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Enlightenmentat the BM.

I went to this yesterday, since I was in town anyway. It's very good, and set up within the restored King's Library (a room built to house the books of George III <g>). It's quite entertaining in the way it looks at the early eclecticism of museums and of science (sorry, 'natural philosophy'). You can see the way in which the broad scope of enquiry begins to turn into systematic classification and specialisation. There's the occassionally patronising sentence in the signs, especially ones keenly pointing out that modern ethnography etc. is so much more advanced than the work of Cook etc. - given the exhibition is about historical notions and exploration you'd think the idea that scientific enquiry has progressed would be self-evident. Overall though, it was an almost perfect cabinet of curiosities* and creates a far better mental imagining of the Age of Enlightenment than the 1753 exhibition did. Plus! one of John Dee's scrying glasses! (There's an entire section on the overlapping of natural philosophy with mysticism which any FP fan should have a browse through even if they skip the rest of the exhibit.)

It's also a wonderful insight into how modern museums came about, not only taking in the BM (obviously) but also the British Library and the Natural History Museum. OK, maybe that's just fun for museum geeks like me...

*Sir John Soane's Museum is the perfect example of an entire house of curiosities, and in the same era. And, for anyone who cares, it's in Lincoln Inn's Fields on the route of the Feast of Fools (and has a Hogarth painting which mentions the Eleven Days). Phew...got that back on topic, I think...