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Article: Travelling objects: the story of two natural history collections in the nineteenth century.
- Article from:
- Portuguese Studies
- Article date:
- January 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Modern Humanities Research Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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This paper will explore the journey of two distinct natural history collections assembled by the naturalists Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844) and Friedrich Welwitsch (1806-72), one from Brazil to Lisbon and Paris, the other from Angola to Lisbon, and then finally to London. Through an examination of these cases I will try to show how, in the nineteenth century, natural history specimens were associated with specific forms of collecting, travelling and exhibiting. I will recover and analyse the travel itineraries that do not appear on the museum labels of these objects, and by so doing reveal the exhibition culture that constitutes one of the main values of ...