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The History of Museums: Collecting & Curating the Past - CED00190C

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  • Department: Centre for Lifelong Learning
  • Credit value: 10 credits
  • Credit level: C
  • Academic year of delivery: 2022-23
    • See module specification for other years: 2024-25

Module will run

Occurrence Teaching period
A Spring Term 2022-23

Module aims

This module considers how practices of collecting and display shaped the origins and development of art museums and galleries in Europe and North America. It will consider how museums helped to construct the History of Art and how this narrative has been changed with alternative practices of viewing, collection and display. It will especially consider the legacy of imperialism upon museum collections and the current debates surrounding this issue.

Through seminar discussion and independent reading as well as written formative and summative assessments, students will develop key transferable skills such as analytical reasoning and argument development, oral communication abilities, and research techniques.

Module learning outcomes

Upon completion of this module, students will be able to:

  • Understand the formation of museum collections in Europe and the controversies surrounding the collection of art today
  • Determine how museums contributed to the classification of knowledge and the legacies of this practice
  • Discuss major works of art from significant collections in European museums and explain their provenance
  • Evaluate how practices of collecting and display have contributed to standard and alternative narratives of the History of Art
  • Debate the problems and ethics surrounding works of art owned by a museum as the result of imperialism or looting.
  • Demonstrate university-level reading and writing skills (including vocabulary for persuasive arguments, crafting a cogent thesis statement and engaging in research)
  • Locate and use appropriate reference materials, including primary source material
  • Generate critical questions for debate based on readings
  • Develop interpersonal skills through seminar tasks and group discussion.

Indicative assessment

Task % of module mark
Essay/coursework 100

Special assessment rules

None

Indicative reassessment

Task % of module mark
Essay/coursework 100

Module feedback

The tutor will give regular individual verbal and written feedback throughout the module on work submitted.

The assessment feedback is as per the university’s guidelines with regard to timings.

Indicative reading

  • Alpers, Svetlana. “The Museum as a Way of Seeing.” Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, ed. Exhibiting Cultures. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1991
  • Barringer, Tim. “The South Kensington Museum and the Colonial Project.” In Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn, eds.Colonialism and the Object - Empire, Material Culture and the Museum. London: Routledge, 1998, pp. 11-27.
  • Baudrillard, Jean, “The System of Collecting.” In John Elsner and Roger Cardinal, eds. The Cultures of Collecting. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994. pp. 7-24. PACKET
  • Baxandall, Michael. “Exhibiting Intention: Some Preconditions of the Visual Display of Culturally Purposeful Objects.” in Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, ed. Exhibiting Cultures. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1991, pp. 33-41.
  • Bourdieu, Pierre and Alain Darbel. The Love of Art: European Art Museums and Their Public. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991
  •  
  • Jonathan Brown, Kings & connoisseurs: collecting art in seventeenth-century Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.
  • Coltman, Viccy. Classical Sculpture and the Culture of Collecting in Britain Since 1760. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. 
  • Duncan, Carol. Civilizing Rituals--Inside Public Art Museums. London and New York: Routledge, 1995.
  • Guilding, Ruth. Owning the past: why the English collected antique sculpture, 1640-1840. New Haven : Yale University Press 2014
  • Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor, eds. The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-century Europe. Oxford University Press, 1985.
  • Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, eds., Exhibiting Cultures. The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display (Washington and London: Smithsonian Press, 1991).
  • Klonk, Charlotte. Spaces of Experience Art Gallery Interiors from 1800 to 2000. New Haven (Conn.): Yale University Press, 2009.
  • MacGregor, Arthur Grant. Curiosity and Enlightenment Collectors and Collections from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 2007.
  • McClellan, Andrew, ed. Art and Its Publics: Museum Studies at the Millennium. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.
  • McClellan, Andrew. Inventing the Louvre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
  • Pierson, Stacey. Private Collecting, Exhibitions, and the Shaping of Art History in London: The Burlington Fine Arts Club. 2017.
  • Reist, Inge Jackson. British Models of Art Collecting and the American Response: Reflections Across the Pond. 2017.
  • Stourton, James, and Charles Sebag-Montefiore. The British As Art Collectors: From the Tudors to the Present. London: Scala Publ, 2012.


The information on this page is indicative of the module that is currently on offer. The University constantly explores ways to enhance and improve its degree programmes and therefore reserves the right to make variations to the content and method of delivery of modules, and to discontinue modules, if such action is reasonably considered to be necessary. In some instances it may be appropriate for the University to notify and consult with affected students about module changes in accordance with the University's policy on the Approval of Modifications to Existing Taught Programmes of Study.