Social Practices in Museums: Near and Middle Eastern Historical Dimensions
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Abstract
A modern museum evokes a certain imaginary, with a history going back to private
and less systematic collections, such as cabinets of curiosities. Stimulated by
European Enlightenment ideas, the modern museum developed into a semi-public
institution regulated by modern nation states in the 19th century. Unlike cabinets
of curiosities, modern museums exhibit objects in order to convey certain
ideas and systems of knowledge.1 To contribute to the general debate on what
makes a museum, this paper will focus on the history of Near and Middle Eastern
institutions, considering socio-material practices that are normally thought to
characterise modern museums. The paper is inspired by recent studies that have
successfully traced certain markers of modernity, such as individuality, secularity,
or atheism, to pre-modern times and non-European regions.