On The Origins Of Public Museum In Europe

The emergence of museum is due to people's awareness of collection.The behavior of collection gives rise to the birth of this special institution i.e.museum,which represents the transition of private collection into public properties.European museums are representative among these primitive museums.Therefore,the occurrence of European museums is inevitable against the background of that era.For a long time,there have been various versions about the origin and birth of European museums,we choose several development stages of museum which are controversial with each other as our research object to investigate the evolution of the museum which established before the emergence of the formal European museums.The first stage is the Muse temple in the classical period,Muse temple did not equip the typical characteristics of a modern museums at all,but it is the source that the word 'museum' comes from,in addition,there is the noble collection of Roman times and the church collection later;The second stage is the infant stage of European museums,the representative,Uffizi Gallery,though did not completely equip the features of modern museums,the concept of museum has since been changed;In the third stage,the behavior of private collection tended to be professional gradually.In addition,the participation of scholars speed up this transition,leading to a set of primitive principles for the preservation and classification of museum collections.All of these conditions promoted the birth of modern museums;Eventually,the first public museum,the Ashmolean,appeared in the fourth stage.In spite of the confinements during its initial period,the public feature of the Ashmolean Museum determines its status as the first modern museum.In the end of this paper,by comparing these stages with each other,we conclude that the development of science and culture is the factor which stimulates the evolution of museums.Apart from that,there is a common point during the evolution,i.e.the rulers usually play the leading role in the development of the museum,and the preservation of precious relics and art treasures is the most important mission of museums.