2l8 Memorial of George Brmvn Goode. 



v.— THE USES OF SPECIMENS AND COLLECTIONS. 



A. — THE USES OF SPECIMENS. 



1. Specimens are like the types in a printing office. They may be 

 sorted in the cases in convenient order, so as to be accessible when 

 needed, and may be used to make intelligible almost any train of thought 

 or series of ideas, each being available to hundreds of different relation- 

 ships. 



2. A museum is rarely justified in exhibiting all its materials; as well 

 might a pubHshing house insist upon using every piece of type in its 

 possession in the printing of each book which it issues. 



3. An exhibition series, when properly installed and labeled, is usually 

 most effective when limited in extent. 



4. Such a series should not only be hmited in extent, but also selected 

 and arranged as to produce a certain unity of effect. 



Comment. —This principle has been stated by Jevons, who writes : "There may 

 be many specimens exhibited, but they ought to have some degree of relation that 

 they may conduce to the same general mental impression. It is in this way that the 

 Thorwaldsen Museum at Copenhagen exercises a peculiarly impressive effect upon 

 the multitude of all classes of Danes and Swedes who visit it. This museum con- 

 tains in a single building almost the whole works of this great sculptor, Thorwaldsen, 

 together with all the engravings and pictures having reference to the same. Very 

 numerous though the statues and bas-reliefs are, there is naturally a unity of style 

 in them, and the visitor as he progresses is gradually educated to an appreciation of 

 the works. In somewhat the same way we may explain the ineffaceable effect which 

 certain other foreign galleries produce upon the traveller, especially those of the 

 Vatican. This is not due simply to the excellence of any particular works of art, for 

 in the Louvre or the British Museum we may see antique sculptures of equal excel- 

 lence, but in the principal Vatican galleries we are not distracted by objects belong- 

 ing to every place and time. The genius of the classical age spreads around us, and 

 we leave one manifestation of it but to drink in a deeper impression from the next." 



The Museo delle Belle Arti in Sienna, the collections in the Monastery of San 

 Marco in Florence, the Mus^e Gallo-Romain at St. Germain near Paris, the Museo 

 Borbonico in Naples, the Musee des Thermes in the Hotel de Cluny, the German 

 National Museum in Nuremberg, the Museo de Ultramar in Madrid, the Museum 

 of Practical Geology in London, all have been successful in maintaining this unity of 

 effect. 



A noteworthy example of a museum of limited scope in which unity of effect is 

 sacrificed is the Musee Guimet in Paris, although notwithstanding this effect it 

 is one of the most interesting and beautiful small museums in the world. In this 

 instance it is evidently due to the fact that the original purpose of the museum— 

 which was to illustrate the comparative history of religions— has been modified by 

 the admission of extensive collections illustrating the arts of the Orient, and that 

 these are not separated in their installation from the religious collections. 



Great national museums are usually so hampered in the matter of space that they 

 are not able to attain to such unity, and perhaps it is not equally important in these 

 great establishments in which popular education is only one of several purposes. 



5. Single or unrelated specimens, though valuable or interesting, are 

 in themselves of little moment in comparison with series of much less 

 precious objects which unite to teach some lesson to the student or visitor. 



