram
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://royalsociety.org/science-events-and-lectures/2019/11/collecting-for-charity/
 
Description Benefit Concert, Francke Foundation, Workshop I, Collective Wisdom 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact 50 People attended a Benefit music concert for the Francke Foundation in Halle Germany on 8 June 2018, from 6:30-7:30, a Baroque Concert at the "Englische Saal" in the historic English House, Francke Foundation. This concert was performed by students from the Halle Conservatory, led by Nick Gerngross on Harpsichord. It recreated music performances done in the 17th century by children at the Francke Orphanage, and allowed us to discuss our project and answer questions. The concert raised 205 euros which will be used to enhance programmes in the children's creativity centre at the Francke Foundation
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://collectivewisdom.uoregon.edu/workshop-i/